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The vast majority people in the Middle Ages lived off subsistence farming, which doesn't really have "days off". Yes, farming has busier and quieter periods, b

The vast majority people in the Middle Ages lived off subsistence farming, which doesn't really have "days off". Yes, farming has busier and quieter periods, but many types of work like spinning and weaving were essentially continuous (the amount of work required to clothe a family was ridiculous), and even the quietest "off day" still included things like feeding and milking the animals. Feast days were often also designed around communal events like harvesting or barn-raising, when the entire community got together and basically took turns working at tasks that needed more labor than a single household can provide.

rsj_hn 5y ago
> The vast majority people in the Middle Ages lived off subsistence farming, which doesn't really have "days off". I think you have an incorrect view of subsistence farming. It does not require constant work, and you do not see constant work in traditional societies. You do see many days off. Now during harvest time there is lots of work, but that is a small period of the year, say 7 weeks out of the year. Other times the farmer has the option of when to plant and how much, when to weed and how much, when to work on processing food and how much. And these fall into familiar patterns from which things like feast days emerge as the interstitial times when the above does not need to happen. The idea of constant backbreaking labor all year long may be appropriate for something like a large Jamaican plantation, but not a small farm in Europe. Of course if it was an American farmer, they would enlarge their farm, bring in more livestock or auxiliary sources of income to fill up whatever daylight was available, and keep adding work until they and all their hired hands were busy all the time. Then they would take the earnings and use it to buy more land and hire more people and expand the work even further. But traditional societies did not organize themselves this way, nor is this something required of farmers. Here is some data: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w... "The contrast between capitalist and precapitalist work patterns is most striking in respect to the working year. The medieval calendar was filled with holidays. Official -- that is, church -- holidays included not only long "vacations" at Christmas, Easter, and midsummer but also numerous saints' andrest days. These were spent both in sober churchgoing and in feasting, drinking and merrymaking. In addition to official celebrations, there were often weeks' worth of ales -- to mark important life events (bride ales or wake ales) as well as less momentous occasions (scot ale, lamb ale, and hock ale). All told, holiday leisure time in medieval England took up probably about one-third of the year. And the English were apparently working harder than their neighbors. The ancien règime in France is reported to have guaranteed fifty-two Sundays, ninety rest days, and thirty-eight holidays. In Spain, travelers noted that holidays totaled five months per year.[5] 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."
- Clewza313 5y ago
  That article equates "work" with farming alone, which is a common but fallacious trope. A subsistence farming household has to manufacture virtually everything they need, and in your "small farm in Europe" setting, spinning and weaving alone consume essentially all the working hours of one person in a family: Put into working terms, the basic clothing of our six person farming family requires 7.35 labor hours per day, every day of the year. Our ‘comfort’ level requires 22.05 hours (obviously not done by one person). https://acoup.blog/2021/03/19/collections-clothing-how-did-they-make-it-part-iii-spin-me-right-round/ https://acoup.blog/2021/03/19/collections-clothing-how-did-t... The main difference between the subsistence farmer and the wage worker -- and ACOUP goes into this in detail -- is that the subsistence farmer has to optimize for security over productivity, meaning that the marginal returns for working harder/longer hours are much less. Working twice as hard to till twice the fields won't help when a summer frost nukes the whole crop.
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    I think you have a point. I mean making butter with a stick - how long does that take? Household work was probably alot ontop of payed work.
  - artem247 5y ago
    I'm not sure why exactly subsistence farming households would have to manufacture everything -- farmer can sell produce on the market and buy stuff. You quote quite a long article - yet you do not give the full data. 7.35 labor hours per day whole year is to produce 21 sq meters of cloth, using estimates about ancient world, not pre-modern Europe. 20 sq meters of cloth using a bit more modern (Middle ages) estimate would give you 3 hours per day whole year by one person. Also keep in mind that those farmer households would not change their clothes every year (and that's an understatement)
    - TheCoelacanth 5y ago
      > I'm not sure why exactly subsistence farming households would have to manufacture everything -- farmer can sell produce on the market and buy stuff That doesn't lower the total amount of labor required. Someone still has to make the garments. Garments were also very expensive, and most farmers wouldn't have had enough surplus crops to purchase them. > more modern (Middle ages) estimate would give you 3 hours per day whole year by one person That's after the invention of the spinning wheel, which didn't exist for ~90% of the Middle Ages. The second estimate from just before the invention of the spinning wheel (1300s) is close to the ancient estimate. > Also keep in mind that those farmer households would not change their clothes every year (and that's an understatement) One garment per year. That doesn't mean they throw away the old garment. They might keep it as a spare or repurpose it for other uses. He also justifies this estimate based on historical data for people who were issued garments by their employers (slaves and soldiers). Cato the Elder recommended issuing slaves one garment every two years, and was infamous for being cruel and parsimonious towards his slaves, so that is probably about the bare minimum for subsistence. Soldiers in the Roman Republic were issued two garments per year. Assuming that subsistence farmers aimed for a standard of living above that of the most poorly treated slaves seems like a reasonable assumption.
paganel 5y ago
> which doesn't really have "days off" My grand-parents were Eastern-European peasants and they certainly had "days off", you were not allowed to go to the field during a religious holiday (and one was not allowed to do it on Sundays, either). 25 years since I last helped my paternal grand-parents to collect hay I can still remember those religious holidays when we'd just sit around the house, not going to the field: July 20th (Saint Elijah), August 15th (Assumption of Mary), August 6th (Transfiguration) and I think also June 29th (Saint Peter and Paul).

rsj_hn 5y ago

> The vast majority people in the Middle Ages lived off subsistence farming, which doesn't really have "days off". I think you have an incorrect view of subsistence farming. It does not require constant work, and you do not see constant work in traditional societies. You do see many days off. Now during harvest time there is lots of work, but that is a small period of the year, say 7 weeks out of the year. Other times the farmer has the option of when to plant and how much, when to weed and how much, when to work on processing food and how much. And these fall into familiar patterns from which things like feast days emerge as the interstitial times when the above does not need to happen. The idea of constant backbreaking labor all year long may be appropriate for something like a large Jamaican plantation, but not a small farm in Europe. Of course if it was an American farmer, they would enlarge their farm, bring in more livestock or auxiliary sources of income to fill up whatever daylight was available, and keep adding work until they and all their hired hands were busy all the time. Then they would take the earnings and use it to buy more land and hire more people and expand the work even further. But traditional societies did not organize themselves this way, nor is this something required of farmers. Here is some data: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w... "The contrast between capitalist and precapitalist work patterns is most striking in respect to the working year. The medieval calendar was filled with holidays. Official -- that is, church -- holidays included not only long "vacations" at Christmas, Easter, and midsummer but also numerous saints' andrest days. These were spent both in sober churchgoing and in feasting, drinking and merrymaking. In addition to official celebrations, there were often weeks' worth of ales -- to mark important life events (bride ales or wake ales) as well as less momentous occasions (scot ale, lamb ale, and hock ale). All told, holiday leisure time in medieval England took up probably about one-third of the year. And the English were apparently working harder than their neighbors. The ancien règime in France is reported to have guaranteed fifty-two Sundays, ninety rest days, and thirty-eight holidays. In Spain, travelers noted that holidays totaled five months per year.[5] 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."

Clewza313 5y ago
That article equates "work" with farming alone, which is a common but fallacious trope. A subsistence farming household has to manufacture virtually everything they need, and in your "small farm in Europe" setting, spinning and weaving alone consume essentially all the working hours of one person in a family: Put into working terms, the basic clothing of our six person farming family requires 7.35 labor hours per day, every day of the year. Our ‘comfort’ level requires 22.05 hours (obviously not done by one person). https://acoup.blog/2021/03/19/collections-clothing-how-did-they-make-it-part-iii-spin-me-right-round/ https://acoup.blog/2021/03/19/collections-clothing-how-did-t... The main difference between the subsistence farmer and the wage worker -- and ACOUP goes into this in detail -- is that the subsistence farmer has to optimize for security over productivity, meaning that the marginal returns for working harder/longer hours are much less. Working twice as hard to till twice the fields won't help when a summer frost nukes the whole crop.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  I think you have a point. I mean making butter with a stick - how long does that take? Household work was probably alot ontop of payed work.
- artem247 5y ago
  I'm not sure why exactly subsistence farming households would have to manufacture everything -- farmer can sell produce on the market and buy stuff. You quote quite a long article - yet you do not give the full data. 7.35 labor hours per day whole year is to produce 21 sq meters of cloth, using estimates about ancient world, not pre-modern Europe. 20 sq meters of cloth using a bit more modern (Middle ages) estimate would give you 3 hours per day whole year by one person. Also keep in mind that those farmer households would not change their clothes every year (and that's an understatement)
  - TheCoelacanth 5y ago
    > I'm not sure why exactly subsistence farming households would have to manufacture everything -- farmer can sell produce on the market and buy stuff That doesn't lower the total amount of labor required. Someone still has to make the garments. Garments were also very expensive, and most farmers wouldn't have had enough surplus crops to purchase them. > more modern (Middle ages) estimate would give you 3 hours per day whole year by one person That's after the invention of the spinning wheel, which didn't exist for ~90% of the Middle Ages. The second estimate from just before the invention of the spinning wheel (1300s) is close to the ancient estimate. > Also keep in mind that those farmer households would not change their clothes every year (and that's an understatement) One garment per year. That doesn't mean they throw away the old garment. They might keep it as a spare or repurpose it for other uses. He also justifies this estimate based on historical data for people who were issued garments by their employers (slaves and soldiers). Cato the Elder recommended issuing slaves one garment every two years, and was infamous for being cruel and parsimonious towards his slaves, so that is probably about the bare minimum for subsistence. Soldiers in the Roman Republic were issued two garments per year. Assuming that subsistence farmers aimed for a standard of living above that of the most poorly treated slaves seems like a reasonable assumption.

paganel 5y ago

> which doesn't really have "days off" My grand-parents were Eastern-European peasants and they certainly had "days off", you were not allowed to go to the field during a religious holiday (and one was not allowed to do it on Sundays, either). 25 years since I last helped my paternal grand-parents to collect hay I can still remember those religious holidays when we'd just sit around the house, not going to the field: July 20th (Saint Elijah), August 15th (Assumption of Mary), August 6th (Transfiguration) and I think also June 29th (Saint Peter and Paul).