Peasants sow and harvested the lands but most of the year didn’t have much to do.
They usually ploughed two times before harvest, and had to harrow at least once. After the harvest you had to process it, so cleaning threshing and winnowing grain or cleaning fruits. You’d need to weed it, maybe even plough it again after sowing to flatten out the ground and cover the seed and bury the weeds. If you’re lucky, you can add some manure and if you’re unlucky you might to plough agaaaain to retain more water on the field.
Of course those staple crops are in addition to the vegetable and herb garden, and any animals that need care every single day.
And all of this is ignoring the housework, gathering firewood, cooking for today and preserving for winter, cleaning and mending clothes, making yarn and weaving fabric, down to simply fetching water. Just housework is a fulltime job (not 40 hours, but literally all the time) in de middle ages.
And if you fall Ill, break a leg, have a fire or just have a shitty dry summer, the general solution to that is dying slowly and painfully.
Subsistence farming sucks so hard, people worldwide literally chose indentured servitude as a preferable alternative on many occasions.
“During times of high wages and good harvests, peasants could expect to work no more than 150 days a year.”
Ahhh this article again. It misses a hugely important bit of info: this work is ONLY for their lord. To translate it to a modern context:
During a brief period after the Plague, a peasant “only” had to work 150 days to “pay the rent”. If they wanted to do stuff like stay warm, wear clothes and eat, that came on top of those 150 days.
They usually ploughed two times before harvest, and had to harrow at least once. After the harvest you had to process it, so cleaning threshing and winnowing grain or cleaning fruits. You’d need to weed it, maybe even plough it again after sowing to flatten out the ground and cover the seed and bury the weeds. If you’re lucky, you can add some manure and if you’re unlucky you might to plough agaaaain to retain more water on the field.
Of course those staple crops are in addition to the vegetable and herb garden, and any animals that need care every single day.
And all of this is ignoring the housework, gathering firewood, cooking for today and preserving for winter, cleaning and mending clothes, making yarn and weaving fabric, down to simply fetching water. Just housework is a fulltime job (not 40 hours, but literally all the time) in de middle ages.
And if you fall Ill, break a leg, have a fire or just have a shitty dry summer, the general solution to that is dying slowly and painfully.
Subsistence farming sucks so hard, people worldwide literally chose indentured servitude as a preferable alternative on many occasions.
Both sides are true.
Work itself was much harder and life itself could be called a struggle compared to today’s standards.
But the attitude towards works was very different and much more broken up. Leisure in medieval times is well documented.
“During times of high wages and good harvests, peasants could expect to work no more than 150 days a year.”
https://www.thecollector.com/peasant-life-medieval-england/
Ahhh this article again. It misses a hugely important bit of info: this work is ONLY for their lord. To translate it to a modern context:
During a brief period after the Plague, a peasant “only” had to work 150 days to “pay the rent”. If they wanted to do stuff like stay warm, wear clothes and eat, that came on top of those 150 days.