Sustainable Agriculture and Food: Four volume set (Earthscan Reference Collections)

(Elle) #1
Agricultural Sustainability and Open-Field Farming in England 239

The flexibility of the open-field system was maximized by having alternative
grain crops. For example, wheat and rye were autumn-sown crops, while barley
was planted in the spring. Sometimes such flexibility was paramount where the
vagaries of the weather in relation to the underlying soil structure demanded it.
On the extensive clayland for example, inadequate drainage resulted in excessive
water retention and this meant that the period during which the ground could be
prepared for cropping was limited. In such circumstances, when there was a delay
in the preparation of the ground, the ability to plant a spring-sown crop was not
just desirable, it was vital to the general well-being of the community. Yet in some
parishes otherwise dominated by the heavy clays, there were also areas where quite
different soils also existed. Here the planting of rye provided a good alternative
because it could be concentrated in those parts of the open fields least likely to
produce good crops of wheat or barley. In such cases it was grown every second or
third year (Hoskins, 1950, pp163–165). The inclusion of similar crops that pro-
vided such flexibility in response to soil conditions, the weather and the market,
went a long way to ensuring the ecological sustainability of the open fields.
In time the growth of the market economy saw adjustments in the grain crop
mix, in particular there was a shift towards wheat, which became the premier cash
crop. In 32 open-field villages in Bedfordshire in 1801 31 per cent of the arable
was under wheat, and 18 per cent under barley. In neighbouring Northampton-
shire the equivalent distribution was 31 per cent wheat and 27 per cent barley
(Turner, 1989, p52). In comparable Leicestershire villages wheat was planted on
between 27 and 30 per cent of the cropped arable in the three open fields, while
barley occupied between 18 and 25 per cent (Hoskins, 1949a, pp134–135). Rye
remained as the dominant bread grain in much of north and east Europe but by
the period under review it was only occasionally planted in England, and then
mixed with wheat as a bread grain known regionally as muncorn, maslin, blend
corn and other names. By the late 18th century whenever it was grown, however
rarely, it was used mainly as an early spring feed crop rather than as a bread grain
(Hoskins, 1949b, pp161, 174). By 1801 only 3 per cent of the open fields of Bed-
fordshire were sown with rye, and less than 1 per cent of those in Northampton-
shire (Turner, 1989, p52). Nevertheless, what we can conclude of the bread grains
is that within communally administered agricultural systems there was adaptabil-
ity that had evolved over many generations.
The second part of the rotation was generically known as the pease field
(whether it was one or more actual fields), and represented the pulse rotation.
Traditionally, beans and peas were planted in the late winter. The land was ploughed
typically at Epiphany (6 January), left for a short while so that frost action could
break it up further, and then sown. The purpose of this course was mainly as live-
stock feed. In Leicestershire in the second half of the 16th century, peas (the term
was used indiscriminately for both peas and beans) commonly occupied 35–40 per
cent of the cropped arable (Hoskins, 1950, pp168, 171; Thirsk, 1954, p212). By
1801 we know that 47 per cent or so of the cropped arable in the Leicestershire vil-
lages of Congerstone, Glenfield and Bringhurst was under beans or peas (Hoskins,

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