How many hours a day did farmers work in the middle ages?

Sam_Stone · October 2, 2000, 6:16pm

In the poorest areas, people would farm in the summer, and hunt in the winter. But more to the point, most peasant farming took place in areas that don’t get harsh winters. Most northern cultures were more nomadic or in general relied more on hunting and fishing.

Jmullaney started this thread because he doubted my assertion that peasant farmers at the start of the industrial revolution might have willingly left the farm to work in a factory. His doubt stems from his belief that peasant farming was somewhat of an idyllic lifestyle of gardening while the children played or did light chores around the house. Thus, he believes that the industrial era with child labor and all those factory workers was a big step backwards in lifestyle.

Therefore, he thinks that peasant farmers were basically forced off their land to work in factories, and their children sold into slave labor.

In fact, peasant farming was grueling labor for all members of the family, lifespans were short, there was rarely enough to eat, and people voluntarily left the countryside in droves to work in factories because the pay was much higher and the working conditions were often better than what they were used to.

For example, peasant farmers rarely had good land to grow on. They often had to plant crops in rocky soil, and this meant long days hauling rocks off the land. Furrows for seeding were often cut by hand, by people on their hands and knees with primitive blades. Having an actual draft beast for pulling plows and hauling water and food was the mark of a wealthy person.

Water had to be hauled from the nearest well or spring, an arduous daily chore that was usually done by Mom and the Kids while Dad was digging away in the fields.

It was NOT an idyllic existance. Life for most peasant farmers then (and now in the poorest countries) was nasty, brutish and short.

Kimstu · October 2, 2000, 6:53pm

Bob T.: *My New American Bible translates the times as “early morning”, “midmorning”, “noon”, “late afternoon” and “near sunset”. *

Well, the Greek is much more specific: for example, your translation’s “midmorning” is actually “peri triten horan”, “about the third hour”, meaning the third (seasonal) hour since sunrise, or about nine o’clock if you’re counting seasonal hours from midnight so that sunrise is at the standard six o’clock. Similarly, your “noon” and “late afternoon” are really “peri hekten kai enaten horan”, “about the sixth and the ninth hour”.

*The point I was trying to make was that in Medieval Europe (for illustrative purposes let’s try 100 years before the Reformation) that if you went to up Joe Peasant Farmer and told him that he could get off work in three hours, I doubt he was going to have a good idea what that meant. *

Actually, the concept of “hour” was a very familiar one even in antiquity, even to the primarily working-class people who formed Jesus’s typical audience. Naturally, most of them wouldn’t have access to instruments for measuring those hours exactly, probably not even a good sundial or water-clock, but they understood what they were. Joe Peasant Farmer might not have timed his three hours precisely (although naturally, long experience without clocks made them much better at estimating time by the sun than we are), but he would certainly have had a good idea what you meant.

jmullaney · October 2, 2000, 6:54pm

I just find this hard to believe. Why don’t we have any record of a thousand year famine in Europe from circa 400-1400AD?

Well, you only had to do that once, though.

Again, I just find this hard to believe that people would not have kept and bred livestock when this greatly reduced their labor. I’ve never heard of any region of Europe that was too poor to afford horses.

Again, can anyone give me a cite that this is true? Were irrigation systems required in Europe? Was everything done by hand? I’m sure irrigation is used now to increase yields, but I’ve never heard of this before or seen paintings of farmers bucket watering their crops before.

How short? What was the lifespan in those days?

I’ll check out that Book of Hours sometime. Thanks, Maeglin.

Purd_Werfect · October 2, 2000, 6:58pm

Hi Maeglin I’ve little doubt that Iceland can be a wonderful place to live, and I hope to visit there before I die. Just my little joke on working during all daylight hours, as I’ve heard that in June and July, all the hours of the day have daylight. I wouldn’t presume to judge, but I’ve no such qualms about being a smartass

Spoke · October 2, 2000, 7:40pm

I grew up on a farm (though admittedly, it wasn’t the Dark Ages). I would agree that there is a tendency of those who didn’t grow up under similar circumstances to romanticize the lifestyle. The financial rewards are not great for most farmers, and the work is hard. On the other hand, it was not constant work, and there were many idle hours. (Though I’m sure that was less true in earlier times.)

As to the question of why folks left farms for factory jobs, I would suppose that it wasn’t so much a lifestyle choice as a question of demographics. Say Farmer Brown has nine children (not so unusual in earlier times). Those children all become farmers. Then they each have nine children. Et cetera, ad infinitum. See the problem? Farms can only be subdivided so many times before some of the children have to find another way to earn a living. (This is a simplification of course, ignoring high mortality rates and such, but the population has been increasing exponentially.)

In addition, under the old English rules of inheritance, I believe that only the eldest son would have inherited the land anyway, meaning the female siblings and younger sons had to find other means for supporting themselves.

At the same time populations were increasing, crop yields were also going up. Result: Fewer farmers needed. Too many farmers, and you get overproduction and plummeting prices, which would result in farmers losing their farms, and still more former farmers looking for another way to earn a living.

So I’m thinking that farmers who left the farm to work in factories did so not because the factories held any great allure, but because of simple population pressures and economic realities.

Dinsdale · October 2, 2000, 8:35pm

Little to add to this interesting discussion, other than the fact that I relatively recently encountered a reference presenting the midieval agrarian life as precarious. What stuck with me was a statement that, due to low yields and poor storage facilities, in late winter/early spring it was more common than not for people to be in a state of near starvation and netritional deficiency, until wild provisions appeared for foraging, followed by maturing crops and fall nuts/fruits. In this light, a poor harvest the previous fall could indeed be disastrous.

Sorry, no cite. But does not strike me as preposterous.

MandaJo · October 2, 2000, 10:30pm

We have records of hundreds of little famines, of canibilism, of mass starvations. Some years were better than others, but it was not unusual for a 10 minute hail storm to destroy a year’s labor and doom a lot of people to serious pain and, for many, slow death.

No, you had to do it every few years as the land became exhausted. Rotation systems only delayed the inevitable.

This goes back to the famine thing. There has to be winter fodder for livestock, and there was never enough of a surplus to support much.

I think he is refering to drinking/cooking water here, which is no small consideration. People go through quite a bit of water in a day, and if you have to haul that any distance it is a hell of a chore.

Quite short: under 30 for a peasant. Peter Brown, a noted historian, estimated that in the late Roman period the birth rate had to have been at least 5 live births per woman just to keep the population from shrinking. The qualilty of life was certainly no better in the middle ages.

Did you look at Anthracite’s link? It is really a very good and readable summary. Look again at those crop yeilds–**2-5 to 1 **. That means that for every seed you plant, you got 2-5 back. Think about that. You have to save enough for replanting, so in a bad year (or a bad area of Europe–some places had very low yeilds) as much grain had to be planted as would support the community. How much grain would you eat in a year if it were almost your only food source? You have to lug that much out to the fields, as well as however much it would take to support those members of the community tha were not directly involved with agriculture, ans as much as the cow will eat over the winter. The amount of work we are talking about here is mind-boggling. Furthermore, maintenice-type tasks are not trivial–fences had to be repaired, tools made, wells dug, firewood chopped, etc. It never stopped.

One more note on quality of life in the middle ages–most farmers had neither acces too nor time to harvest more firewood than was needed for cooking. Medieval peasants in Germany living in drafty huts had no heating beyond what was provided by bedding down with the live stock. This is not a life we would want to live.

jmullaney · October 2, 2000, 11:16pm

I suppose for a massive hail storm, there could be dire consequences. The ten percent tithe to the church would have helped as I imagine, with some overhead, most would be redistributed to those in need.

That link describes fairly descent surpluses. Grain was stored and kept for several years before it went bad. And weeding wasn’t very thorough or consistant according to archeological digs.

The link implies practically a four month holiday though.

Well, I’ve heard tell that we only have enough oil for another 30 years, and enough uranium for another 100 after that. So unless we get fusion working, 2130 ain’t gonna be a fun year. But we probably won’t live see it.

Sam_Stone · October 2, 2000, 11:49pm

Jmullaney: I can’t believe you’re still trying to depict the peasant life as pleasant! “Four Month Holiday” indeed… Do you know what people were doing during those four months? Mostly freezing and starving, while working as best they could on their infrastructure - repairing roofs, collecting firewood, working on tools, mending clothing, and doing chores or handiwork for other people to try and earn a little extra.

From Anthracite’s Link:

In case you never read this, this is a depiction of people who are STARVING. They were often weak, sick, and tended to die quite easily from minor injuries and illnesses.

I almost choked on my coffee over this one. Are you suggesting that the church was a sort of welfare system for peasants? You believe that most of the tithings were re-distributed to peasants in need? What the church offered peasants was the belief that the hardships of this life would be rewarded in the next: The actual cash went largely to wealthy people, who in those days were Royalty and Clergy. There may have been some token aid that I’m not aware of, but it certainly wasn’t a massive welfare system.

Oh, and besides hail you had to worry about floods, draughts, fire, insect infestations, birds, rodents, soil that’s no longer fertile, war, thieves…

Small wonder that people fled the countryside in droves to find work. Perhaps not as many as in the best agricultural years, but throw a draught into the mix and you’ve got a mass exodus.

It should be noted for completeness that the living conditions for the earliest factory workers were not great, due to the pressure on the infrastructure. Living areas were crowded and filthy, and there was a lot of disease. Sewers couldn’t keep up with capacity, and the streets were often filled with refuse and waste. The living conditions for factory workers improved steadily enough that people did not leave, and the migration of workers into the urban areas continued.