Three-field system

Legend

“Preparing, sowing, tending, and harvesting. All gained a almost divine renewal.”

Skjald Sejrik

 

Description

The three-field system allowed farmers to increase production, and in this system, arable land was divided into three large fields: one was planted in the autumn, the second field was planted with other crops, and the third was left fallow. Varying between cereal crops, legumes fertilising the soil, and allowing fallow fields to overgrow and be used for grazing animals. Their excrement fertilising that field’s soil to regain its nutrients.

Wanderers from below the rim introduced the technique to our part of the world. But, as the legume crops needed summer rain to succeed, the three-field system was less successful in the sunlands and below shadowlands. Thus those that benefitted the most were those of the tropical, temperate, and shadowland zones.

Skjald El Mary

 

There’s an ancient poem regarding this;

Does anyone know… how oats, peas, and barley grow?

Skjald Kazumix

 

History

Our part of the world was a pretty primitive place until a few decades after the wanderers arrived. As they interacted, our parts grew as civilisations, because their engineers improved water and wind power and brought this agricultural system. Ultimately doing more than the indigenous had ever done with their slave system.

The wealth from the increased crops soon spread to our indigenous tribes. As the three-field system needed more ploughing of land, the Borji invented the moldboard plough. This further increased agricultural productivity, and populations literally exploded. Especially Borji, Ughuz, Markian, Clovincaz, Gorean, Tatongol, Jomzaar, and Vular saw an extreme raise in populations.

In the five millennia since the wanderers crossed and introduced the three-field system. Agricultures of the old indigenous powers became productive enough to support towns with masons and artisans—people who didn’t just labour for food. Settlements kept growing and required increasing supplies.

Horses were bred in numbers for military use, and it was integrated into farming, but three things made it difficult to use them in farming. Hooves became soft and easily hurt in damp soil, and when they were harnessed in an ox yoke, their wind was cut off, and the horse couldn’t just graze grass.

Ughuz invented the nailed horseshoe and the Gorean horse collar, solving two of these problems. The solution to the problem of feeding the horse was more complicated, but as the Borji invented the moldboard plough and crops like oats for horse food began to be planted in the spring, preference changed from oxen to horses. Leading to further productivity and nutrition available to the populations and their trade partners.

Skjald Sigurd

 

Organisation

Previously farmers used two fields—one active at a given time and the other one fallow. Then wanderers showed that a field could be used two years out of three if it were planted with one crop in the fall and a different crop in the spring, a year and a half later.

This meant farmers had to break their holdings into three fields—one to be planted with wheat or rye in the fall for human consumption; a second to be used in the spring to raise peas, beans, and lentils for human use and oats and barley for the horses. The third field lay fallow. Each year this use was rotated among the three fields.

Skjald Ulrich

 

Special

The three-field crop rotation required people to rearrange real estate and to change their social order. For all its potential advantages, it was very hard to implement, and overall it took 2 centuries.

Skjald Valgrif