> The harvest period for each crop is slightly different,
> thankfully.
And if it weren't, then they'd grow crops that did have different periods, or magically induce same.
Seem my other lengthy post about the labour involved in harvesting grasses: when a harvest is on, you don't have time for anything else. Presumably grain harvests are as labour intensive as grass harvests, if not moreso (as threshing is also involved). I don't have any experience first hand with grain harvesting, but grass harvesting I have a fair amount.
> Harvest, like lambing, is something that involves all the
> clan, men, women, children, hangers-on, sulky shepherds,
> forest dwellers *plus* whatever itinerants you can round up -
I disagree with lambing. Lambing doesn't all happen at once, but spread out over a period of weeks. Not everyone is directly involved in lambing, but everyone is certainly *affected* by it.
However, later maintenance and harvesting involved in sheep husbandry does involve more people (shearing, tail-cropping, slaughtering).
> the hiring fair of ancient tradition and recent Fairport
> Convention. It probably involves magic and spiritual help as
> well - see Mikael Raaterova's 'Spirits of the Far Place' on
> Questlines. But we're still looking at several week's work.
That 'several weeks work' is a bit misleading, though. Grass harvesting is intense, but has peaks and valleys. Ideally, if you had the manpower, you'd harvest all your grass at once when it was ready. In reality, most likely you wait for a dry spell, harvest as much as you can, wait for the next dry spell, harvest as much as you can, and hope to God you can get it all done in a short period of time. That 'short period of time' is indeed likely to be weeks, but the harvest time itself is only a matter of two or three days.
So what you end up with is a month or so, where you have burst of activity that last for two or three days, and in between those bursts you tend to other things. (Like harvesting vegetables ripe at the same time, etc etc.)
John -- when do you shear down under? When's your lambing season?
> My arrow-'gainst-the-shieldwall figure would be an average of
> perhaps three weeks. Hard yakka. Thank the Goddess for
> cidernight afterwards.
heh. Indeed.
> Let me close with a Heortling observation - there are three
> types of Heortling, those who count, and poets. I definitely
> fall into the latter category.
'snork.
-- Viktor
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