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From:
Subject: Re: [POSEN] _Ordinary Prussians_: first impressions
Date: Sat, 28 May 2005 18:08:42 -0500 (CDT)
References: <71AF726BF6ECD41194DC006008059C2DFC1AF2@TX-MAIL>
In-Reply-To: <71AF726BF6ECD41194DC006008059C2DFC1AF2@TX-MAIL>


Some assorted thoughts for gathering information for the agricultural
simulation game:

I. Land management
I understand this area was one of the last to let go of feudalism--
What were the various classes of ownership, rental, serfdom?
In the case of rental or other non-ownership, what portion of the
crops, livestock, manual labor, etc., was required in a year?
How large was the average farm?
What were the measurements of land, and how do they compare to acres?
What sort of inheritance laws/customs were in place?

II. Land and climate descriptions
What kind of soil was there?
Was the area mainly forested, or were there open prairies?
Was the area hilly or primarily flat?
What was the average rainfall?
How long was the average growing season?
When could one expect to plant? to harvest?
Were the winters generally mild or severe?
Were the summers hot or moderate?
Is there an area in the US that most closely approximates the region?

III. Living conditions
Did they also use a house/barn combination like so much of the rest
of Europe?
What was their clothing like?
What were their sleeping conditions?

III. Crop and livestock management
What types of livestock--horses, cattle, pigs, chickens, geese,
etc.--were usually kept, and how many of them?
Was fishing a significant source of food? [My grandpa from Deutsch
Krone loved pickled herring, but I've never been able to get it past
my throat. :-) ]
What grain crops were used?
What kind of hay was planted?
Were there fruit trees and orchards?
What produce, such as potatoes was planted?
Is there any information on the varieties of produce used? (For
instance, I recently read that a hundred years ago, there were many
more--45 is the number I remember--varieties of turnip seeds to be
had in the American seed catalogs.)
What percentage of the grain crops was kept back for seed?
What percentage of the grain crops (and possibly produce?) was kept
back to feed the animals during winter?
What processes were used to preserve meat, grain, fruits and
vegetables for storage?

IV. Working the farm
The steel plow was invented, as I remember, in the last half of the
19th century--
What types of implements were used for plowing? harrowing? planting?
weeding?
How much land could be worked in a day with X-number of workers?
How was grain harvested and threshed?
How was hay cut and stored?
Who fed the livestock and when?
Who did the milking?
How was the milk processed and preserved?

>
> If I had a 'magic wand', I would love to see it turned into an online
> simulation game. Perhaps in time we'll be able to do some kind of a less
> ambitious exploration of the material. For example, maybe we'll take a
> single year and "walk through" a typical year, discussing the seasonal
> agriculture operations. Being a "city slicker" with only country roots,
> I'd
> need a lot of help from those who are closer to the soil, to better
> describe
> the details and interactions. If we do this, we should probably do it on a
> (new) separate list, to keep from increasing the traffic on this one, and
> to
> focus on the topic. I'm thinking 1700's would be a good timeframe and the
> Stavenow estate as described in the book a suitable "world". While the
> Junker estates of the north were somewhat different than the situation in
> Wielkopolska, much would be the same. We could explore the differences as
> a
> side effort.
>
> For example, if the list were operating right now, we'ld be discussing the
> activities that would be happening on this imaginery estate and its
> village(s) on a typical week at the end of May. We could use the current
> weather in Brandenburg as if it were the same weather in our re-imagined
> world. If any were so inclined, they could write imagined diaries of
> subjects or nobles. Random events (epidemics, disease, accidents, market
> prices) could be generated. World events for the chosen "year" would be
> announced as they "occurred". None of this will be possible until the
> material is successfully extracted from the book, which will take several
> months, best case. But perhaps a less ambitious trial version could be run
> earlier.
>
> I'll post some interesting excerpts from the book soon, probably starting
> with units of measure, for example the difference between an estate
> wagonload and a farmer's wagonload, the German vs the English mile, etc.
>
> Does anyone have a 1:100,000 scale map of the Perleberg area? Mine don't
> do
> that far east, nor do the "Hungarian maps" online. Stavenow is just west
> of
> Perleberg, which is NW of Berlin in northern Brandenburg, right on the
> border with Mecklenburg (which made it pretty easy for dissatisfied
> subjects
> to escape harsh obligations).
>
> James
>
>
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> Become a "Kreis curator".
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>
>

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