His activities include tending the horses in the evening, in the autumn breaking flax on the wooden flax breaker before daybreak, supplying the horses with straw for litter and grooming them, carrying water, throwing the sheaves of grain, straw, and hay from the forage loft and bringing it to the chopping room and feed store, chopping wood, and turning swaths during threshing, while at the same time, if he has received Confirmation in Christianity and no longer goes to the preacher, spinning 15 to 20 skeins of yarn over the long reel or 25 to 30 skeins over the small reel; if no threshing takes place, however, he must supply 20 skeins, i.e. a piece of yarn over the long or one and a half pieces over the small reel, and when he turns 17, even 25 skeins over the long reel. In accordance with the Farm Laborers’ Code dated February 6, 1752, he receives annually 4 Reich thalers in pay and, in keeping with tradition, Mengellakenlinnen for two smocks.
With Confirmation into Christianity completed, upon reaching the age of 16, he is immediately enrolled and registered in the conscription list, solemnly bound in lieu of an oath in accordance with the Sovereign’s Decree dated February 19, 1765, not to leave his fatherland, travel without leave and passport to other countries, nor to stay there beyond the duration of his leave. [ . . . ]
From his 17th into his 20th year, he becomes Schulte, junior farmhand; as such, he has to perform all sorts of immeasurable farm work that the lord and the lady order him to do, for which the groom and the foreman of the farm cannot be used. He has to dig in the garden, trim hedges, make bundles of brushwood out of them (to line the fences), chop wood, operate the plow, and help cut the crop.
In the fall, from the Wilbaser Kirmis onward and in the winter until the celebration of St. Peter assuming the Pastorate (February 22), he has to help with threshing before daybreak, in the evening bring the four heaps of grain to be threshed from the loft to the threshing floor while spinning a piece of yarn over the long or one and a half pieces over the small reel; however, if an entire day’s work consisting of eight heaps of grain, each of which counts as ten sheaves, is threshed, he spins over the long reel half a piece consisting of ten skeins, or 13 skeins over the small reel, so-called small yarn.
If no threshing occurs at all on any day, he must supply one and a half pieces over the long or two pieces over the small reel. Weather permitting, the time around the celebration of St. Peter assuming the Pastorate is set aside for farm work.
In the course of this, the junior farmhand must trim hedges, cut bundles of brushwood and put them on the fences; he must also help deliver felled lumber and trimmed wood for summer fuel. During cultivation and fallow time in spring, i.e. in the months of April, May, and June his tasks include operating the plow, helping to load soil, cutting grain during harvest time and bringing the grain to the farmhand on the cart using a pitchfork.
Certainly, during this time of your lives, the physical powers are beginning to increase noticeably, but you must be all the more careful in using them, for you might never run a greater risk of wrecking your health than in this very period.
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