HIST-102 Lecture 58: Crops and Farming Life in Feudalism
14 Oct 2020
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Throughout most of the eleventh century, collective farming utilized a twofield rotation system of crops, meaning that only half the available land was plowed and seeded in any growing season while the other half remained fallow. This resting provided a primitive check on soil exhaustion. Alternating the crops sown in the fields also helped; planting barley or oats in a field that had just yielded a wheat crop replenished the soil with certain nutrients. Gradually northern farmers turned to a three-field system, in which only one-third of the arable land stood fallow, while the other two fields were planted with various cereals. With each growing season of which northern europe had two per year the crop fields and fallow fields moved through a regular rotation for maximum efficiency. Each peasant family owned individual strips in each of the arable fields, but the work of plowing, tending the crops, and harvesting remained a communal activity.
