Life in a Medieval Village - Frances Gies [23]
Harrowing. Man following the harrow is planting peas or beans, using a stick as a seed drill. British Library, Luttrell Psalter, Ms. Add. 42130, f. 171.
Rules of St. Robert.58 In 1297 the Elton wheat yield reached fivefold, but overall the ratio remained about the same, a third to half modern figures.59 Prices fluctuated considerably over the half-century from 1270 to 1320, varying from five to eight shillings a quarter (eight bushels) for wheat.60 Half a ring (two bushels) planted an acre. Even without drought or flood, labor costs and price uncertainty could make a lord’s profit on crops precarious.
The treatises offered extensive advice on animal husbandry—standards for butter and cheese production, advice on milk versus cheese, on suspension of the milking of cows and ewes to encourage early breeding, on feeding work animals (best for the reeve or hayward to look to, since the oxherd might steal the provender), and on branding the lord’s sheep so that they could be distinguished from those of the tenants. The cowherd should sleep with his animals in the barn, and the shepherd should do the same, with his dog next to him.61
In the realm of veterinary medicine, the best that can be said is that it was no worse than medieval human medicine. Without giving specific instructions, Walter of Henley advocated making an effort to save animals: “If there be any beast which begins to fall ill, lay out money to better it, for it is said in the proverb, ‘Blessed is the penny that saves two.’ ”62 Probably more practical was Walter’s advice to sell off animals quickly when disease threatened the herd. Verdigris (copper sulfate), mercury, and tar, all items that appear frequently in the Elton manorial accounts, were applied for a variety of animal afflictions, with little effect on the prevailing rate of mortality, averaging 18 percent among sheep.63 Sheep pox, “Red Death,” and murrain were usually blamed, the word “murrain” covering so many diseases that it occurs more often in medieval stock accounts than any other.64
The Elton dairy produced some two hundred cheeses a year, most if not all from ewes’ milk, with the bulk of the product going to the cellarer of the abbey, some to the famuli and boon-workers.65 Most of the butter was sold, some of the milk used to nurse lambs. The medieval practice of treating ewes as dairy animals may have hindered development of size and stamina. But though notoriously susceptible to disease, sheep were never a total loss since their woolly skins (fells) brought a good price. The relative importance of their fleece caused medieval flocks to have a composition which would seem odd to modern sheep farmers. Where modern sheep are raised mainly for meat and the wethers (males) are slaughtered early, in the Middle Ages the wethers’ superior fleece kept them alive for four to five years.66
Poultry at Elton, as on most manors, was the province of a dairymaid, who, according to Seneschaucie, ought to be “faithful and of good repute, and keep herself clean, and…know her business.” She should be adept at making and salting cheese, should help with the winnowing, take good care of the geese and hens, and keep and cover the fire in the manor house.67
The only other agricultural products at Elton were flax, apples, and wax, all cultivated on a modest or insignificant scale.68 The wax was a scanty return on a beekeeping enterprise that failed through a bee disease. On other English manors a variety of garden vegetables, cider, timber, and brushwood were market products. Wine, a major product on the Continent, was a minor one in England.
In the old days of subsistence agriculture, when the manor’s produce went to feed the manor and the clink of a coin was
Beehive. British Library, Luttrell Psalter, Ms. Add. 42130, f. 204.
seldom heard in the countryside, the surplus of an exceptional season, beyond what everyone could eat, went to waste. But for some time now a momentous change had been under way. The growth of town markets “put most men within