Women, who were well along in their pregnancies, were still sent to work at plowing and hoeing. "Hard driving" was quite common, and consisted of working slaves past their physical capabilities, as what they regarded as normal. In the South there was no rest season, the climate was always considered good enough to work in and, so, everyone was economically active all year round. Children between the ages of six and ten might be active as water carriers. Children between the ages of ten and twelve were organized into gangs and put to weeding. .
Typical plantations had anywhere from 9 or 10 to 25 slaves. Mainly, the slaves were field hands who planted and picked the cotton or cut the sugar cane. A few might be skilled in blacksmithing or other manual arts. Larger planters might have 50 or more slaves. The largest slave holding in Louisiana was just under a thousand--Houmas House. There was also another type of slave on a plantation known as a house slave. A House slaves were trained to do their work from childhood. They would be away from the other slaves. They would sleep on a pallet besides the masters' bedroom. The house slave was taught to believe that being a house slave was the best thing that could become of him or her. All older housemaids wore a key ring. On it, were all the keys to the pantry, the smokehouse, the cooling cellar, and other food storage's. Every house slave would walk in a way so that the keys would jingle to show how, proud, important and trusted the slave was. Close to the kitchen was a large wooden building called the kitchen quarter in which the house servants ate. They also did the washing in the family and the unpleasant work such as scaling fish, cleaning and putting up pork, etc. Being a house slave was easier than being a field slave, but they had to work longer hours. .
The food was generally adequate in bulk, but imbalanced and monotonous. Typical food allowance was a peck of corn meal and three to four pounds of salt pork or bacon per week per person.
