The hide/yardland/'terra una familia' of ~120 acres was considered the ideal holding for a family, not the usual holding. According to Domesday book, most peasant families who actually supported themselves on their own land held a virgate (30 acres). That's 30 acres of arable land, mind you, not any 30 acres. (Poor peasants who supported themselves mostly as hired labour for others held as little as 3 to 7 acres).
If you ever care to look up actual hidages in various medieval books, you also have to keep one thing in mind : hides and acres weren't measures of area in the Middle Ages. The hide was a unit of taxation; the Danegeld was a tax on hides. The acre was usually 4 strips in the common field, often quite a bit different in area than 1/640th of a square mile.
I spilled spot remover on my dog. Now he's gone.
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