A View in Peasant Life

Once again, reading about how a culture or how a particular type of people live interests me. The essay on "Advances in Agriculture" that we read this week is the one that grabbed my attention. Granted, this essay focused on agriculture but it still reflects what life must have been like for these people and how they lived their lives on a daily basis. Between the years 800 and 1000 villages consisted small huts made of clay and grass, surrounded by two fields. The huts were small, only one or two rooms with a loft above for storage, one door and no windows. I can't imagine living with my family in one room with our animals. I mean, what would that be like, waking up with your pigs and cows laying down next to you? You would stay warm in the winter I guess. I imagine if you were lucky enough to have two rooms in your hut you could pen your animals in one and you could sleep in the other. Each hut had about 1/2 acres of land attached to it called a messuage that you used for your own use for a garden or a place to keep your animals outside. The two fields surrounding the village were also used by families. It was known as an open field system. Each family owned portions of each field but it seems that all were responsible for the whole field. Sixty percent of the harvest went to taxes and church tithes, leaving the village people with 40 percent for themselves which would be put towards things you couldn't grow or make yourself. It would take 35 bushels for one basic family to live, which equals out to about 30 or 40 acres of plowed field for each family assuming your growing year went well and there were no early rains to ruin your crops. I wouldn't want to live in such times when you had to hope that everything went well so you could survive the next year and you didn't have much to begin with.