Medieval Farming Villages

[Glupii]

I am in the process of working up the starting village of a new campaign. And I am trying to figure out how large the area needs to be.

The area is a flat land surrounded on three sides by a narrow band of foothills and severe mountains beyond that. On the forth side is a cliff leading down to the sea. While the community most certainly gets some benefit from being on the sea, it is not their main form of subsistance. That would come from the farms.

I was thinking of a village of about 300 folks and about a dozen farms, each run by an extended family having about 8-12 able bodies workers. Each farm would grow at most 2 corps with most growing one. Each farm would have a cow or two and maybe some chickens but I was thinking one farm would specialize in Chickens, pigs, and maybe some dairy cattle.

Beyond the farm would be a Sheep Herder that kept a flock grazing in the hills most of the time. I didn't think the hills I was considering would support more than one flock.

The area is mostly subsistance and does very little trading outside the community. It does have a Lord and Manor but beyond that there is very little in the way of outside influence.

OK for my questions that I need help with:

1. How big should the average farm be?
2. How many cows would be needed to supply dairy (Milk and Cheese) for this area?
3. How big would the overall flat area need to be to support what I am looking for?

I have never been savy on details of farming being a city boy. Any help on this would be appreciated.

[Vondy]

Based on your population estimate this is a fairly large village. If we assume fifty households (~6 people each), evenly divided between cottars (~5 acres ea.), half-villeins (~15-20 acres ea.), and villeins (~30+ acres ea.), then you're looking at about 750 acres for the peasants to farm and a like number that they farm for the lord (as a rule of thumb, unless he's minimized his own acreage (demense) in favor of more pasture for revenue yielding crops). This acreage does not include a normative amount of pasture and or wilderness beyond the crop land. In a well established region this would be more pasture and less wilderness. In a less established the opposite. To support a village this size you're probably looking at close to 3,000 total acres - a sizable fief indeed, and one that would be the province of a fat-cat knight with significant military obligations (several men at arms at least) in return. As for cows, I'm not sure how many would be needed for dairy needs, but sheep are a better flock overall unless you have vast tracts of grazing land. They produce wool (for clothes and sale) as well as milk and require less acreage overall. Goats are also a good choice in this regard, but they each everything in sight. If its a frontier manor then pigs are an excellent choice because they can root around in the woods with minimal supervision and still produce leather and meat.

[Glupii]

Wow! I seriously underestimated my size. Perhaps I need to scale back my Village by a bit. And the cattle I was not looking at raising as a food source. I was thinking they would each farm have 2 or three cows they breed amongst each other and the cows only reason would be for dairy. The main animal crop (?) would be sheep and pigs. Perhaps some goats but not many. See, I am too much the city boy. I didn't even know sheep produced milk. Is that what they did in ancient greece? I know they raised alot of sheep due to the land being what it was.

Now to find out how big 3000 acres is.

thanks for the help.

[Vondy]

Wow! I seriously underestimated my size. Perhaps I need to scale back my Village by a bit. And the cattle I was not looking at raising as a food source. I was thinking they would each farm have 2 or three cows they breed amongst each other and the cows only reason would be for dairy. The main animal crop (?) would be sheep and pigs. Perhaps some goats but not many. See, I am too much the city boy. I didn't even know sheep produced milk. Is that what they did in ancient greece? I know they raised alot of sheep due to the land being what it was.

Now to find out how big 3000 acres is.

thanks for the help.

Flock! I initially put crop in my post and then edited it. In ancient greece goats and sheep were the primary flocks (and milk producers). That was the case with many civilizations. Cows take a lot of grazing space and don't provide a renewable source of cloth. On the other hand, Oxen are ideal for plowing, though the villeins (and some of the industrious half-villiens) would probably be the one's who could afford to support them. A cottar certainly couldn't (he doesn't have the land for it). Those that had them would probably hire them out when their own acres (and the lord's) were ploughed - further enhancing their purses.

As for size: which part of the middle ages. For a village in the latter middle ages this would have been middlin. In the early middle ages it would have been quite large. On the other hand, unless you're actually running middle-ages Earth, there's no reason not to tweak it for your own ends.

[gojira]

I did a quick Google search for "Medieval farm" and found this link:

http://www.hyw.com/books/history/Agricult.htm

Pretty close to what Von-D Man is saying, but it's got some more facts and figures in there for you.

[Mutant for Hire]

Medieval Demographics Made Easy (http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm)

This is a must-read for anyone putting together an agrarian society.

[LordGhee]

This is cool also

http://www.rpglibrary.org/utils/meddemog/

this you can do a country

Lord Ghee

[LordGhee]

forgot base on med dem made easy

Lord ghee

[Curufea]

3,000 acres = 12,140,570 square meters.

[Erkenfresh]

Thanks for the links guys. I'll be needing this info!

[Rage]

also, remember that sheep and cattle can be farmed on the same pasture easily, as the sheep and cattle eat different parts of the grass, cattle IIRC will eat the higher parts, while sheep can ground graze. So, you can pretty much say that if properly used a pasture can support sheep and cows in a ratio of about 5:1. (depending on farming practice. It could easily be more, if you teach your cattle to eat bark and tree leaves. Something which is often done in certain parts of NZ.)

[Rapier]

Medieval Demographics Made Easy (http://www.io.com/%7Esjohn/demog.htm)

This is a must-read for anyone putting together an agrarian society.

WOW. I definately bookmarked this page. I'll have to revisit some of my FH campaign stuff.

Did you take a look at the support values chart? I'm not sure I agree with all of the numbers. 1 tavern/pub for a town of 400? That seems awfully low to me. Maybe that's just me and my fiction. Every town has some kind of tavern/pub and a town of 400 would certainly be able to support more than one considering the role a pub played in town society.

Similar with blacksmiths. You are not guaranteed a blacksmith until the town reaches 1500 in population?

180 people could live and thrive in an agrarian society in a single square mile?

I'm not saying that *I* have done any research that disproves any of this. I'm just saying that the numbers seem to be a little off to me. Maybe I just read too much and authors tend to paint things in a rosey tone.

Anyone done any hard research or had any kind of experience? I spent less than 72 hours total in my life on a farm. What do I know of how much produce/pasturage it takes?

[LordGhee]

Thease sites are based on hard data, a gamer friend of mine is an anthropoigist (sorry spell) and look at them.

just remmeber if you use oxen to plow and do not need to shoe horses and use a wood plow a blacksmith is not needed much.

in the 1920-1930 a working farm in Ok. where my family is from was 160 acres to 320 and families could support themselves. (in that time peorid 60% of the wage earners in the US made 200 a year. with a doctor 2500$ and Mae West earning the most in 1932 320,000$. ( much to Randolf Hearst dismay!)

Try to find info did not the old boards have a discussion on this??

Lord Ghee

[Mutant for Hire]

Did you take a look at the support values chart? I'm not sure I agree with all of the numbers. 1 tavern/pub for a town of 400? That seems awfully low to me. Maybe that's just me and my fiction. Every town has some kind of tavern/pub and a town of 400 would certainly be able to support more than one considering the role a pub played in town society.
Look at the terminology used. Towns are a thousand and above. We're talking villages below a thousand. Villages did not necessarily have taverns. Among other things, farmers tended to do their own brewing.

Similar with blacksmiths. You are not guaranteed a blacksmith until the town reaches 1500 in population?
The big question to ask is: how often did the average person (read: farmer) go to the blacksmith and how much work did they need done? The numbers here are rules of thumb about how many people you need until you get a steady business.

Also, I would think that you would also end up looking at regions. In a collection of villages with a population adding up to 1500, you'd find a single blacksmith. Given how the villages were densely arrayed, that isn't that crazy a concept.

I'm not saying that *I* have done any research that disproves any of this. I'm just saying that the numbers seem to be a little off to me. Maybe I just read too much and authors tend to paint things in a rosey tone.
If you can find any numbers to contradict that, be my guest. So far I have not been able to find any major criticisms of the work.

[Vondy]

If you can find any numbers to contradict that, be my guest. So far I have not been able to find any major criticisms of the work.

All of the books I have read discussing this topic and similiar ones support the numbers of your link. A village of a few hundred people was largely self-sufficient and peasants did most of the work themselves. Unless the village was on a throughf-are with traffic a few hundred people would not generally support a tavern or a blacksmith (let alone the proverbian fantasy novel / RPG inn). A mill to be sure, but with alewives, people who did their own slaughtering, and cheese-making, and weaving, and house raising and the like most of the "professions" were only sustainable in very large villages/small townships or larger settlements. Most goods they provided that the villagers would need could be obtained on market day at the fair.

[mikesama]

Look at the terminology used. Towns are a thousand and above. We're talking villages below a thousand. Villages did not necessarily have taverns. Among other things, farmers tended to do their own brewing.
The big question to ask is: how often did the average person (read: farmer) go to the blacksmith and how much work did they need done? The numbers here are rules of thumb about how many people you need until you get a steady business.

Also, I would think that you would also end up looking at regions. In a collection of villages with a population adding up to 1500, you'd find a single blacksmith. Given how the villages were densely arrayed, that isn't that crazy a concept.
If you can find any numbers to contradict that, be my guest. So far I have not been able to find any major criticisms of the work.

As far as blacksmiths go, you can always have something akin to the wandering smiths of Celtic Ireland. Thier anvil was a relativly small head on a nearly 6 foot iron spike that they would hammer in the ground where ever the stopped to work.

A good kilm could sub as a forge and the metal would probably be originally smelted where it was mined.

[Markdoc]

Also remember that largish farms would often have someone who could do minor metalwork, using a crude temporary furnace and the side of a hammer as an anvil. This is how travelling tinkers did their work. You need quite a lot of people to make a living out of full-time smithing.

Based on my own experience, since some of the places where I work are esentially agrarian/medieval even today, no, it doesn't surprise me that the tavern beloved of fantasy writers was rare to non-existent. Historically, it's basically a city institution. In rural west africa, hotel-type taverns are rare off the main roads - a village of even a few thousand is by no means guaranteed to have one. And even purpose-built bars are pretty uncommon - it's much more common for someone to put an old pot or a cup upside down on a stick stuck in the ground by the side of the road. That means a house where you can get a meal or a drink for a small payment - but you can't order: you get what the family is eating. A similar practice was common in Ireland and England (and I presume elsewhere) right up until the 19th century.

cheers, Mark

[McCoy]

As far as blacksmiths go, you can always have something akin to the wandering smiths of Celtic Ireland. Thier anvil was a relativly small head on a nearly 6 foot iron spike that they would hammer in the ground where ever the stopped to work.

A good kilm could sub as a forge and the metal would probably be originally smelted where it was mined.
Again, the smith might depend on the military obligation of the Lord. If the local knight has to maintain arms, armor and a warhorse, he might have a skilled retainer that may do work for the peasents on a time-available basis. This village sounds small for that, but in warlike times budget might be apportioned.

Agree Inn/Tavern is highly unlikely unless the villiage is on a trade route.

[Mutant for Hire]

Oh, here's a bonus perk. A rather large PNG of medieval Nottinghamshire. I've lost the original source reference link but it's apparently a fairly ordinary English county back in the middle ages. Look at the number of villages and then look at the map scale to see exactly how densely packed these places are.

And yes, realistically, passing through most villages, a travelling group of adventurers would be forced to get their meals and sleeping quarters from whatever local farmer was willing to put them up. Note that this could be very simple assuming the group looked fairly reputable and was free with their coin.

Adventurers would themselves be forced to get most of their gear from a town at least, and the traditional linkage of adventurers to cities is in fact to some extent justified by the historical record. Cities existed to support professions that could not be afforded by villages or even towns. People went to the cities for exotic goods and services, and that would include adventurers as well. And the sorts of gear that adventurers need often would only be found in cities themselves.

[Curufea]

I've used the medieval demographics site for various fiefdoms in Western Shores - I've occasionally had players express disbelief at how few bakers there are, and how many shoe makers there are.
I then point out that these are professionals. There were far fewer bakers in medieval times because every family would do their own baking.

[Diamond Spear]

I would recommend picking up a book called "Life in a Medieval Village" by Gies.http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?TTL=Life+in+a+Medieval+Village&z=y It should be available at your local Barnes and Noble (which is where I got my copy) it is chock full of information and an easy read as well. I also recommend "Life in a Medieval Castle" and "Life in a Medieval City" by the same author. Great books to read for anyone running a fantasy campaign.

[prestidigitator]

I've used the medieval demographics site for various fiefdoms in Western Shores - I've occasionally had players express disbelief at how few bakers there are, and how many shoe makers there are.
I then point out that these are professionals. There were far fewer bakers in medieval times because every family would do their own baking.
Oh. And I just thought it was because people liked to eat shoes back then. :doi: ;)

[Curufea]

Oh, here's a bonus perk. A rather large PNG of medieval Nottinghamshire. I've lost the original source reference link but it's apparently a fairly ordinary English county back in the middle ages. Look at the number of villages and then look at the map scale to see exactly how densely packed these places are.
This is precisely my idea of pop density in the Western Shores. The original source material blithely states that they've had civilisation for thousands of years - typical of fantasy stock timelines - and yet we are to believe there are isolated villages days away from each other with wandering monsters in between? Puh-leeze!

Anyhow, back on topic - any chance you've found maps of medieval Germany at all? That's what I would really like to see - I've been on a constant hunt for them ever since I started my campaign. Using anything I could (took me a while to find all the heraldic devices of the baronies).

[Vondy]

Anyhow, back on topic - any chance you've found maps of medieval Germany at all? That's what I would really like to see - I've been on a constant hunt for them ever since I started my campaign. Using anything I could (took me a while to find all the heraldic devices of the baronies).

I have political maps of Germany and France in the high middle ages. The German maps are in... German. I also have a map of Wales in the 13th century, British Shires, and Europe in the Dark Ages (600 or so). I can send them to you. PM me with the e-mail address you want them sent to.

[austenandrews]

Oh, here's a bonus perk. A rather large PNG of medieval Nottinghamshire.
I like "Thorpe in the Glebe." :)

Cool map, thanks.

[Mutant for Hire]

I would recommend picking up a book called "Life in a Medieval Village" by Gies.http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?TTL=Life+in+a+Medieval+Village&z=y It should be available at your local Barnes and Noble (which is where I got my copy) it is chock full of information and an easy read as well. I also recommend "Life in a Medieval Castle" and "Life in a Medieval City" by the same author. Great books to read for anyone running a fantasy campaign.
"Life in a Medieval City" is one of the books listed in the bibliography of "Medieval Demographics Made Easy", but yes, I do like the books.

I do like confounding people who don't quite realize that things were very different in pre-industrial time. I like people who want to go to a weapon shop to buy a weapon. You don't have weapon shops. Crafted items were not manufactured in standardized models. You went to a blacksmith or preferably a swordsmith who was a specialist in such things and got one made to specification.

There's no Hackmaster 2000 model sword. Instead, like the infamous Stradavarius violins, you had weapons made by someone, and a few craftsmen became so famous for their skill, their weapons were very prized. The Muramasa swords of Japan, for example, were very (in)famous.

On the bright side, no one ever had anything "off the rack". It was all more or less custom made.

[LordGhee]

Custom could be ordered.

Most blacksmith, Armourer or metalworkers made stock items that they knew a demand existed. example in Mainz germany the twenty or so wepaon smiths kept making things on speck, hoping to sell you might not finish the item so the customer could get a customized item. this information from a blacksmith who also study the history of his craft.

example yo make a dozen horse shoe banks of assorted sizes and when a customer came in you fitted the shoe (trimed it ect.).

black smith made their living on things like nails.

King John of England (of robin hood fame) paid out a million silver to supply his army with crossbow quarrels in one sige alone that lasted a few months in his war with the Barons. Goverment contracts made fortunes back then.

Lord Ghee

[LordGhee]

this looks like the map source for the map in the old robin hood campian book for 3rd. got to check.

Lord Ghee

[Roland]

Wow! I seriously underestimated my size. Perhaps I need to scale back my Village by a bit. And the cattle I was not looking at raising as a food source. I was thinking they would each farm have 2 or three cows they breed amongst each other and the cows only reason would be for dairy. The main animal crop (?) would be sheep and pigs. Perhaps some goats but not many. See, I am too much the city boy. I didn't even know sheep produced milk. Is that what they did in ancient greece? I know they raised alot of sheep due to the land being what it was.

Now to find out how big 3000 acres is.

1 square mile = 640 acres
1 acre = 1 furlong × 4 rods
1 furlong = 220 yards = 1/8 mile
4 rods = 22 yards = 1/80 mile

Medieval farmland was typically laid out in 1-acre plots. An acre was about how much one man with a team of oxen could plow in one day. The furlong was the length of a furrow. After plowing one furrow, the farmer would rest his oxen, then turn them around and plow back in the other direction.

A family's plots would not be adjacent, but would be scattered. This would ensure that the characteristics of the family's plots (slope, drainage, soil type, etc.) would exhibit greater diversity, which would help to hedge against the risk of extreme growing conditions in a given year.

In the early middle ages, they plowed with oxen. Later, after better harnesses were developed, they were able to use horses. Your peasants will need some sort of livestock to pull their plows. If they have dairy cows, they will have a supply of oxen (which are created by neutering male calves).

[Threnody]

Each farm would grow at most 2 corps with most growing one.Nope. That kinda specializing isn't medieval. They grew some of everything needed, with spare area going to cash crop.

Each farm would have a cow or two and maybe some chickensNope. Cows were rare; they take a lot of land. The rich have some. Plain folks have goats or pigs, sheep not often. Chickens are right tho. Everybody had chickens.

Beyond the farm would be a Sheep Herder that kept a flock grazing in the hills most of the time.Right. That's where you'd have sheep; not in the villiage.

2. How many cows would be needed to supply dairy (Milk and Cheese) for this area?
Cow's milk was considered unsafe an unhealthy. People prefered goat's, donkey's, mare's an maybe sheep's milk.

[Markdoc]

Custom could be ordered.

Most blacksmith, Armourer or metalworkers made stock items that they knew a demand existed. example in Mainz germany the twenty or so wepaon smiths kept making things on speck, hoping to sell you might not finish the item so the customer could get a customized item. this information from a blacksmith who also study the history of his craft.

That's not really true - for a start, blacksmiths and armourers were seperate job categories, but even big centres of armour specialisation like Mainz and Graz did not often make things on spec. - records make it plain that they only worked to order, and they were often back-ordered months or even a couple of years in advance. What they would do is make blanks - prepared metal suitable in size and quality that could be made into things since that often took as long or longer than bashing out munition weapons and armour.

example yo make a dozen horse shoe banks of assorted sizes and when a customer came in you fitted the shoe (trimed it ect.).

Same point - you wouldn't make a dozen different sizes - you might make a few extra shoes of the same size and then fit them as required, but most smiths simply kept the metal rods handy. It's not actually as big a deal as it sounds - I've watched the Carlsberg smith make a new horsehoe and fit it from scratch in about half an hour. The whole idea of "making things in different sizes in advance" doesn't seem to have caught on until the 19th century.

cheers, Mark

[Phil]

On the tavern/inn point, i think the inn of fantasy stereotype (such as the Prancing Pony in Bree) would be rare indeed. But as any inhabitant of rural england today will vouch, a village would not need to be particularly large before a pub of some sort sprang up, particularly where that village lay on a major transit route.

I have been to more than one village in England which has literally been little more than a couple of houses and a pub. Dont underestimate the importance of the pub as not only a watering hole, but a community centre and place to exchange news and gossip.

This website supports this supposition of mine, and gives an indication of how it would be possible:

http://www.godecookery.com/mtales/mtales13.htm

[Markdoc]

Yeah but the key phrase is"One village craft was so widely practiced that it hardly belonged to craftsmen. Every village not only had its brewers, but had them all up and down the street. Many if not most of them were women. Ale was as necessary to life in an English medieval village as bread, but where flour-grinding and bread-baking were strictly guarded seigneurial monopolies, brewing was everywhere freely permitted and freely practiced"

So there's no question that medieval taverns and inns existed - I've visited some whose founding dates back to Angevin times in the UK. But all the old ones are in cities or on pilgrim routes. The old traditional village pub dates back in most cases only 150-200 years: long after the medieval alewife had ceased to exist.

But in medival times when alewives were common, few if any of them owned a real sit-down tavern: those were strictly regulated by licence and usually belonged to wealthy merchants who imported strong beer from the continent - and not unnaturally that kind of person wasn't found in your average village (they might be found in wealthy villages like the Cotswold wool towns during the 1500's though).

cheers, Mark

[Dale A. Ward]

On the tavern/inn point, i think the inn of fantasy stereotype (such as the Prancing Pony in Bree) would be rare indeed. But as any inhabitant of rural england today will vouch, a village would not need to be particularly large before a pub of some sort sprang up, particularly where that village lay on a major transit route.
To be fair, you must bear in mind that Bree was more civilized and urban than what would be termed a village. It was a major crossroads whose population was an eclectic mix of hobbits, humans, and a few dwarves. It would be expected to have a large central meeting place like a tavern/inn.

Even Hobbiton was large and civilized enough to have a pub.

[Curufea]

Although - Tolkein's shire was modelled more on the villages of his time, rather than actual medieval times. He took the best of what he liked about England to create his world, especially the Shire.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Another point of note...
We REALLY can't look at Tolkien for references here.
While he may have set many of the benchmarks upon which modern FRPG's were established, remember that most of the civilization we see in the Western region of Middle Earth is basically 18th century rural england with the technology retarded and the serial numbers filed off.

Tipping one back in a pub with your mates, while you smoke a nice pipe, and then tucking your thumbs into your waistcoat and dancing the buckles off your shoes does not reflect "medieval" in any way...

Few pubs, nor much in the way of pipes, no waistcoats, and precious few buckles on shoes, mate... A hobbit could wander in to the inn at the beginning of Treasure Island and the only things that'd likely cause remark are his size and hairy feet.

Neat thread, BTW...:thumbup:

[Mutant for Hire]

I would like to emphasize that Tolkien's Middle Earth was in no way meant to be any sort of medieval world. It is an eclectic blend of a lot of different cultures, dating from nineteenth century rural England all the way back to Charlemagne, and possibly older elements than that. Another thing to point out is that the economics of Middle Earth were incredibly ill defined. Tolkien didn't particularly want to tell a realistic story, he wanted to tell a myth the way he liked to.

There is very little indication of how Bilbo and Frodo made their living, though the implication is that they rented out land to lower class hobbits, but it's never explicitly said that Bilbo or Frodo ever owned anything other than Bag End. He just made the two of them hobbit gentry and how they supported themselves was left rather vague.

Yes, you can make Middle Earth work, but you really have to work at filling in all the gaps that Tolkien left blank and trying to figure out how to keep those elements from getting in the way of what Tolkien already established.

Frankly, Discworld does a far better job at creating a fantasy world that actually feels plausible, and the main reason for that is that Pratchett has been increasingly hitting the history books to flesh out his world.

[Glupii]

WOW! This stuff is great! You guys are a fountain of useful knowledge. I learned alot just by reading these pages. so I am going to put something down here and see if I have adjusted my thoughts on the village well enough.

The village is in a clearing bordered on three sides by mountains and one one side by cliffs falling off to the sea. This area is about 30 miles by 5 miles in size and is only accessible by boat or by a pass that is only open 4 -5 months out of the year through the high mountains. There is a river that runs through the area and off the cliffs into the sea. This river is fed by mountain streams.

The area is pretty much isolated but does have a Lord (Baron) that is in charge of the area for the Kingdom Ruler. However he spends the majority of his time in the Capital city at court so his Magestrate generally runs things. Under him is a Sherrif who acts as Capt. of the Guard as well as chief civilian police authority.

The population of the village proper will be around 300-350 and will have 12-15 outlying farmsteads run by extended families. These farms would be about an acer in size with one or two being as large as two. All the farms grow a variety of crops and a certain amount for the lord of the area. Fishing is not a large portion of the economy but there is enough done to supplement the diets of the villagers. Several farmers also grow pigs and chickens and one deals almost exclusively with sheep and goats.

In the town proper there is a pub that also have several rooms that are usually taken up by farmers from the outlying farms on the days they come into town for supplies and trading. Several folk brew in town but the tavern owner has the rep for the best ale in town. there are a few other craftsman in town that are able to make a living from their trades but largely everyone makes their own things and anything they make extra they barter off on market day which happenes once a month.

How does this sound so far?

[Roland]

If the land bordering on the sea ends with a steep cliff, how do the people access the sea for trade, fishing, etc.?

The outlying farmsteads run by extended families will have to be a lot bigger than 1-2 acres. If they were farming full-time (i.e., not spending a lot of time fishing), I would say at least 3 acres per able-bodied adult male, and more likely 5 acres unless the land is especially fertile or extremely limited in availability.

Crops would be rotated to maintain the soil. The key is to include a legume in the rotation - e.g., beans, peas, clover - to replace nitrogen in the soil. Medieval Europeans rotated peas with grains. Peas provided protein for the diet, as well as nitrogen for the soil. (OTOH, your villagers might rely on fish both for protein and to fertilize the soil.)

It sounds like Norway might be a close historical analog to what you are trying to create. Your geography sounds like a fjord. The Norwegians (and Scandinavians/Vikings in general) had economies that mixed farming with various seagoing pursuits - fishing, trading, and raiding. That might give you a focus for further research.

[Vondy]

WOW! This stuff is great! You guys are a fountain of useful knowledge. I learned alot just by reading these pages. so I am going to put something down here and see if I have adjusted my thoughts on the village well enough.

The village is in a clearing bordered on three sides by mountains and one one side by cliffs falling off to the sea. This area is about 30 miles by 5 miles in size and is only accessible by boat or by a pass that is only open 4 -5 months out of the year through the high mountains. There is a river that runs through the area and off the cliffs into the sea. This river is fed by mountain streams.

Its already been asked, but how do they get to the sea, via the river? The sea will be a major potential food source for them. You will probably end up with a small community of fishermen in addition to the farmers - and they might have a smoking or salting house.


The area is pretty much isolated but does have a Lord (Baron) that is in charge of the area for the Kingdom Ruler. However he spends the majority of his time in the Capital city at court so his Magestrate generally runs things. Under him is a Sherrif who acts as Capt. of the Guard as well as chief civilian police authority.

Okay, please take this as what it is - "information" - and not as criticism or "telling you what to do," which its not intended to be:

A baron would have more than one knight, each with a manor and village, under him. Also, a baron would likely rate some sort of fortification (though that wouldn't be a hard rule). There is some wiggle room on this if its a new settlment and his title is something akin to march warden - a frontier noble with more military authority than social status and more problems. I'm not one to dictate titles, but someone who runs the place in his stead is likely to be called a steward, unless he's decided they run it and he just collects revenues and visits occassionally, in which case they might be called a constable or bailiff. And a Sheriff was a royal appointee who was put in place as a check on the nobility, often with authority ranging into more than one county. The captain of his guard (how big is it) would be his local military rep, but they didn't really have official law enforcement. His job would just be to execute his bosses orders. The local "cop" was usually a respected peasant who bore the title beadl, and who, in addition to keeping order for the lord (sometimes with the help of the lords men), was responsible for watching the seed stock and making sure everyone showed up and put in their fuedal service in the fields as directed by the reeve (the chief peasant). Also, to avoid the massive costs of a large military unit on the frontier a strong yeomanry is a good route. A yeoman put in his feudal service as a soldier as opposed to working the lords fields in exchange for his lands. At different times this was a freeman's slot or a peasant's slot.


The population of the village proper will be around 300-350 and will have 12-15 outlying farmsteads run by extended families. These farms would be about an acer in size with one or two being as large as two. All the farms grow a variety of crops and a certain amount for the lord of the area. Fishing is not a large portion of the economy but there is enough done to supplement the diets of the villagers. Several farmers also grow pigs and chickens and one deals almost exclusively with sheep and goats.

All good, though the outlying farmsteads might be a mite larger in terms of acres.


In the town proper there is a pub that also have several rooms that are usually taken up by farmers from the outlying farms on the days they come into town for supplies and trading. Several folk brew in town but the tavern owner has the rep for the best ale in town. there are a few other craftsman in town that are able to make a living from their trades but largely everyone makes their own things and anything they make extra they barter off on market day which happenes once a month.


Historic or not, its a good idea as a genre trope and meeting place for PCs. None of us have lived in a world quite like the middle ages and few if any have advanced history degrees specializing in the subject. Small anachronisms that give us an anchor of familiarity in the setting are good things in my estimation.

How does this sound so far?

Keep at it. You're doing fine.

[Curufea]

I've always found the description of a tanner/parchement maker from one of the Cadfael books fascinating. A small building downstream and preferrably downwind of the village becuase of the smell and large quantities of water used for curing hides. The skins hung up in rows for drying.

I haven't yet worked out a way to include them into the game.

[Glupii]

OK so I will increase the acerage of the outlying farms to around 7 acers given that most have several generations working it and a fair number of able bodies. Given that they also do the rudimentary blacksmithing and carpentry as well as animal husbandry (Pig's, chickens, horses, sheep). Also due to the fact that some of the acerage would be taken up by the animals as well.

As for the fishing, they have a path down to the shoreline and have a small harbor built. But given the difficulty in getting the things up to the village, I figured their would likely only be 2 families fishing with perhaps 3-4 boats total. Like I say, enough to supplement the diet but not enough to be a major source of income.

The political structure is in place for a reason that I don't wish to post here (Mainly because my players read this too) But I thank you for the concern on that. And the proper titles are appreciated. The main thing I will say is that the town is under the thumb of the gov't like everywhere else but perhaps a little less so for being so far away and having nothing that the Gov't considers useful. The post of Baron here is considered a backwater position at best. So as long as they pay all the formal lipservice to the Gov't Reps, they are pretty much left alone.

Please keep the comments coming. I am really soaking this stuff up like a sponge. I REALLY appreciate the time and effort you are giving me on this, folks.

[Basil]

WOW! This stuff is great! You guys are a fountain of useful knowledge. I learned alot just by reading these pages. so I am going to put something down here and see if I have adjusted my thoughts on the village well enough.

The village is in a clearing bordered on three sides by mountains and one one side by cliffs falling off to the sea. This area is about 30 miles by 5 miles in size and is only accessible by boat or by a pass that is only open 4 -5 months out of the year through the high mountains. There is a river that runs through the area and off the cliffs into the sea. This river is fed by mountain streams.

The area is pretty much isolated but does have a Lord (Baron) that is in charge of the area for the Kingdom Ruler. However he spends the majority of his time in the Capital city at court so his Magestrate generally runs things. Under him is a Sherrif who acts as Capt. of the Guard as well as chief civilian police authority.

The population of the village proper will be around 300-350 and will have 12-15 outlying farmsteads run by extended families. These farms would be about an acer in size with one or two being as large as two. All the farms grow a variety of crops and a certain amount for the lord of the area. Fishing is not a large portion of the economy but there is enough done to supplement the diets of the villagers. Several farmers also grow pigs and chickens and one deals almost exclusively with sheep and goats.

In the town proper there is a pub that also have several rooms that are usually taken up by farmers from the outlying farms on the days they come into town for supplies and trading. Several folk brew in town but the tavern owner has the rep for the best ale in town. there are a few other craftsman in town that are able to make a living from their trades but largely everyone makes their own things and anything they make extra they barter off on market day which happenes once a month.

How does this sound so far?
First off, I'll echo everything Von D-Man said, especially regarding titles and positions. However, on most manors there wasn't really anything that could be called a "Guard"; defense came from the "Levy," which was pretty much all able-bodied men. they had only the rudiments of training, and pretty much had to use farm tools and bows for weapons. So, no "Captain of the Guard."

Second, I suggest Life on the English Manor By H. Bennett. Excellent "close up" view of 1200-1350 English manors.

Now for some info, mostly from the above book --- A head-of-household with 5 acres would not be able to sustain his family on that small an amount of land, and would have to supliment what he could grow with payment-in-kind from larger landowners for working on their land. 5 acres sounds like it should be plenty, but medieval farming was horribly wasteful.

Part of that wastefulness was due to the main method of farming, called Open Field Farming. The typical manor had three large fields, each divided into a number of strips, the strips being 1/2 to 1 acre in size. Each head-of-household owned a number of strips, scattered through the three fields. At any given time, one field would be planted to peas, beans, vetch, cabbage (rarely), etc., another to grain (oats, barley, rye), and the third left fallow. The fields would be rotated; that is, which crops were where was altered from year to year.

Because the strips were so small, there was no efficient way to plow, sow, or reap them, leading to a great deal of excess work; the presence of bauks of unused land between the strips added to the problem.

As well as the three fields, there was a large area where all the cattle (cows, sheep, goats, etc.) were pastured. This land was shared by all, leading to its name, the "Common." After the grain was harvested and gleaned, the cattle, and any geese, were allowed to feed on that one of the Open Fields, for a while.

All houses will have a bit of land around them (called a croft, glebe, and other names), on which various herbs, vegetables, etc. were grown, thereby broadening the diet which would otherwise be legumes and grain only. Also, this is where chickens and geese were raised.

Note the presence of what were called "Assarts." An assart was land hacked out of the woods and wilds around the manor. An assart belonged to one householder, who could farm it how he liked. He did have to pay rent to the lord of the manor, the rent being in kind or in work, but then he had to pay rent (or perform "villein service") for his regular lands, so that wasn't an onerous burden.

BTW, it's worth noting that while the law and courts (especially royal and aristocratic courts) made a big deal out of whether someone was free or serf, in practice the more important distinction was how wealthy a man was. The serf with 30 or 60 acres, a pair of oxen of his own, etc., was in far better straits than the freeman with 5 acres and one goat. And note, both situations were far from uncommon!

BTW, if your manor is that isolated, it's really going to need a blacksmith, even if he's second rate. Taking stuff to the nearest town, or waiting for a travelling "fix-it man" isn't going to be enough. For the same reason, an inn (even if a poor quality one) is a good idea. However, your outlying farmers (who would be owners of assarts) would stay with family when they came to town; note that assarts were rarely more than a half-day's travel away, too.

I hope this is helpful; anything that's not good for playing can be dropped or altered, no matter how inauthentic the change is. ;)

[Glupii]

One thing to note here that may help some, I am not looking to recreate EXACTLY the medieval village for in the village I am creating all the land is technically owned by the Baron but in reality the landowners basically do what they want as long as they keep the Baron's manor in foodstuffs and trade goods. Since my gov't model is so different, lets not concentrate too much on that.

However I do see your point on the size iof the farms. Would 7-10 acers for a family of a 12-15 (figuring 7-8 ablebodied men women and older children available for working the farm and animals) be sufficient?

And I appreciate the insite as to the general layout of the farm That will come in handy, I am sure.

As for the Blacksmith, there IS a General smith in the area under the employ of the Baron's Manor. And he takes care of alot of the major civilian needs as well. But for simple things like shoeing horses, mending tools and such, it would more likely be something that they can repair right there rather than lugging it into town to have the smith look at it.

[prestidigitator]

However I do see your point on the size iof the farms. Would 7-10 acers for a family of a 12-15 (figuring 7-8 ablebodied men women and older children available for working the farm and animals) be sufficient?
From the agriculture link given above:
In England, the idea farm size for a family was a "yardland" (24-30 acres) in size. Only about a quarter of the English farm families had this much land (or a bit more) before the Bubonic Plague , most had ten or fewer. Those farmers possessing a yardland were able to work their land efficiently enough to feed themselves and prodice a surplus for sale.
I don't know what the typical family size would have been, but 24-30 ablebodied people seems a bit high given that description and the definition:
The acre was selected as approximately the amount of land tillable by one man behind an ox in one day.
While crops certainly needed upkeep, I find it unlikely they needed continuous upkeep equivalent to a full day of tilling, even given the other demands of a farm. :)

[Teflon Billy]

Keep in mind that the area you said was available for farming (30 miles by 5 miles) covers 90,000 acres.

You've got plenty of room to support farms of 5 if not 10 times the size your talking about, as well as 5 to 10 times the population.

TB

[Curufea]

Yes - acres are not linear lengths, but areas...

[Teflon Billy]

Yes - acres are not linear lengths, but areas...My mistake 1 sq mile = 640 acres, therefore 150 sq miles = 96,000 acres.

TB

[Threnody]

However I do see your point on the size iof the farms. Would 7-10 acers for a family of a 12-15 (figuring 7-8 ablebodied men women and older children available for working the farm and animals) be sufficient?
Problem here! In medieval times people would think of their family as parents, siblings, kids, sib's kids and such like, so that's 'bout the right size for a family, but it ain't a household.

A household would be husband+wife, and 1 to 4 kids. The "man of the household" would own strips of land, and see to the plowing, sowing, and harvesting of it. So X acres feeds only 3-6 people. Like someone said, 5 acres was barely enough for a household. You've still got 3 to 4 times too high a pop density.
Back to the drawing board. ;)

[Roland]

However I do see your point on the size iof the farms. Would 7-10 acers for a family of a 12-15 (figuring 7-8 ablebodied men women and older children available for working the farm and animals) be sufficient?

For a family of this size, you would probably want 20-30 acres for crops. Depending on the extent of their feudal duties and the availability and fertility of the land, they might be able to farm a bit more than that. And they would need additional land for any livestock.

[Glupii]

I understand I could make alot more farms of a larger size. But I do not want the entire area domesticated completely. I want to leave room for some woods and "forbidden" areas and such.

So what I am seeing is that for a family sized at about 8 or so able bodied workers they should have approximatly 30 acre's of land per farm? That seems like alot to me. But there still seems to be a problem of feeding the population I have given the area. The number of Non farming individuals I am thinking would be approximatly 350. So I guess the question is, how many acres would be needed for 8 folks to work that would supply enough to feed their own family of 12-15? Or maybe the best question would be how many mouths could an acer of land feed in general? I am not going to get into the nitty gritty of what they grow. Just a generality is all I need. I need to figure out how many farms would be needed to feed the additional 350 non farming folks. I would estimate that 15% of there diets would be supplemented by fishing and another 15% of their diets by their own gardens. (And those numbers could be off a bit) But that still leaves the remainder to be covered by the outlying farms. So How big can the farms be when only worked by 8 or so folks and how many would I need to cover the extra mouths?

-edit-
OK I see I didn't read Roland's post well enough there. So if I understand correctly, a family with 8 or so able bodies folks could work 30 acres of land? If that is correct than how much of the harvest would be needed for their own family of 12-15 and how much would be surplus? How many more mouths other than their own family could they feed?
-end edit-

[prestidigitator]

I understand I could make alot more farms of a larger size. But I do not want the entire area domesticated completely. I want to leave room for some woods and "forbidden" areas and such.

So what I am seeing is that for a family sized at about 8 or so able bodied workers they should have approximatly 30 acre's of land per farm? That seems like alot to me. But there still seems to be a problem of feeding the population I have given the area. The number of Non farming individuals I am thinking would be approximatly 350. So I guess the question is, how many acres would be needed for 8 folks to work that would supply enough to feed their own family of 12-15? Or maybe the best question would be how many mouths could an acer of land feed in general? I am not going to get into the nitty gritty of what they grow. Just a generality is all I need. I need to figure out how many farms would be needed to feed the additional 350 non farming folks. I would estimate that 15% of there diets would be supplemented by fishing and another 15% of their diets by their own gardens. (And those numbers could be off a bit) But that still leaves the remainder to be covered by the outlying farms. So How big can the farms be when only worked by 8 or so folks and how many would I need to cover the extra mouths?

-edit-
OK I see I didn't read Roland's post well enough there. So if I understand correctly, a family with 8 or so able bodies folks could work 30 acres of land? If that is correct than how much of the harvest would be needed for their own family of 12-15 and how much would be surplus? How many more mouths other than their own family could they feed?
-end edit-
Agriculture

At the medieval level of technology, a square mile of settled land (including requisite roads, villages and towns, as well as crops and pastureland) will support 180 people.
Looks like you generally need about 2 square miles. If your setting has more advanced/efficient methods of agriculture, you could probably get away with half of that. If you have any sort of magic involved, you could of course reduce it as you feel is appropriate.

Each square mile is 640 acres. If a household farms 30 acres, those two square miles are going to require about 35-40 households, roughly (assuming most of the area is farmland, which is pretty likely).

[Glupii]

Good work, but does that take into account the farming families themselves? OK Let me see if I can figure this out.

For the village of 350, 1280 Acers of land and 43 families assuming each family can handle a far of 30 acres. No if each family averages 14 mouths as well that is another 602 folks to feed. Oy this could get tricky. Wait....

If 640 acres feeds 180 folks then each acre feeds about 3.6 people. If we say a family of 14 (only 8 or which are ablebodied) can manage 30 acres then 14*3.6 = 50.4 acres just to feed themselves. So in order to have a surplus of any kind, I either have to increase the size of the land on each farm, or increase the output of each farm.

If the Village is 300 folks and 30% of their needs are met by Fishing and home gardens, then we have 210 folks left to feed. Add to that the 50 that maintian the Manor and the Guard and we have 260 extra mouths to feed. So what ever number of farms that we decide on has to have enough surplus to feed that 260.

Add to the crops the flocks of sheep and you likely will drop it another 8-10% but I will let this go for now and let them have some excess to barter with and make money on.

[katal3]

If the area has sufficient grazing land you can add in livestock, which would probably increase production to cost ratios slightly at the very least

[Markdoc]

Problem here! In medieval times people would think of their family as parents, siblings, kids, sib's kids and such like, so that's 'bout the right size for a family, but it ain't a household.

Actually I meant to correct this before, but that's backwards: the Household (old english: Husholdningen) was the whole schmoe. So "family" is wife, kids, granma and uncle Ulf - all the people living together and related by blood. "Household" is all of them plus the three serving girls, two swend and the boy who looks after the pig ie: everyone who lives in the house or holding (Holding comes from the old word meaning "to include" as it happens). In medieval times a wealthy household also included a priest (or more) and personal guards. Basically everybody who lived in the house and derived their living from the head of the household.

So... to get back to the topic at hand, your area is about 150 square miles (Von D-Man's right - that's space for a pretty big fief). 2 square miles or so will be the village and surrounding fields (might be as little as 1 square mile, if 30% of the population are fishermen) and each of the independant households would be less than a tenth of a square mile in area (that's plenty for the size you are describing). That leaves more than 90% of your coastal strip essentially unsettled :eek: Given that the households are probably going to be no more than a half-day's walk from town that fits the medieval pattern: everybody crammed into one corner of the fief and then nothing for two-three days travel.

No wonder the baron spends all his time in town - sounds like he lives in the boonies. If I was him, I'd be looking for right trusty adventurers to build holdings out in the woods, to bring more land under his control before someone else does it.

cheers, Mark

[oakfed]

Here's a summary of Norman English village sizes from 'Domesday Book and Beyond', an old but as far as I know still accurate treatise on the Domesday book statistics:

The minimum size village considered sufficient to provide for one knight was a '10-hide' village. The Saxons had set the minimum land for 'thegn-right' at 5 hides. Coincidently, large numbers of the villages listed in Domesday Book have 5 or 10 hides. (Aside: the Saxon 'hundred', an administrative division of a shire, was called because it theoretically had villages with 100 hides).

A hide is a unit of both area and taxation.

Area-wise, a hide is usually considered to be 120 (cultivated) acres. A hide had four virgates (30 acres); a typical villein (about 1/2 the peasant families) held a virgate, though some had as much as a hide, while the rest - bordars and cottars - made do with less than a virgate, or no land at all (and made their living as hired labour).

You have to be careful with the hides in Domesday book, though, because they were used primarily for taxation. We know a lot about taxation in Norman England because of Domesday Book (which was compiled so the Normans could continue to collect the Danegeld as the Saxons had done; the Danegeld was assessed on hides.) As units of taxation, hides had flexible areas. Large swathes of England were either punitively or beneficiently 'hidated' - assessed 'for geld' at more or less hides than usual, as punishment or reward.

[Glupii]

OK here is what I have come up with so far. Please keep in mind that the political structure of the area I am putting together is fantasy and so is different from the typical historical X serfs per Knight owing Y% in taxes etc.

Here are the knowns:

1. An average able bodied worker can care for 5 acres of land. This averages out since a family has many able bodied workers and they work all the land.
2. An average Family (Household) will have 18 members with 13 being able bodied workers.
3. As this is a highly fertile area, I have chosen to go with the high end of the yields so an acre will yield 300 liters of wheat, 720 liters of barley, 340 liters of Peas, or 400 liters of Oats.
4. Liters of grain required to feed a person for the year = 400. I have read it to be 500 but I am also not adding in livestock, cheeses and fish, foraged foods, and private vegtable gardens. So I figure 20% of the persopns diet being made up by these things is not a bad figure. Plus there is a fruit tree orchard here as well growing a few different trees Apple, Plum, and Pear. Again, this is not counted in my equasion to be conservative.

What I get out of this is an average farm size of 65 acres yielding an annual harvest of 9600 L. of wheat, 15206 L. of Barley, and 4026 L. of Peas or Oats depending on what the farmer used to rebuild the nutrients in the field that year. This also leaves 1 acre on each farm for use as room for livestock and vegetable gardens.

The total Grain yield per farm will be 28832. of that 7200 will be eaten by the family itself. At a tax rate of 10%, 2883 will go for that. That leaves 18748.8 which will feed an additianl 46 folks. Given that some of the grains and fruits will go to make Beer, Mead, and wines, I will lower this to 36. So in order to feed a town of 350 non farmers, I will need a total of 10 farms which will still give surplus so the folks will live, if not wealthy, at least comfortable which is what I was shooting for.

Thoughts and suggestions are welcome.

[Roland]

It sounds like your village is shaping up!

Two suggestions:

1) You'll need more than 1 acre for livestock. Cattle and sheep can eat a lot of grass! And, unless the climate is warm year-round, you'll have to grow extra food to feed the livestock through the winter.

2) Don't forget that you will need to leave some of the cultivated land fallow each year. Even with good crop rotation, you can't plant every acre every year without artificial fertilization (though the livestock might be able to help you there).

One question: How does the local lord collect his share? In the early Middle Ages, the lord would have had his own lands, and the peasants would been obligated to spend some time working on their lord's land. Later, many lords collected rents from the peasants in kind or in cash. (As late as the early 20th century in the US, landowners could be required to spend a few days every year working for the county. They would perform tasks such as clearing land for roads and digging ditches.)

[Curufea]

Here's a summary of Norman English village sizes from 'Domesday Book and Beyond', an old but as far as I know still accurate treatise on the Domesday book statistics:

The minimum size village considered sufficient to provide for one knight was a '10-hide' village. The Saxons had set the minimum land for 'thegn-right' at 5 hides. Coincidently, large numbers of the villages listed in Domesday Book have 5 or 10 hides. (Aside: the Saxon 'hundred', an administrative division of a shire, was called because it theoretically had villages with 100 hides).

A hide is a unit of both area and taxation.

Area-wise, a hide is usually considered to be 120 (cultivated) acres. A hide had four virgates (30 acres); a typical villein (about 1/2 the peasant families) held a virgate, though some had as much as a hide, while the rest - bordars and cottars - made do with less than a virgate, or no land at all (and made their living as hired labour).

You have to be careful with the hides in Domesday book, though, because they were used primarily for taxation. We know a lot about taxation in Norman England because of Domesday Book (which was compiled so the Normans could continue to collect the Danegeld as the Saxons had done; the Danegeld was assessed on hides.) As units of taxation, hides had flexible areas. Large swathes of England were either punitively or beneficiently 'hidated' - assessed 'for geld' at more or less hides than usual, as punishment or reward.
The Domesday book is 11th century though - just at the beginning of the Middle Ages. Farming practices did improve of the the following centuries.

[Glupii]

Good questions. Let me see if I can answer them.

1. The livestock that the farm would have would be likely a few cows for milk to convert to cheese, a herd or whatever of pigs, and a flock of chickens and/or Geese. They might have a few goats for milk for drinking. But there will not be any widespread cattle for meat cultivation going on and there will only be one or two families on the outside of the area in the foothills that raise sheep and goats as a living. I might add a second acre for their extras but I am not sure if more would be needed.

2. OK here is where my NOT being farm born is telling. I thought the reason they planted oats and peas was to replace the nutrients and it was actually better than letting it lie fallow? I was going off the ratio the one artical cited in here was telling me where 1/2 the land would be Wheat, 1/3 would be Barley, and the rest would be oats or peas to allow the land to recover. If this is not correct, then my whole equation is off. So if anyone can answer this, I would be thankful.

3. How the lord collects his share is a level of detail I was going to basically ignore and just say it happened. It might be that he collects some in cash and some in traded goods or crops. He has a household to maintain and he is responsible for feeding his soldiers and staff as well. So He would be glad to take alot of his taxes in foodstuffs. But either way, I was not going to go into alot of detail about this as I don't think it will really come up in the game.

[Roland]

If you have the best possible pasture land plus the most efficient feeding regimen, you will need at least 3 acres per cow and 1 acre per sheep. Realistically, you should figure you will need 3 times that much land per animal. (Livestock farming requires a lot of land, relative to crop farming, but less labor.)

You will also need livestock (most likely oxen) to pull the plow. (These can, of course, be eaten when they get too old to work.)

Crop rotation goes a long way toward preserving the fertility of the land, but not quite far enough. One trick is to plant your fallow fields in clover, which adds nitrogen to the soil. When the clover is mature, then you graze your livestock in the field. They eat the high-protein clover and fertilize the field with their manure. Then you plow the clover and manure into the field and it's ready to be planted again. In short, this enters the calculations by letting you count your fallow fields toward your grazing-land requirement. (But you will need additional grazing land besides the fallow fields.)

The question of how the lord collects his share enters the calculations. If he collects his share in kind, then each household must produce enough extra food to pay rent/taxes to the lord. If he requires payment in labor, then each household will have that much less labor available for its own production.

[Basil]

Please note: all my comments are based on actual Medieval farming techniques (as far as I know them). If you wish to change things to fit a fantasy setting, feel free. I'm only trying to help by giving you a grounding in reality. :)

1. An average able bodied worker can care for 5 acres of land.
Not quite: a Medieval family (of two adults and 1-3 children on average) needs 5 acres to barely survive in good years. I know of no figures for the maximum a single worker can care for.

This averages out since a family has many able bodied workers and they work all the land.
No. An average Medieval family has 2 able-bodied workers, one of whom spends most of her time in and around the house.

2. An average Family (Household) will have 18 members with 13 being able bodied workers.
Here is a major problem. So long as you use families of this size, all figures from medieval history will need to be greatly adjusted. First, the average family in the historical sources is about 1/3 this size. Second, and even more important, the fraction of able-bodied workers is much, much less. The average medieval farming family is about 1/3 or less adults, and children, even into their preteens, are not "able bodied" in the sense of able to handle plowing and other heavy tasks. The fact is that children, even up to 13 or 14 did most of thier work around the house, or herding fowl, sheep, goats--and that only near the village. Farm work, particularly using medieval technology, is extraordinarly hard work, taking a full grown adult (and some of it beyond the strength of most women). If you want to adjust your number to a larger family, use the ratio of able-bodied persons, which means the family you've described above is about SIX TIMES as large as a typical medieval family, for purposes of calculations.

BTW, a family of the sort you envision will require enormous advances in health care, especially pediatrics, to have such a large fraction of children reach adulthood. You'll need to either give your people advanced understanding of health, nutrition, and sanitation, or make health-related magic a commonplace.

3. As this is a highly fertile area, I have chosen to go with the high end of the yields so an acre will yield 300 liters of wheat, 720 liters of barley, 340 liters of Peas, or 400 liters of Oats.
As has been pointed out, these yields are way beyond medieval technology. For instance, one third of the land is fallow at any given point, and the plowing, sowing, and reaping techniques are fairly primitive. Also, the use of Open Fields, with each family owning small strips of land scattered about, greatly reduced efficiency.

BWT, the use of clover on the fallow didn't come in until the 16th or 17th century. Also note that the larger livestock was driven onto the fallow field soon after the harvest (to eat the stubble), but they were driven off well before plowing, so that their manure was not accumulated for an entire year. This was done because fresh manure will "burn" plants and seeds, killing them off. The manure was left on the fallow field to prevent this, letting it "age".

4. Liters of grain required to feed a person for the year = 400. I have read it to be 500 but I am also not adding in livestock, cheeses and fish, foraged foods, and private vegtable gardens. So I figure 20% of the persopns diet being made up by these things is not a bad figure. Plus there is a fruit tree orchard here as well growing a few different trees Apple, Plum, and Pear. Again, this is not counted in my equasion to be conservative.
I believe the figure you've cited assumes a modicum of non-grain source of food, so I'd suggest you use the full 500 liters.

What I get out of this is an average farm size of 65 acres yielding an annual harvest of 9600 L. of wheat, 15206 L. of Barley, and 4026 L. of Peas or Oats depending on what the farmer used to rebuild the nutrients in the field that year. This also leaves 1 acre on each farm for use as room for livestock and vegetable gardens.
The average medieval family had 1/3 to 1/2 acre around the house, used for vegetables, raising chicken (and the rare goose), and such. If you want larger livestock than that, figure a further 3 1/2 to 4 acres per sheep or goat, double or triple that per cow, triple or quadruple per bull or ox. However, in the middle ages, livestock larger than geese were pastured together, in one flock (or one flock per animal type). That was what the "commons" I've mentioned before were used for. Thus, the land for major livestock was not part of the farm.

The total Grain yield per farm will be 28832. of that 7200 will be eaten by the family itself. At a tax rate of 10%, 2883 will go for that. That leaves 18748.8 which will feed an additianl 46 folks. Given that some of the grains and fruits will go to make Beer, Mead, and wines, I will lower this to 36. So in order to feed a town of 350 non farmers, I will need a total of 10 farms which will still give surplus so the folks will live, if not wealthy, at least comfortable which is what I was shooting for.
Here's another major problem. In the middle ages, the village (averaging 300-400 people) was 95%+ farmers. The farmers lived in the village, there's no "350 non-farmers to feed." Note, by the way, that that's actually 95% effective non-farmers; that is, an person who makes half his living by farming and half by other work is counted as "half a farmer". Indeed, most of those who depended on others' food-growing only did so in part, and got part of their food by farming. The soldiers you've mentioned as putting in the lord's manor-house will be (along with the lord and his family) some of the very, very few not farming at all. And note that the married soldiers' wives will be growing vegetables and raising chickens around the house.

In short, in the middle ages, in a village, everyone farms, save the lord and his family. And the lord's wife will be raising herbs for flavoring and medicine.

Thoughts and suggestions are welcome.
I hope these helped. :)

[prestidigitator]

Let's remember on the, "able-bodied worker," end that a child who is old enough to do a full amount of work is essentially considered an adult. By the age of fourteen or so (perhaps even earlier), the young ladies will be being considered for marriage (at which point they will leave their original home for good) and the young men other than the eldest will be thinking of setting off (since they will typically be left little or nothing of the estate, at least among the lower classes).

[oakfed]

Yes - acres are not linear lengths, but areas...
Late replying to this...

Actually, although an acre is indeed an area measure, there was a linear length associated with the acre - the furlong, which was the customary length of a plowed strip. It's 40 rods long.

Similarly, the breadth of an acre was 4 rods (sometimes called a chain).

A rod was about 18 feet; it was the width of one strip in the field. Peasants were allocated specific strips in the common fields - scattered about, not contiguous. 4 strips were considered to make up an acre.

Like all medieval measures, though, rods, furlongs, and acres were not standardized and varied from place to place (even in the same field, not all the strips were the same length, because they had to fit the contours of the land, but they were all considered 'furlongs'.)

[Markdoc]

I wouldn't get too hung up on this - statements like "a family is X persons" or "A family requires X acres" are only applicable to certain cultures in certain areas at certain times.

For example, the acreage mostly quoted here is more or less based on medieval english history, using grains such as early (small-head) rye and wheat. Medieval germany - especially north Germany - used a crop rotation system with a much heavier emphasis on root vegetables that supported a higher population (one of the reasons the Germans were so much trouble to their neighbours - they continually outgrew their available space). Modern grains yield 2-3 times as much medieval ones and it's far from unreasonable that in a fantasy world where magic actually works, that some crop improvement has not occurred, even if you want to stick with grains as a major crop. Root vegertables - and especially potatoes - shift the balance even further. Quoting from Hobhouse's book "Seeds of Change" on potatoes "an acre and a half would provide a family of four to six with food for twelve months, while to grow the equivalent grain required an acreage four to six times as large..." - and it required less work, and fewer tools (no ploughing, no plough animals, etc). It's a high density food for primitive farming.

At the other end of the scale, Montaillou (perhaps the world's best-studied medieval village) had 250 people (almost all living in single family dwellings) and farmed an area of over 2000 acres - about 9 acres per person. But then, it was an upland mountain village living by a mixture of herding and small-farming.

Likewise, what constitutes a farming family varies wildly: in Northen Europe, especially Scandinavia with the Heregaard system, a farm with more than 20 residents and 6-8 adult workers was by no means unusual (large farms could house up to a dozen families in one building complex, with numbers reaching 40 or more).

So you have a historical range of land needed per person from 0.25 to 9 acres in different areas/eras - a 36 fold difference, even though the technology was similar! We also have a historical household size ranging from one to nearly 50 (actually in some places, times, like Imperial Rome farms could be much, much bigger, but that's outside the scope of what you described). My advice is to decide what you want in terms of social arrangements, make sure that it is not too unrealistic (you have enough info for that in this thread) and then just go for it. Either way you have plenty of land for the population you described and plenty of wilderness left over.

cheers, Mark

[Roland]

Basil - remember that Glupii's setting includes independent, scattered farms of extended families, in addition to the main village. I think his 18-member families were on these outlying farms, which would not be expected to follow the usual village model.