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>Did you go out and cut the wood, too? Haul it home? Every day? I've cut tree branches with a saw but just for "gardening" maintainance. More often we used to

>Did you go out and cut the wood, too? Haul it home? Every day? I've cut tree branches with a saw but just for "gardening" maintainance. More often we used to do it with a chainsaw, but for special purposes, not cutting down trees to get the season's wood. In the village there were people who cut the trees and sold the wood. So didn't have to personally cut down trees. Probably that was the case in any larger village in the 19th century too. I've hauled wood though - the bulk storage happens a few times a year (and it's just offloading what the guy brought), but from the storage to the woodstove/fireplace happened every day. Not a big deal. And if you have a carriage, which they did or someone in their village did, the former is not a big deal either. >Consider why they had to work so hard, and still died young and malnourished. Another common misconception. Birth/Early childhood death aside, the life expectance wasn't that different than today. And some of these rural communities even are in the "too many live to be 100" blue zones. Depends on the place I guess. People in some midwestern half-desert like New Mexico or Arizona probably fared differently than people in places full of green, fertile land, and running waters, like in many areas of rural Europe. Or people under some nasty feudal lord working them to the bone, versus independent villagers. For those, the main thing that did did them bad, was adverse weather messing the crops some years.

defrost 2y ago
I'm > 60 and still median age in a rural community filled with quasi retired farmers born in the 1920s and 1930s .. they variously sheared, split wood every day, got up at 3 am to take bullock carts to to the local well to bring home tanks of water daily, etc. The GP has some odd ideas about manual labour killing people - here it was principally the lack of antibiotics that filled the cemetries and orphaned a good number of the people still alive here nearly a century later.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  > The GP has some odd ideas about manual labour killing people It's not odd at all. The bone evidence from colonial Americans shows that they were severely overworked. I think modern Americans have some romantic notion of what it was like, probably from watching Daniel Boone episodes on TV or Outlander.
amanaplanacanal 2y ago
I wonder what has changed? People today who attempt to get a piece of land and do subsistence farming usually discover it is way more work then they are used to doing and quit.
- aden1ne 2y ago
  Smaller families? Historically families were large and the entire extended family helped out, across all generations. In the modern age our families are smaller, and we consider it morally abject to have children work, with the elderly being expected to retire.
- Jensson 2y ago
  They lack the 20 years of mentor led training to do all tasks related to farming and surviving that average medieval adults had. How fast you can do things when you are skilled compared to unskilled is massive, unskilled subsistence farming not being viable isn't strange.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    Skilled or not, doing everything with hand tools is unending backbreaking labor.
WalterBright 2y ago
"The average life expectancy of a pioneer man, woman or child ranged from 30 to 40 years, if they were fortunate enough to survive childhood." -- Google "life expectancy of colonial americans" > More often we used to do it with a chainsaw Right, because chopping down a tree with an axe and then cutting it into suitable lengths for the stove by hand is a massive amount of work. I have some experience cutting logs with saw and axe. There's a reason people invented chainsaws. > some nasty feudal lord Irrelevant to colonial America.

defrost 2y ago

I'm > 60 and still median age in a rural community filled with quasi retired farmers born in the 1920s and 1930s .. they variously sheared, split wood every day, got up at 3 am to take bullock carts to to the local well to bring home tanks of water daily, etc. The GP has some odd ideas about manual labour killing people - here it was principally the lack of antibiotics that filled the cemetries and orphaned a good number of the people still alive here nearly a century later.

WalterBright 2y ago
> The GP has some odd ideas about manual labour killing people It's not odd at all. The bone evidence from colonial Americans shows that they were severely overworked. I think modern Americans have some romantic notion of what it was like, probably from watching Daniel Boone episodes on TV or Outlander.

amanaplanacanal 2y ago

I wonder what has changed? People today who attempt to get a piece of land and do subsistence farming usually discover it is way more work then they are used to doing and quit.

aden1ne 2y ago
Smaller families? Historically families were large and the entire extended family helped out, across all generations. In the modern age our families are smaller, and we consider it morally abject to have children work, with the elderly being expected to retire.
Jensson 2y ago
They lack the 20 years of mentor led training to do all tasks related to farming and surviving that average medieval adults had. How fast you can do things when you are skilled compared to unskilled is massive, unskilled subsistence farming not being viable isn't strange.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  Skilled or not, doing everything with hand tools is unending backbreaking labor.

WalterBright 2y ago

"The average life expectancy of a pioneer man, woman or child ranged from 30 to 40 years, if they were fortunate enough to survive childhood." -- Google "life expectancy of colonial americans" > More often we used to do it with a chainsaw Right, because chopping down a tree with an axe and then cutting it into suitable lengths for the stove by hand is a massive amount of work. I have some experience cutting logs with saw and axe. There's a reason people invented chainsaws. > some nasty feudal lord Irrelevant to colonial America.