THRIVING after the FALL

The Library · Document 131 · FEASTING · Household and village

Agrarian Micro-Community Optimal Size

Its printed title: The Agrarian Thermodynamics of Temperate Micro-Communities: Labor Constraints, Surplus Dynamics, and the Calculus of Specialization

How many households a village needs before it can feed a full-time smith or cheesemaker. It walks through Chayanov's peasant household, Boserup's ladder of intensification and the Brenner debate, with Brandenburg's Stavenow estate as a case, then reckons that a smith needs at least 50 households and 10 to 12 tons of charcoal a year, and a cheesemaker the milk of 50 to 100 cows. A closing section sets the figures beside modern ecovillages.

Open the PDF 17 pages · 384 KB

Number
131
Book
FEASTING after the FALL
Shelf
Household and village
File
131 Agrarian Micro-Community Optimal Size.pdf
Pages
17
Works cited
88

Used in

In the Numbers

The village and its trades

The rows that check it

  • 4 confirmed
  • 2 partly confirmed
  • 2 unresolved
  • 0 marked for safety
  • J16 partly confirmed 131's 60–80 acres (24–32 ha) per household of five rests on medieval yields: seed 1:4–1:5, 5–7 bushels/acre, 20–25 % seed, 20 % rodent loss, 10 % tax, 10 % tithe; gap to 117 is …
  • J20 unresolved Three narrows: (1) mid-April to end May: potatoes in, lupin, carrots, cabbage transplant, kidding, garden; (2) June hay, late July rye at yellow ripeness, August second hay; (3) …
  • J21 unresolved Hay: a mower with a peened scythe cuts about a third of a hectare of grass a day; rye 0.2 ha: two days cutting with cradle and binder, one day stooking, a dry week in stook; …
  • J35 partly confirmed 131's village: 60 households, 300 people, ~3,450 acres, five specialist households (smith, miller/baker, cheesemaker/herdsman, wright, forester/collier); surplus ratio 0.1–0.2 …
  • J38 confirmed Hufe in Brandenburg 30–60 Morgen (8–15 ha); a village of 40 Hufen = 400–600 ha of field plus as much wood and Luch; 131's 3,450 acres is the historical village at medieval yields
  • J43 confirmed Hagen, Ordinary Prussians: Brandenburg Junkers and Villagers 1500–1840, Cambridge 2002, Stavenow estate (Prignitz); villagers bargained, sued, shirked, struck
  • J44 confirmed "A village that has no lord must find a substitute": the table, the boon-day, the reckoning in kind settled at the feast (the book's answer, linking Ch 17)
  • J45 confirmed Honest Broker's findings: 117 half-cited to library PDF 24, diet from fitness blogs, calories from a protein shop, pasture short for its goats at low yield; 131 from …

In the Index

Iron and steel Milk, butter and cheese The village and its trades Land and its measure

Its works cited 88

As the document lists them, unchecked. Sorted here by their addresses only, which says where a claim comes from, not whether it holds.

  • 15 journals, universities and public bodies
  • 4 document-sharing sites
  • 7 encyclopaedias
  • 28 forums, video and social sites
  • 7 blogs
  • 26 other web pages
  • 1 without an address
Show all 88
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  47. How much free time did an average person in the middle ages have reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/28q7l5/how…
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