This is only correct for the field work. Other works like threshing and cleaning grain could take literal months. And idk where did you get the notion that holidays were free of work.
thank you! i am a freak for the middle ages (mostly holy roman empire) and i get frustrated when these lies continue to get spread.
Don’t forget mending tools, tending or butchering livestock, repairing your house…
Yeah, that was already mentioned by other posters. But if you mention the livestock, it’s a neat point to remind that peasants, both medieval and later ones literally lived with their animals especially in winter. In the same room. Chickens, sheep, goats, cows, pigs. And those weren’t your average cute pygmy piglets people keep as pets, pigs were more like wild hogs and there is terribly long list of known cases where pigs assaulted humans and even killed and and devoured weak people and children. Anyone still want to go back to the bucolic medieval life?
Saves time on having to bring food for the pig …
There were also those winter months were you couldn’t do anything outside anyway.
In the field yes, but in and around house there was plenty of work. For example abovementioned threshing was often done in the winter, it was hellish work which took a lot of time up to even the next harvest. Also, what people often forget is that before the agricultural and industrial revolution technic and knowledge wasn’t locked. XVIII and XIX century peasants, depite seemingly living in very similar conditions than their XII century ancestors still had better tools and more knowledge. They did had on average more hands but less land though, that was “recompensed” by serfdom and exploiting peasants from unpaid work.
Medieval peasant would simply be unable to work extra, that’s why serfdom started to appear on wider scale in XV and XVI century after reneissance pushed knowledge forward and population completely recovered after Black Death - it was also beginning of rural capitalism formation, when commodity food production was increasing and of course solution was to squeeze peasant for more unpaid labour (for example, late XVI century Polish landowner could get up to 20 times more money from unpaid labour of peasants on his land than by taxing the same peasants from the same land).
Some of us are painfully aware.
I’m 40 and going through a major midlife crisis. No savings, no hope for a higher paid job than entry level despite two degrees. The thought of having to do this for 25 more years is debilitating.
My votes don’t matter because the parties I vote for are consistently below the 10% threshold needed to get representation. Meanwhile, life gets worse year after year and the goddamn far right gets more votes every election.
Most of us are utterly doomed to serfdom at best and near-chattel slavery at worst. Someone make it make sense, because I sure can’t.
It’s shit, isn’t it.
My mum survived a civil war in her native land, raised without an education, survived a husband who wouldn’t let her work for her own pension, survived the divorce and the lack of safety net, got an education, gets paid peanuts at work whilst watching people more underqualified than her get promoted, gets treated like shit, and still comes home every day smiling.
Her philosophy: “We could all literally go at any time. Might as well enjoy the present.”
Your mother is made of stronger stuff than I am. I have no issues admitting this.
But we also shouldn’t just accept living off the crumbs the elite sweep off their tables. All of us, your mother definitely included, deserve better than that.
Most definitely, but after some point you carve out the small corner of freedom that you have.
literally the house burning dog meme
if the house is always burning and no amount of water will quench it, then yeah, I guess you have to make peace with it
I know the feeling. Change what you can change, the rest you can’t change is pointless to ponder of what the future holds. How ever unlikely things change.
Those were only holidays off from working as a serf for your landlord. You still had to feed your families by working the rest of the time
But anyways, yeah Americans don’t get enough PTO
My understanding is that the rest of the time peasants were trying to grow their own food and cloth and… you know, survive. This is a bit disingenuous.
That said, I would survive a lot better with 200 days off a year
Would you be better off with only being paid for 10 hours a week? You would have a lot more time to grow your own food and make your own clothes, so you wouldn’t need as much money anyways.
Why do we fucking care about whatever they did in the middle ages? I know I can’t work like this, there’s no need to consult the history books
