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Is this the right NG?
You really are in the wrong group here. You should repost to uk.business.agriculture. On the principle that I already said that, and you didn't, you don;t know how to so I have x-posted this post. However bear in mind that some posters do not x-post so a valuable reply my not appear on sci.ag. Gilgamesh writes I noticed that many of the old field boundaries are curved in a sort of backward-S shape. The only book I could find in the library says this is characteristic of enclosed strips which were ploughed by oxen (If I read things aright, that means any time up to about mid-18th century), but gives no explanation beyond the suggestion that it made them easier to turn. That is often correct. Well, with a single-bottom plough, that does'nt make sense to me, unless you plough in one direction only. ER, no. They were ploughed in lands. So the animals start to turn when they are out of the furrow making the plough turn, and equally swing wide coming in. These small changes add up each time you go round so the field gets a 's' shape. This can still be seen when you have students on cultivations in small fields. An acre is already an 11-mile walk - would anyone willingly double that to 22 miles? Only if the land is very sloping. The logical layout would be the classic furrow long by stetch wide acre, although the land hereabouts is relatively light, so you might well be able to plough more than an acre in a day (Is it just coincidental that an acre is usually quoted as much as a skilled man with a scythe could reap in a day? I have seen both 'definitions'. I doubt either are more than piecework estimates. Chains, poles, perches and furlongs are very old measurements. The field layouts for Champion Country were probably set before the Black Death, when reaping was done with a sickle) Reaping was still done with flint sickles in parts of scotland in the start of the 30C. -- Oz This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious. Note: soon (maybe already) only posts via despammed.com will be accepted. |
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