How have farms changed?

Qualitymark

A description of medieval Irish farms:

The farmhouse was round and constructed of wattle packed with insulating material, and there was an adjoining out-house.

The farmhouse was surrounded by an enclosed area (les) of approximately 100 feet in diameter, which contained structures such as the sheep pen, calf pen, pigsty, and hen coop.

Outside the les, the typical farm had a vegetable garden, as well as a kiln for drying corn and a barn for storing it.

The Old Irish law texts regularly distinguish between the infield (faithche), which refers to the better land around the farmhouse, and the outfield (sechtarfhaithche) farther away.

The main law text on farming, Bretha Comaith- chesa, provides detailed descriptions of what constitutes a proper field boundary, and distinguishes the stone wall, trench-and-bank, bare fence, and oak fence. The proper dimensions and method of construction are specified in the text. For example, the bare fence is constructed with posts and hazel rods, and is capped with an interwoven blackthorn crest—the medieval equivalent of barbed wire.

How are things the same or different now?

Kovu

Um.....all of it? :pac:

You could broadly describe the change as farmers back then lived off the land, they reared what they ate and farmed hand to mouth on small pockets of land passed on in families. Now the (much larger) farms are used mainly to sell produce for money which is then used to buy products/food.

blue5000

OP sounds very like the eco-village not too far from here:p

Qualitymark

Kovu wrote: »

Um.....all of it? :pac:

You could broadly describe the change as farmers back then lived off the land, they reared what they ate and farmed hand to mouth on small pockets of land passed on in families. Now the (much larger) farms are used mainly to sell produce for money which is then used to buy products/food.

Doesn't sound like it was necessarily that hand-to-mouth…

One such manor was Knocktopher in County Kilkenny, where a fairly detailed extent for 1312 lists four farmers holding between 5 and 74 acres of arable land, then at least forty-five free tenants holding from as much as 2,520 acres of arable land all the way down to just one house plot. There are also ninety-seven burgesses who held 360 acres of arable land, and finally there is mention of a settlement of betaghs, but the record does not give any indication of their probable numbers, although they farm 120 acres of arable land

and

Early Irish laws indicate that the range of cereals grown and eaten included oats, barley, wheat, and rye, used for making bread, porridges, cakes, and beer. Different grains were accorded different status, and according to early Irish laws (typically seventh to eighth century A.D.) wheaten bread was a high-status food.
There is abundant archaeological evidence for drying of cereal grain in corn-drying kilns and the grinding of grain in both domestic rotary querns and horizontal mills. Vegetables for soups were grown in small gardens around the dwelling, and included cainnenn (probably onions), celery, and possibly parsnips or carrots, peas, beans and kale.
Wild garlic and herbs may also have been gathered in the woods, along with apples (which were grown in orchards), wild berries, and nuts…
Between the seventh and the tenth century A.D. (and after), cattle were primarily kept to provide milk and all its products: cream, butter, curds, and cheeses, as well as thickened, soured, and skimmed milk drinks, all referred to in old Irish as bánbíd (white foods)… faunal analyses of cattle bones from the large middens found on early medieval cran- nogs such as Moynagh Lough and Lagore (Co. Meath) and Sroove (Co. Sligo) also indicate that cattle herds were carefully managed for dairying.
Rennet from calves and sheep was used in making cheese, while butter was clearly made in large amounts. Wooden buckets, tubs, and churns recovered from early medieval Crannogs also indicate the preparation and storage of such produce, while tubs of “bog butter” may have been placed in bogs for preservation.
However, meat was also important and evidently eaten by both rich and poor…

Willfarman

We now sell our produce at a pittance in large volume to enormous capitalist processing and retailing companies who in turn sell it back to us shrink wrapped and boxed in packaging which often costs more than the food!

Qualitymark

Oh, and people had fish and eel traps in the rivers, and of course shellfish, as well as sea fish, were used and sold. And when things got bad there was always a bit to be made from ransom.

Capercaillie

Kovu wrote: »

Um.....all of it? :pac:

You could broadly describe the change as farmers back then lived off the land, they reared what they ate and farmed hand to mouth on small pockets of land passed on in families. Now the (much larger) farms are used mainly to sell produce for money which is then used to buy products/food.

The land would have been filled by the song of corncrake, quail, grey partridge, corn bunting, skylark, lapwing, redshank, cuckoo, snipe and curlew. The land is mainly silent now of these creatures.

djmc

There is still plenty snipe and cuckoo around here as well as pheasants that wait until I nearly step on them before they fly up and make a racket stopping my heart in the process.
I remember my parents telling me of bringing the sow into the house beside the fire to Farrow and lads eating the bread and jars of thick sour milk for dinner.
You don't have to go that far back in history to see big changes.
When my dad brought his first tractor his father thought he was mad not to keep using the horse for work and said them tractors will never catch on.
Even 1930s or 40s would be a different world from today.

Birdnuts

When you think of the changes rought by mechanisation and the introduction of agri- chemicals etc., farming has probably changed more in the few decades since WW2 then it had in the previous 1000 years.

Nekarsulm

Possibly the introduction of the potato, combined with the fudal and later landlord sysrems were the greatest misfortunes to occur to this country.

locky76

Nekarsulm wrote: »

Possibly the introduction of the potato, combined with the fudal and later landlord sysrems were the greatest misfortunes to occur to this country.

Is it potatoe because it ensured that our over reliance on it in the run up to the famine?
Maybe some other misfortune would have wrought havoc if the humble spud had never appeared? (and we wouldn't have Tayto park... :-))

gazahayes

blue5000 wrote: »

OP sounds very like the eco-village not too far from here:p

Different laws down there altogether!

Nekarsulm

When you have population explosion, up to eight million people, and most families living on a couple of acres as cities and urban dwelling was a tiny proportion of the total , all facilitated by a new wonder crop delivering tons of food to the acre, then any interuption of supply could only cause disaster.

foxy farmer

Before the advent of mechanical power (steam or oil powered engines)farm work was done by humans and animals. The sun was the ultimate source of energy. Plant crops they grow feed yourself your family and animals and get work done.
Now we dig into the ground for fossil fuels and we buy food rather than produce our own.
I think theres a saying which goes something like this.
You might not make a living from an acre but you wouldn't die on it either; ie grow food on it.

Qualitymark

Thread creep… but… when you talk about a population explosion up to eight million - that wasn't the biggest problem. The biggest problem was the horrifying inequality. By the 19th century, the occupation complete and the suppression of Ireland absolute, Irish tenants were living in one-room mud cabins roofed with rotting straw, sleeping on the floor in a huddle of people on a bundle of lice-infected rags; the landlords' attitude was "they like their dirt". If they improved their situation, the rent went up, and up, to the point where they couldn't pay it, then they were evicted and better-off tenants brought in.

For instance, "The broken-hearted farmer, Dan O'Hara" was doing well in Connemara and built his family a stone house with - oh, the arrogance - good windows; when prices crashed and rents soared he was unable to pay the rent and he and his family were evicted; his wife died on the boat to America, his children were fostered out, and he, without a word of English, tried to make a living selling matches on the streets of New York and died of hunger within months.

Historians talk about the population explosion to eight million, but the population of Britain was also soaring at the time, soaring from 18 million up towards its present-day 64 million…

The problem in Ireland wasn't the growing population, but the lack of industrial centres to provide a) money and b) a safety valve. We had landlords eager to wring every last penny from their tenants; we didn't have creative industrialists; when industry did begin, it was taxed out of business if it competed with English industries. In England, when tenants fled awful rural conditions, they fled to the cities to work in factories. Here, there were no factories, so people had to flee the country altogether and emigrate to England or Scotland or America.

onyerbikepat

Capercaillie wrote: »

The land would have been filled by the song of corncrake, quail, grey partridge, corn bunting, skylark, lapwing, redshank, cuckoo, snipe and curlew. The land is mainly silent now of these creatures.

Don't forget that rare breed of Black And Tans.

Qualitymark

I'm convinced that the Free State government and the Fianna Fail-led governments that followed it ruined Irish horticulture out of prejudice against unionists, by the way.

In 1915 there were several "gardening schools", some under the aegis of Horace Plunkett and of David Houston, who taught agriculture in the Royal College of Science for Ireland. Horace Plunkett was the chief bottlewasher of the Co-Operative movement, and worked hard for farm education generally.

The idea of these gardening schools, like the Ladies' Gardening School in Terenure, was to give women a sound education in horticulture, so that farms could continue to have their pastoral and tillage work, but this would be backed by Irish-grown vegetables that could replace a lot of imports and provide a valuable second string for farmers, with the female part of the farm team growing soft fruit, tree fruit and vegetables for sale in addition to the dairy and poultry work that was normally the woman's province and which money she normally controlled (before the co-ops grabbed it).

By 1922, all of these gardening schools had closed, and by 1925 so had the Royal College of Science for Ireland.

Willfarman

The ridiculous prejudice went beyond the beyonds of stupidity. A pig with a black spot couldn't be shown at a fair in these parts as it was deemed a English breed.