November is taken up primarily with gathering apples and making cider and delivering apples and cider to buyers. This is George’s mainstay stock in trade, and it’s a time of hard work and long hours. The pace slows down a bit in mid-December. – Alex Brooks
Saturday, December 12, 1829: Today and evening I helped make sausages to dry. It is quite rainy.
Sunday: I am unwell with a pain in my eye and head, was taken partly blind for half an hour.
Monday: I made a large gate. Tonight we husked corn.
Tuesday: I took my wagon and horse and put it with Mr. Danford’s and drew three loads of hay from Mr. J. Russel’s for said Danford, and he agrees to credit me for the same on account, and today we cut and drew and partly hewed some timber.
Wednesday I finished my gate and raised it at the barn yard to come into the highway.
Thursday I made a pair of bar posts and set them below the barn yard and moved the barn yard and made it larger. Tonight we husked corn. This morning Doc Dwight Right’s wife died (Polly Platt Wright), age 34.
Sunday December 20: My family went to meeting in the cutter. On this evening I reckoned with Esther Shelden and paid her up to this date all in cash, which was six dol and 88 cts, for 62 cts per week. She tended to all kinds of work and milking and occasionally to other outdoors chores. I made no charge against her for the hair comb I bought her the other day.
Monday: I took the single wagon and carried Mother Holcomb up to brother Wm’s and today I made a parting to my barn yard to shut the calfs in. Tonight we husked corn.
Tuesday: I made some latches to my gates and husked corn. This evening I went to Hancock Village with the single wagon to Wm Hadsell’s store. I bought The Life of Josephus complete in one volume, and paid one dol and 50 cts and I bought The Life of Napolean Bonapart in two volumes and paid two dol for them.
Thursday: We husked corn and this evening we husked corn. Tonight I did not rest very well, I had a bad cold and the rheumatic complaint in my right shoulder.
Friday, December 25: I did not tend to much but chores. I was unwell with cold and rheumatism. My family went to the Temperate Society meeting at the Saturday meeting house.
Saturday: I am unwell. Today I went with the single wagon to brother Wm to fetch Mother home. I walked from there to the post office at Nathan Howard’s and paid 36 cts for a letter from Hanna Twichel at Ohio and 18 cts for a letter from Isaac Humphrey to the west about 250 miles.