Plowing along... from Joerg Baumgartner on 1997-04-05 (Glorantha Digest Vol 04)

From: Joerg Baumgartner <joe_at_toppoint.de>
Date: Sat, 5 Apr 97 16:58 MET DST

>Peter Metcalfe
>>Amazing. One obscure phrase in the Report of the Orlanthi and Joerg
>>transforms all the cattle to stunted midgets. [...] If the cattle
>>were really all that small then why aren't the Orlanthi hooking up
>>ordinary sized *horses* which could do the job better (even without
>>a horse collar)? Methinks the team implies rotation of the oxen
>>on the plow rather than a full component of oxen.

Oliver D. Bernuetz
>The reason they might need eight ox teams to plow would be that they're
>plowing heavy or virgin soil. My understanding is that Orlanthi territory
>is for the most part former woodland ala Northern Europe. That tends to
>mean fairly heavy soils.

Unfortunately Greg also stated that the Barntar plow is a lot lighter than the Lodril plow. Basically, I tend to assume that the Barntar plow is the pre-technological hook plow, which needs some force to produce a furrow even in fairly light soil.

One reason the Orlanthi stick to the hills is that they can till the chalkier, lighter (and less yielding) soil up there easier than the heavier loess of the lower Pelorian basin (or Prax).

>Continuing in this vein I find it unlikely that Lunar farmers would be able
>to till the soil in Prax. Prairie soil is just about the hardest to
>cultivate.

However, in Prax they till the river valley rather than the grasslands. This will be somewhat heavy soil, but manageable during the period between inundated and baked dry.

End of Glorantha Digest V4 #319

WWW at http://rider.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html