Stumbled on a weird historical fact about medieval farming that changed my fantasy world

I was reading this book about crop rotation in the 13th century and found out peasants actually grew turnips as a winter food source, not just for livestock. Totally shifted how I wrote my fantasy village's economy and food supply. Anybody else run into a random historical detail that made you rethink your whole setting?

2 comments

2 Comments

michael_craig15d ago

Turnips changed my whole approach too, but for a different reason. Once I learned how much nitrogen they put back in the soil, I stopped treating farmland like a static resource and started mapping out actual rotation cycles across my fantasy kingdom. It made me realize most fantasy worlds have way too much food production for their population levels. Started adding fallow periods and crop blights to keep things realistic. Now my villagers actually suffer through lean winters instead of always having full storehouses.

abby18915d ago

Man that's a really good point about population sizes. I read somewhere that most medieval villages had around 50-150 people living off like 300 acres, and now I can't stop noticing how fantasy towns are way too big for their farmland. @michael_craig the fallow periods thing is something I never even thought about, but it makes total sense. Honestly I love that your villagers actually deal with real consequences like lean winters instead of just having magic granaries. It adds so much weight to the story when the food supply feels like it actually matters.