The first morning after her arrival, Quash accompanied the other women to work in the rice fields. It was planting time, which they told her would run from March to May. Big William was waiting for her, asked to see her palms, said they looked like a baby’s ass, and stated that she would be classified as a half-hand because of her apparent weakness and inexperience. It was backbreaking labor, wading barefoot through ankle-deep water and transferring the rice shoots from a flat bag on her back into the soft bottom.

The main rice fields were in a big bend of the Ogeechee, and salt water never intruded. At high tide the still-flowing fresh water was above where the rice was planted, permitting the two main canals to be filled twice a day. Heavy wooden gates controlled the flow of water from the river to and from these canals, and smaller gates or piled-up dirt were used to plug the ever-smaller channels leading to different areas. The river water was used both to nurture the growing stalks and to drown emerging grass and weeds. At times, the fields were permitted to dry so that surviving weeds could be pulled up or chopped with hoes. Each plot in a rice field became the personal responsibility of a particular worker, so everyone could tell whose fault it was if there was a poor stand or a weedy area, and Quash soon felt a sense of ownership for the area under her care.

Big William had two other drivers working under him, each in charge of half the field hands. The other men were used in clearing land, digging irrigation trenches, plowing furrows in dry rice fields, sawing lumber, caring for the livestock, cultivating corn, potatoes, and other crops on the plantation’s high ground, or serving as carpenters, blacksmiths, or leather workers.

For the first few days Quash worked between Sarah and Ida on an area half as large as theirs, and even then they helped plant some of the plot assigned to her so they could move abreast up and down the field. She had to stand erect frequently to ease the pain in her back, and was afraid that the driver or even the overseer would notice that she was not working steadily. Sarah was talkative and inclined to answer a steady stream of questions, mostly about other women. Quash learned that two older women were caring for the thirty-two small children, three were responsible for cooking the slaves’ big evening meals and enough bread, potatoes, rice, and sometimes meat for mornings and at noontime, two were assigned to help the male gardener, three worked in the big house, and four women were now too old to leave their cabins and perform any useful tasks.