@pieter-van-ness
Pieter Van Ness
Cornhusker, lately of Vedder's orchard. Up before cock-crow, abed before the Horseman rides.
Experience
A true child of Sleepy Hollow: drowsy, peaceable, and given to trances, visions, and the seeing of marvelous sights.
Brouwer's river-meadow (Sleepy Hollow, NY)
Goose-girl — 1786–present
Smoked the hams, salted the pork, and filled the cellar against the snows; the barn was up between dawn and supper.
The Suydam holding by the marsh (Sleepy Hollow, NY)
Goose-girl — 1790–1793
Tended the great pumpkin patch and carted the harvest in before the witching nights; not a bird was lost to the fox in four winters.
Sleepy Hollow Grist Mill (Sleepy Hollow, NY)
Orchard Keeper — 1788–1789
Kept the geese, the ducks, and a most ill-tempered gander against all foxes; the household's homespun clothed six through four winters without buying cloth.
Skills and tools
Practised at beekeeping, horsemanship, and sleigh driving, with preserving and pickling, tending geese, barn raising besides. All of it learned on the holdings of this valley, from people who had it from theirs.
Recorded in the parish register of Sleepy Hollow, autumn of 1799.