5 ms·

When the land isn't producing (winter), and you're just living mostly off reserves, and you're not enjoying being pretty much trapped in a hut covered with snow

When the land isn't producing (winter), and you're just living mostly off reserves, and you're not enjoying being pretty much trapped in a hut covered with snow, that counts as "unemployment". Sure isn't a "vacation".

Retric 9y ago
You where not limited to your own hut. Further you where often staying with a large extended family so playing with children and telling stories etc. It was very different than staying home at a modern single apartment.
- ctdonath 9y ago
  Making the best of a bad situation (the essence of unemployment) does not equate to choosing the manner & location of frolicking (the essence of vacation).
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    > The peasant's free time extended beyond officially sanctioned holidays. There is considerable evidence of what economists call the backward-bending supply curve of labor -- the idea that when wages rise, workers supply less labor. During one period of unusually high wages (the late fourteenth century), many laborers refused to work "by the year or the half year or by any of the usual terms but only by the day." And they worked only as many days as were necessary to earn their customary income -- which in this case amounted to about 120 days a year, for a probable total of only 1,440 hours annually (this estimate assumes a 12-hour day because the days worked were probably during spring, summer and fall). A thirteenth-century estime finds that whole peasant families did not put in more than 150 days per year on their land. Manorial records from fourteenth-century England indicate an extremely short working year -- 175 days -- for servile laborers. Later evidence for farmer-miners, a group with control over their worktime, indicates they worked only 180 days a year. http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w... Does not sound like the actions of a group desperate for more work.
fulafel 9y ago
In winter you could still hunt, fish, log wood, build and repair buildings and boats and farm tools and clothes, take care of your farm animals etc. You could also cross bodies of water over the ice much easier with cattle or heavy loads (like wood, big game meat etc).

Retric 9y ago

You where not limited to your own hut. Further you where often staying with a large extended family so playing with children and telling stories etc. It was very different than staying home at a modern single apartment.

ctdonath 9y ago
Making the best of a bad situation (the essence of unemployment) does not equate to choosing the manner & location of frolicking (the essence of vacation).
- emodendroket 9y ago
  > The peasant's free time extended beyond officially sanctioned holidays. There is considerable evidence of what economists call the backward-bending supply curve of labor -- the idea that when wages rise, workers supply less labor. During one period of unusually high wages (the late fourteenth century), many laborers refused to work "by the year or the half year or by any of the usual terms but only by the day." And they worked only as many days as were necessary to earn their customary income -- which in this case amounted to about 120 days a year, for a probable total of only 1,440 hours annually (this estimate assumes a 12-hour day because the days worked were probably during spring, summer and fall). A thirteenth-century estime finds that whole peasant families did not put in more than 150 days per year on their land. Manorial records from fourteenth-century England indicate an extremely short working year -- 175 days -- for servile laborers. Later evidence for farmer-miners, a group with control over their worktime, indicates they worked only 180 days a year. http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w... Does not sound like the actions of a group desperate for more work.

fulafel 9y ago

In winter you could still hunt, fish, log wood, build and repair buildings and boats and farm tools and clothes, take care of your farm animals etc. You could also cross bodies of water over the ice much easier with cattle or heavy loads (like wood, big game meat etc).