Friday, fair and warm, 60's. I washed in morning early then helped Clifton put insulation in wood house. Girls didn't go to Halloween party at the parsonage.
Comment: Wonder why girls did not go to party?? Here is what Socrates Hubbard wrote about harvesting in October about a hundred years prior. He lived around Scott's patent with a view to Livingstonville:
"In October as soon as the corne was ripe it was cut and put into stoots this was a job I rather liked, and then soon after the first of November it was drawn to the barn and set up on the Barn floore put into the stables etc. Then came the fun of husking. By this time the weather began to get cold so that in the morning especialy we were glad to sit in sun the large east doors of the barn were opened and rite in front of them we began our work throwing the golden ears into a basket until full then empty into the wagon. I generaly colected quite a veriaty of spoted red black, blew & diffirant collared corn ears. Flax was an other article we generaly raised. an half achor was about the extent. This however took a good deel of labor. Flax has to be pulled this is don by swinging the left hand around the flax as much of it as can be easily pulled at once the rich [right] is then used taking hold below the left. The handfull is spred on the ground and so in the seeds always the same way. It is shortly gethered up into bundels and set five or six in a place until the seed will thrash easily. The thrashing is don on the barn floor with frales. This thrashing was generaly don some rany day when we could not work out. I can now see the cold damp day Father Paul and myself working with the flax my part of the work was playing with the beautifull seed as it sliped from the faning mill. The stems or stalks were taken to the meddow and spred in rows left for a month or more to rot, then bound into larg bundels and placed in the barn for winter treatment. I never liked to dig potatos to tutch them sends a shudder through me and a particular smell of the vines was very disagreeable to me. my business was picking up. The Potatos were put into a large bin in an outdoor seller nearly all the farmers had such sellers on account of the extreeme difficulty of preventing the cellirs under the house from freezing. This sellar was dug into the side of a bank neer the house, was probibley ten by fourteen walls on the sides and timber overhead. An outer and iner door and ry straw in large bundles put betwen. Of cours the sellar was perfacly dark. Gethering Apples Was a holliday. The orcherd was a large one everybody had Apples so we never sold an apple. What was not put into the seller and mad into cider went to the hogs and cows. Hundreds of bushels were fed in this way. Those designed for winter use were carfully picked and carried basket after basket to the bin. More than a hundred bushells were thus stowed away. Those intended for cider were haIled generaly two milds to Chancy Hulberts who had a cider mill. The mill was a primative afare circular trough two feete wide and thirty perhaps forty feete in circumferons. The apples wer scattered over the bottom of the trough, then a ponderous wheele six feed [feet] in diameter was rold over them by a horse hitched to a windless. This arangment crushed the apples very finely. The press was two immence wood screws, we generaly made five or six barrels of cider.Three barrels was boild into one for apple sauce. The rest put into the sellar from which we drank occasionaly during the winter and when to sower for that put into vinigar."
Take a look.....from The Life And Times Of Socrates Hubbard
With a Short Sketch of the Hubbard Family
Written by Himself
Commenced the 13th of December 1856 in Quincy, Ill.
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