I used a method I found in the book 'Food In Medieval England' and discovered that allowinng 15% of gross acres to be woods and 50% of cleared acres to be crops that Kaldor can produce enough grain to provide 1500 k-cal per person four times over.

It may be that the quarters per acre yield are vastly different in Harn and the data used in the book.

Wheat: 1.37 qtrs per acre, at 16.7% of cleared acres
Rye and Rye mixes: 1.14 qtrs per acre, at 19.1% of cleared acres
Barley and Batley mixes: 2.99 qtrs per acre, at 48% of cleared acres
Oats: 1.01 qtrs per acre, at 16.2% of cleared acres

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Roy Denton - the title says Baron, but Queen for a year. (Cheselyne I)

"Nathamh na hoibre an t-eolas"
(Knowledge comes through practice)

I doubt they were burning all that food so they were probably consuming it with increased physical activity and consuming more meat in their diets than the typical Harnic.

1,500 calories a day is to low IMO basically just moping or sitting around the house doing little physical activity. Medieval life was more physically intensive and demanding, particularly for the farmers and laborers.

First thing I found I'm sure someone can find something else slightly different:

http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/question457.htm

The number of calories the body consumes in a day is different for every person. You may notice on the nutritional labels of the foods you buy that the "percent daily values" are based on a 2,000 calorie diet -- 2,000 calories is a rough average of what people eat in a day. But your body might need more or less than 2,000. Height, weight, gender, age and activity level all affect your caloric needs. There are three main factors involved in calculating how many calories your body needs per day:

basal metabolic rate
physical activity
thermic effect of food

Your basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the amount of energy your body needs to function at rest. This accounts for about 60 to 70 percent of calories burned in a day and includes the energy required to keep the heart beating, the lungs breathing, the eyelids blinking and the body temperature stabilized. In general, men have a higher BMR than women. One of the most accurate methods of estimating your basal metabolic rate is the Harris-Benedict formula:

Adult male: 66 + (6.3 x body weight in lbs.) + (12.9 x height in inches) - (6.8 x age in years)

Adult female: 655 + (4.3 x weight in lbs.) + (4.7 x height in inches) - (4.7 x age in years)

Average Harnic Male 68" 153#, average Harnic Woman 66" Light Frame 130#.

"Adult Male Roughly" 1,035 + 850 = 1,800 - 1,900 base range before subtracting years at 70 per decade so say 1,700 at age 20 before factoring caloric burning activity.

Adult Woman 1,200 + 300 = 1,500 base range subtracting "50" per decade say 1,400 at age 20 before factoring in caloric burning ativity.

The second factor in the equation, physical activity, consumes the next highest number of calories. Physical activity includes everything from making your bed in the morning to jogging. Walking, lifting, bending and just generally moving around burns calories, but the number of calories you burn in any given activity depends on your body weight.

The thermic effect of food is the final addition to the number of calories your body burns. This is the amount of energy your body uses to digest the food you eat -- it takes energy to break food down to its basic elements in order to be used by the body. To calculate the number of calories you expend in this process, multiply the total number of calories you eat in a day by 0.10, or 10 percent. If you need some help determining how many calories you eat in a day:

http://www.nutristrategy.com/activitylist.htm

Calories per hour by weight 130# 155# 180# 205#

Farming, baling hay, cleaning barn 472 563 654 745

Farming, chasing cattle on horseback 236 281 327 372

Farming, feeding horses or cattle 266 317 368 419

Farming, feeding small animals 236 281 327 372

Farming, grooming animals 354 422 490 558

Forestry, ax chopping, fast 1003 1196 1389 1582

Forestry, ax chopping, slow 295 352 409 465

Forestry, carrying logs 649 774 899 1024

Forestry, sawing by hand 413 493 572 651

Forestry, trimming trees 531 633 735 838

Gardening, general 236 281 327 372

General cleaning 207 246 286 326

Backpacking, Hiking with pack 413 493 572 651

Aerobics, general 384 457 531 605

Aerobics, high impact 413 493 572 651

Aerobics, low impact 295 352 409 465

Aerobics, step aerobics 502 598 695 791


Winter activity because lack of modern heating requires more personal calories to maintain body temperature in cooler temperatures. Some resource trade off for heating residence via animals (more winter fodder) and firewood (collecting, chopping, stacking burns a lot of calories although many collected drop wood by hook and crook) doubtful large fires were maintained in the average home due to transfer inefficiencies unless wood was plentiful.


Cross country snow skiing, slow 413 493 572 651

Cross country skiing, moderate 472 563 654 745

Cross country skiing, racing 826 985 1144 1303

Cross country skiing, uphill 974 1161 1348 1536

Cross country skiing, vigorous 531 633 735 838

Keep in mind this is the intake from grain alone.

Granted, when doing physical labor you eat more, but you don't do this all the time. The scientist and historians who put this together also saw this as an average for all age groups combined. Thus, children and elderly do not take inn as much as those working hard.

Once you add meat, dairy, fats, and vegetables to the equation the k-cal per individual will be at least 2000+.

I know you want them to eat a lot a meat, and that is fine, but it is not feasible for the setting IMHO. Even in our own history, it wasn't until after the great fall in population after the mid-1300s that the standards of living increased to the point that people actually started eating more meat. This is borne out through research at all levels.

If anything, I think Harnic population per canon is way off, or agricultural production is not as prolific as the English equivalent used to generate this data, or the extraction rate of k-cal per grain type is far less on Harn.

Pick your poison, they are all viable alternatives for the disparity.

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Roy Denton - the title says Baron, but Queen for a year. (Cheselyne I)

"Nathamh na hoibre an t-eolas"
(Knowledge comes through practice)

I mentioned meat because it is inefficient caloric transfer. Probably should do a better break down of their caloric diet from meat and dairy IMO vegetables most provide vitamins and a balanced diet but not a lot of calories to the equation. IMO most Harniacs low ball manorial vegetable acreage requirements and get most of their meat from their own livestock or a familia meal. [That family garden of an acre or less always meets the needs and feeds all families (one size fits all)]

More acreage probably devoted to fruit trees which might have been account woods acreage in some locales.

I agree the population should probably be higher but I do not expect to see much food inefficiencies until hitting the 4 million plus mark so you would still have 400% ratio.

My point is farming is usually physically intensive and more comparable to the medieval lifestyle than the modern world for most people and to many people are low balling actually living requirements versus life support requirements.

They were much more physically active than the average modern person at 2,000 calories so I am thinking 2,500 - 3,000+ calories on the average with more during intense prolonged seasonal work because they were active. Most of those manorial familia received lunch with their labor so I expect that was normally the largest meal of their day.

We have one stop shopping for the most part. They ate bread and pottage (simmering so it would not become infected). We grab a glass of fresh milk with a meal. They had to graze, tend and milk the cow, lamb or goat or barter daily with a neighbor which took time. Tending their gardens. We grab a slice of cheese from the fridge they had to make the cheese from scratch. We grab a bottle of beer they had to brew the beer frequently because hops are basically unkown. Each time a neighbor specializes they still had to walk over, converse and carry it back at least once to barter for it. We need a new shirt we go buy one they had to shear or butcher and tan the animal, make the thread, weave the cloth, tailor the clothes.

Harn is based on historical so that 400% was used historically (sold to urban dwellers or fed to livestock) or lost to waste. I do not see farmers doing all that extra work to see their efforts thrown away year after year.

No one grows 400% of what they need simply to burn it unless someone is making them do it. For the most part they have not discovered the benefits of hops or grain alcohol to store the excess as a run, vodka or whiskey as we did.

What were you using for the acreage, all of Kaldor or the sum of the manor acreage?

The big hole in the calculations is that it assumes maximum intensity. A substantial part of the land will be cultivated in a way that minimizes investment rather than maximizes output. We have made this point in another thread about market access and manorial economics. And there is no shortage of parallels to real world practice.

Variability matters a lot. (This is one of the most glaring failures of HM - bad years aren't nearly bad enough.) Considering the general lack of storage, I believe that the average yield needs to be substantially higher than the raw caloric requirements, or folks are dying of famine on a regular basis. The definition of "substantially" obviously depends on the reliability of yields, and I have never seen any good data on that. My rough guess is 50% - that is, the average yield should be roughly 50% higher than the normal caloric requirement for the population to be stable.

(The best way to store grain and hay, by the way, is as meat. I really don't understand why you rebel at the thought of Harnikers eating meat, even when your own calculations show that its feasible.)

Two things Ray - Are you holding back for seed?

Secondly, there are probably not enough people in Kaldor to farm all these acres.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

Wasn't clear enough up front I guess.

Kaldor acreage is gross acres of all manors.

Less 15% for manorial woods, could be more, but I settled for 15%.

Then 50% of remaining cleared land as grain acreage.

This could be much less, but unless I build a manor for each Kaldoric Manor using my manor generator its hard to say how much less.

Labor is also the issue, but not certain of the amount of land left unworked as a result unless I build all the manors again.

Turin, the yields the authors of the study used were net yields and not gross yields; this means minus seed.

They also factored in 10% for wastage and 33% of oats for fodder, since its for animals and not human consumption.

Mike, yes, people who work hard use more k-cal. I was in the military for 20 years as an Engineer and am quite aware of the energy used when engaged in hard manual labor and the increased need for additional k-cal. However, up to 40% of the population are youth and elderly who do not have those high k-cal requirements and of the 60% remaining, 50% are most likely not as engaged either.

Whereas meat was not a good addition for k-cal, most of the working class got those extra k-cal through fat, cheese, and vegetables in some degree. The fat being the major contributor in the form of bacon and lard. Cheese is also a good transmitter of k-cal and was often a part of the boon meals, labor meals, etc.

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Roy Denton - the title says Baron, but Queen for a year. (Cheselyne I)

"Nathamh na hoibre an t-eolas"
(Knowledge comes through practice)

One thing that came to mind is that HM for basic manor construction uses 12d seed per acre.

Basic yield is 60d x LQ x FI x WI per acre. So a neutral 1.0 for each give 60d per acre.

After seed this is 48d per acre.

So, what is the average cost for a bushel of wheat, rye, barley, and oats?

From that we can see how the yield compares to the research I used.

That average is about 1.63 quarters or 13.04 bushels per acre.

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Roy Denton - the title says Baron, but Queen for a year. (Cheselyne I)

"Nathamh na hoibre an t-eolas"
(Knowledge comes through practice)

Of course Harn's population density is way below even the post plague 14th century nadir. Presuming that the most fertile and easy to farm land is used first, it would be surprising if Harnic peasants were not relatively better off than their 13th century Terran counterparts. In fact, one would probably need to do a fair but of post-hoc rationalizing to get the a erase Harnic peasant's standard of living down towards Terran norms. This may, or may not, be an issue for your pHarn...

Cheers,
De Coucy

That is interesting, I always wondered what might be a good percentage of the Oats sown to be used as fodder. Of course there are a lot of variables, i.e. how many "oat eating" animals a manor has such as cattle and horses.

Of course this does not factor in spent barley used in ale either, which was often used as animal fodder, more for pigs. Also does not include whey used for animal fodder as well, though again from what I have read this was mainly for pigs.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

A few things as well to consider, Ray - Ale has to be taken into account. It was a very large portion of the diet - I'd say a good 10% of the caloric intake. This is a rather inefficient means of nutrition, as it takes about 2.5 the calories of Barley to make ale.

You do have the left over "epent" barley - but this was also common as a feed for livestock as opposed to human consumption, though there was likely both.

Secondly, the yields you are getting are probably from the better manors as opposed to an average - better as in they kept the best records of production. Church lands as an example kept very good records, but were also more productive.

Lastly -



A few things here - were you looking at 50% of the 50% as under plow? or the whole 50%? In other words, were you allowing half the cleared land (not pasture) to lie fallow?

The other thing is if I am redaing correctly, you are devoting all of this land to grain, when 60-70% might be grain, the other lower yielding (as far as calories per acre) other food, or with flax no food value.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

Historically, people in England, prior to 1350, did not drink as much ale as after that date. It was a sign of the increased pay and means of supporting oneself at the time. The spent barley was not a factor here because the focus was on human consumption and since it had already been used for ale its use after that as animal feed had no bearing. BTW, historically, prior to 1350, more oats were used for ale that barley in some regions. It appears that even the wealthy were not willing to cut the quality of grain in their bread but were willing to use cheaper grains in brewing.


It what the scholars came up with. In fact, there are some who believe that peasant lands may have had better returns then the demesnes because the expended more labor per land unit than the demesnes did.


This is per HarnManor basics, half of cleared land is pasture and the other half is arable. Basically, it assumes that the fallow is the pasture. IMHO this is a flaw in the system. Even though it is true that the fallows were considered part of the common pasture. This may also be one reason HM places the meadow under arable. Either way, its a flaw.


For this, yes. Even in historical England the vast majority of arable land was devoted to grain. The land used for cash crops was usually not counted with the arable but as separate gardens or enclosures and was insignificant in comparison, but still it may have been only about 5% of the total arable. Therefore, its affect on the results here would have been negligible.

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Roy Denton - the title says Baron, but Queen for a year. (Cheselyne I)

"Nathamh na hoibre an t-eolas"
(Knowledge comes through practice)

Highly probable. One reason I have decided to use my HarnManor Generator to build some basic manors in a few hundreds of the kingdom to see what happens.

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Roy Denton - the title says Baron, but Queen for a year. (Cheselyne I)

"Nathamh na hoibre an t-eolas"
(Knowledge comes through practice)

Maybe you do not understand what I am getting at. I'll use a sample manor:

Acreage - 1600
Woods - 160
Cleared - 1440
Meadow - 720
Arable - 720

Of that 720 acres, only 360 would be farmed, the other 360 would lie fallow.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

HârnManor is extremely simplified, to be sure:
I'll use a sample manor:

Acreage - 1600
Woods - 160
Cleared - 1440
Pasture - 720 Includes meadows, sheep ranges, goats on the croft, etc.
Arable - 720 Includes everything plowed and unplowed: wheat, hay, apple trees,

That is, 720 acres is for animals, and 720 acres is for plants, and none of the acres (except waste) is doing nothing.

A more complex system would have to subtract out the lands held by the freemen (yeomen, craftsmen, etc.,) as they are not part of the two-field system. Acres devoted to sheep might be excluded, as they could be grazed on marginal hill land not part of the usual rotation. Crofts are not included. Other lands that are permanently one thing or another (orchards and hay-meadows, for example) are excluded. Really, the two-field system in HManor would only include winter crops, spring crops, and some animals.

Another way to look at it is that the two-field system on the manor would consist of the rotating parts of the demense and the lands held by the serfs, that is, the land worked communally, under the direction of the reeve.

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Laboro diem, carpe noctem.

You can probably account for almost all of the "excess" food grown in Kaldor as "Spoiled"!
An article lately estimated that more than half the food grown/harvested/slaughtered/etc. is never eaten.
And this is with modern preservatives, & refrigeration et.al.
I'm currently working in the food industry, and you'd be amazed the volumn of food that end up in the trash!

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Leave the gun, take the cannolli.

That is not how the basic system works in HarnManor. It does not say that half the crops is fallow but assumes that the pastures acres are the fallow and that it is a two field system. A flaw in my opinion. Something I would like to address in any rewrite.

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Roy Denton - the title says Baron, but Queen for a year. (Cheselyne I)

"Nathamh na hoibre an t-eolas"
(Knowledge comes through practice)

Wow. That is a big difference from the old EH1 article (Harnmanor1 if you would). This article took the land after waste and woods, and about 50% was pasture, 50% was arable cropland. Of that arable cropland, only 1/2 was under plow at any given time.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

I think it is real tough to compare the two, we are looking at modern day production without a foot shortage in many countries, vs. a middle ages type world where the food production was not much above that needed.

I think there is/would be a different outlook. We throw away bread if a few days stale - this would not be done in the middle ages.

Modern preservatives and refrigeration are a factor, but the middle ages food items were eaten quickly if perishable, or made into a less perishable form, such as milk to cheese.

One thing you could count on though in a middle ages diet - salt, salt, and more salt. Almost everything remotely perishable was stored with a fair amount of salt.

Don't overlook though the effectiveness of middle ages food preservation. Cod was usually air-dried, and could keep for a few years. Not the most tasty type of food (apparently it was almost rock hard and had to be softened in water to be edible), but it would keep.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

I built all of the manors, with the exception of Baseta, in Allence Hundred of Kaldor using the basic manor rules for the most part.

Allence has the following:
31,240 gross acres for its manors
7,533 acres of woods were generated
23,707 cleared acres remaining

Of these 23,707 acres:
7,921 acres are for crops (25%)
8,795 acres are for pasture (28%)
6,991 acres are waste (22%)

The extra pasture acres are because a number of the manors were above 1,000 ft. and I counted them as highland manors, meaning more land for pasture.

Using these figures I discovered the following about this hundred's crop production:

Allence needs 3,112 annual ration to feed its population to include the households of Baseta, but not including the keep's household.

The hundred produces enough grain, after processing into its various forms to feed 5,001 individuals annually.

This leaves the hundred with an annual rations reserve of 1,689.

Basically the hundred can feed itself grain and 1,689 more individuals annually.

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Roy Denton - the title says Baron, but Queen for a year. (Cheselyne I)

"Nathamh na hoibre an t-eolas"
(Knowledge comes through practice)

That sounds about right. If the Hundred was any nearer capacity it would be subject to frequent distress and occasional famine.

If we look at half the grain production (50% that lies fallow) We have the grain to feed 2500 people annually, or provide 80% of the calories needed.

Considering a poor peasant diet might be 80% grain, this is not too far off.

I had run some sample diets best on estimated manor production of grain, dairy, meat and other products - and based on the livestock numbers given by Harnmanor the diet would have to be higher in dairy and meat than Harnplayer suggests, roughly 70% for peasants diet would be grain. This is based on the amount of livestock, plus throwing in some chickens/geese.

Of course, I was also looking at a household of 5 havin a caloric requirement of 10,000 calories per day. Children burn a lot more calories per pound of body weight than adults, even if the adults are very active. It's the calories required to grow I think.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

Actually, it IS quite tasty and is the national Portuguese dish and it is salted. The cod DOES have to be soaked in water for days (it was never meant to be eaten salted...), and frequently the waters are changed more than once a day, resulting in the need to resalt the cod for cooking, but it is extremely tasty once it's done. It can keep for years, although it can grow stale in the wrong conditions. There are hundreds of ways of preparing this in Portugal!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacalhau
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dried_and_salted_cod

Pork meat, for instance, can be cooked and then stored in a jar completely covered in melted lard and salt (and spices) which then "freezes" around it, and will keep for months. It is called "rojões" in Portugal, and they're sometimes cooked right out of the jar by simply throwing them on the pan, the lard itself part of the dish. And it's GOOOOD!

I also found this article, don't know how accurate it is (it's really not something I know much about) but it states that physically active peasants in the Middle-Ages might be consuming up to 4500 calories a day, which would increase the averages quoted above.

http://www.livestrong.com/article/32125 ... sant-diet/

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José de Freitas
Portugal

I've read many caloric estimates, this is very much on the high side of any estimates.

I think one of the problems is that they estimate a peasant's workload as a for instance of "Chopping trees" for 8 hours as the caloric requirement.

While this sounds good, one did not chop trees continuously for 8 hours straight. You would take breaks, have different tasks, etc. etc. One of the tasks that would consume time would be walking to and from the job site.

It's similar say to looking at how many calories one may burn in a P90X workout, and multiply the 40 minute workout by 12 to get calories burned in an 8 hour period. It just does not work that way.

The average peasant was likley in much better shape than the average 21st century adult - but they would still have to pace themselves during a physical working day.

I use the caloric requirements of modern terms of extremely active - which comes out to 10,000 calories needed for a household of 2 adults and 3 children, the largest consumer being the male at a little over 3000 calories.

Here are definitons of this level of activity, including a few other categories for reference. I left off the sedentary definition.




Actually based on the definitons, many peasants might be better termed "very active" as opposed to extremely active. However, lack of mechanized transportation may not be factored into these definitions.

I might add there would be many Harnians who would better be classed under moderately or lightly active, even some who would be best classified as sedentary.

For example, many of the not overly physical occupations such as many of the guilds would be best classified as moderately active, some guilds in the very active or lightly active categories.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

Many? Or indeed any? I can only think of one 'class'..nobility/very rich...that would realistically have the option of being sedentary. Yet most of these IMHO would choose not to be as it is, well, pointless, frowned upon, and dangerous from a political and practical viewpoint.

To be truly sedentary you would have not to travel anywhere (even riding is hard work); not light ones own fires, not cook; not fetch water, not tend to the land or fend for animals, not wash clothes, not train in arms, have no need to earn a wage, have no or ignore any obligations (which usually involve travel). Just 'living' was hard work imho.

In modern times I would argue that calorific sedentarianism (I copyright that nosense word henceforth) is eminently more possible due to the machinery that aids us. Travel, heating, washing, cooking, getting water require no effort for many and earning a wage is possible in a wider range of lazy ways . More of us have our own slaves/servants too. (Hey even I have a cleaner once a week; and technically I only dip into middle class by profession!) 'Living' is easy as it were.

However; I can think of/reflect modern culture stereotypes of olden days lazy bones if you like:

Monk/Holy Order type. Friar Tuck etc. (Although all those bloody prayers and privations would make me thin:))
Corpulent libertine Noble. Henry V111 etc.
Intellectual of means. Still probably Noble.
Rich Merchant. A foolish move to become fat and slow when the exchequer evaluate wealth visually...as well as the mob
Sorceror...Rasputin..Aleister Crowley...I was going to say John Dee but he was a busy man and had 8 kids...so forget him
Civil servant...Oh Richie Rich; your mortal soul...for Wales

You will note this pretty much excludes women. Don't know what to say about that. Also does not account for Drunkards, the mentally ill etc. Don't what I am saying about that either; but I like the way the juxtoposition makes me look rampantly sexist

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Plots and schemes are the same thing..