THRIVING after the FALL

The Index · A subject

The village and its trades

Three hundred people and their trades, the smith, the potter, the cooper and the miller, and the year they share.

5 documents · 2 chapters · 43 rows

In the chapters

Documents 5

Calculators

The village and its trades

In the Workshop

The graduation wall a village can build

Letters

The cow is a village animal

Sources

  • Practitioner A working village smith in Brandenburg

All the sources

In the log 43

  • 33 confirmed
  • 2 amended
  • 6 partly confirmed
  • 2 unresolved
  • 2 marked for safety
  • H1 amended Safety No fire is lit indoors without a chimney; wood smoke is fine particles and CO; three-stone kitchens kill through the lungs; a wood-burning house has twice the fine dust …
  • J3 confirmed Safety Water for infants and the sick boiled from any well; the village's cleanest well is the one furthest from stalls and middens
  • H19 confirmed About 0.9 kg wood per kg flour in a direct oven, 0.55 in an insulated one; a village that bakes together burns a third of the wood
  • H28 confirmed Beech forest 10 to 11 m³/ha/a; coppice on sand 7; a hectare and a bit or a hectare and a half per family; 90 to 115 ha per village of 300
  • H40 confirmed Coppice for a village of 300: about 100 ha hornbeam and field maple, 1.5 ha per household, up to 100 oaks per ha, 20 parcels of 5 ha, fence 3 years
  • I20 unresolved Bog iron (Raseneisenstein) smelted by Slavic villages on Spree and Havel from the 8th century in small clay furnaces
  • I42 confirmed Coal about 1 kg/h at light work; charcoal nearly the same value by weight, a tenth as dense; a day about 100 litres or 12 to 15 kg charcoal, 50 to 60 kg wood; a village …
  • I43 confirmed Meiler, Quandel, Stübbe; the Köhler trade lasted in the Harz into the 1950s
  • K12 confirmed Solingen blades since the 1300s, cutlers' guild by the 1400s
  • K40 confirmed A city's drawers hold steel that would cut for a century; a village that can sharpen needs no smith for a decade
  • W26 partly confirmed Theophilus, De diversis artibus, c. 1120, gives a tinning method; the Kesselflicker worked Brandenburg villages until the 1950s and the trade ended in the 1960s
  • W44 confirmed Rotary quern older than Rome; Vitruvius De architectura X.5 on the water mill c. 25 BC; post mills in Brandenburg villages from the 1200s; Sanssouci's Historische Mühle …
  • F69 confirmed Isolation m / minimum plants: tomato 3 to 10 (15 to 30 exserted) / 20 to 35; bean 3 to 5 / 50; pea 2 to 3 / 50; lettuce 3 to 5 / 35 to 50; squash 800 to 1,500 / 30 to …
  • F75 confirmed Flax after rye in Thaer's 6 to 7-year rotation with lupin or serradella; seed 130 to 150 kg/ha, 1.0 to 1.5 cm, rows 7.5 to 10 cm, 1,800 to 2,200 stems/m², weed once at 5 …
  • A26 confirmed Deutsches Schwarzbuntes Niederungsrind: village cow of Brandenburg and Pomerania 1880s–1960s, dual-purpose, 4,000–5,000 kg at 4 % fat; Holstein absorption in the West …
  • A29 confirmed 118's maintenance: 650 kg cow 76.28 MJ ME/day, 27,842 MJ/yr, 2,651 kg DM, 11,200 kg DM/ha × 60 % = 0.394 ha; no production, family, village or sand figure
  • A34 confirmed Village of 300 ≈ 75 households, 40 cows, 80 ha of Luch meadow; villages sited on sand islands at the meadow edge; one herd, one herdsman, Gemeindebulle paid by the head; …
  • A71 confirmed 137's village of 300: 45 to 50 does, 150 to 160 ewes, 45 to 60 ha heath, 40 to 50 ha hay, 15 ha hedge, 2 shepherds, c. 5,800 h; 100 ml goat milk a head a day, c. 10 kg …
  • B26 confirmed Schlachtfest: home pig slaughter common in Brandenburg villages into the 1970s, between first frost and Christmas; Hausschlachter ~20 pigs a season for a fee and a …
  • B53 confirmed The year: cow a village, 45 kg a house; pig a household; second spring pig harder to keep; 50 hens a year (old hens and cockerels of Ch 8), the only fresh meat …
  • E23 partly confirmed Kietz: Slavic fishers' settlements beside castles in Brandenburg towns, outside town law, rent paid in fish; Spandau, Köpenick, Rathenow, Brandenburg/Havel, …
  • R11 partly confirmed Orléans vinegar guild chartered in the 14th century (1394)
  • M20 partly confirmed De Laval 1878; 6,000 rpm; hand crank 60 rpm through 100:1; Danish cooperatives within a decade; not forgeable in a village
  • M29 amended Roquefort ripened in the Combalou caves since the eleventh century; monks, then the guild
  • D35 confirmed Zeidlerei: Slavic tree apiaries in Lower Lusatia by the 10th century (965); the word from a verb meaning to cut; the rope loop climbing method; Charles IV's Zeidel …
  • T15 confirmed Everyone carried their own knife to table; rules about pointing, passing handle first, not reaching across, not taking the piece a neighbour's hand is on
  • T18 confirmed Tischzuchten: Tannhäuser's Hofzucht c. 1250 (rules as listed); half a dozen more 13th–15th c.; read aloud in halls, monasteries, guild tables
  • T33 confirmed Salt glaze: Rhineland since late Middle Ages, needs ~1,200–1,250 °C, salt thrown into firebox, HCl gas; a village kiln, not a household fire (link to Ch 18's specialists)
  • T47 confirmed Spreewald stoneware salt-glazed since the 14th c.; Görzke potters' guild 1706 and kilns still working; Glindow bricks 1716 to 1945 from clay 35 to 38 % CaCO3; Zehdenick …
  • T52 confirmed Village potter's year for 300 people: 1,850 vessels, 4,360 kg clay, 12 firings, 44 to 48 stacked metres pine (3.5 to 4.5 a firing), 1 to 1.5 ha coppice, about 980 h; …
  • T55 confirmed Glass not made by the household: furnace 1,300 to 1,350 °C, 350 to 450 kg charcoal per 100 kg glass; a village glassworks about 24 Klafter and 2,400 h a year
  • T56 confirmed Flax mass balance: 1 ha gives 3,500 kg dry straw and about 150 kg bleached cloth for 654 h of which 387 spinning; village of 300 needs 3.5 to 4 ha and 75 to 90 winter …
  • J15 confirmed Reconciliation: 1.5 ha of the household's own (goats, pig, hens) feeds four; a cow needs 2.7 ha of Luch that is the village's (Ch 8's 3.2 ha); plus 1.5 ha coppice (Ch 1) …
  • J26 confirmed Mühlenzwang (mill compulsion) in Brandenburg villages; quern forbidden; among the oldest and most hated manorial rights
  • J28 confirmed Consumables list: files, gaskets, jar lids, needles, rennet, sulphur, matches, glass, salt; stockpile or trade; Ch 2's mine for files
  • J32 unresolved A village well serves a dozen households; a village of 75 has 6–8; the Dorfteich waters the herd and fights fire and predates the well
  • 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 …
  • J36 confirmed Ch 8's village: 75 households, 40 cows, 80 ha Luch; "the same village"; the specialists set the threshold, not the land
  • J37 confirmed Book's own village of 300 on sand with modern seed: 75 × 1.5 ha = 112 ha arable/clover; 75 × 1.5 ha coppice = 112 ha + smith's 10; 80 ha Luch; oxen 10 ha; green, pond, …
  • 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 …
  • 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)
  • J9 partly confirmed Brandenburg villages sit on sand islands at the edge of the Luch; strips on the sand, common meadow below, one herd under one herdsman; the Angerdorf with green, pond …