We
hope everyone will join us at this week’s taste-full Pathfinder Produce market
at the Village Commons, Thursday, March 5 from 2 to 5 p.m. We are approaching our second anniversary at
the market – mark your calendar for March 19 when we’ll be offering some
additional activities to celebrate the “little market that could.”
***
In as much as our family doesn’t have cable and we watch what’s
offered on the internet, we sometimes hit on programs that are
out-of-the-mainstream. Recently, we’ve been
watching a BBC documentary, the Tudor Monastery Farm on
YouTube, which stars historians Peter Ginn, Tom Pinfold, and Ruth Goodman. The series shows how people lived in Britain
around 1500 AD: At that time nobles and Catholic monasteries owned most British
land-holdings; starting during King Henry VII’s reign there were stirrings of a
rising middle class, which included craftsmen, merchants, and yeoman farmers
who played increasingly greater roles in the management of the land.
The show has a lot of hands-on content, with costumed historians
and docents at the Weald
and Downland Open Air Museum completing the business tasks and food
production chores of early 16th century farm life. Their year was organized around two major
constructs: the Church’s cycle of observances, and the natural cycles of
planting and animal husbandry.
Some of my earlier blogs have noted that it was about this time
when European navigators began traveling the globe in search of riches. One of the lasting consequences of this was
the exchange of Old World and New World fruits and vegetables on an impressive
scale. The Tudor Monastery Farm
episodes show the time just before this happened; the crops and food staples
were different than those from even just 150 years later. For instance, in 1500 the English had no
potatoes or corn. The chief crops were
barley, rye, wheat (restricted for the wealthy) and Carlin peas, which were
used to feed both humans and animals.
These protein-rich legumes are still celebrated today in the nursery
rhyme, “Peas Porridge Hot.”
Most meats, with exception of pork, were luxuries for all but the
wealthy. Many meals would include dense
breads, limited dairy, and pottage, which was a boiled mush of various
ingredients that was kept over the fire for days. (As the pot grew empty, more stuff would be
added; the continual heating killed off dangerous bacteria). Diets were seasonal, and as winter stores ran
out, families looked to add fresh vegetables to their trenchers from their
kitchen gardens -- cabbages, onions,
leeks, lettuce, other greens, carrots, turnips and beets were common. Plants
we no longer use, like Alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum) and skirret
(Sium sisarum), were also
cultivated.
All of this
focus on planting and tending crops in Tudor England has me looking forward to working
my own small garden. It’s time to start
selecting seeds, planting a few starter pots, and coming up with ways to combat
my arch nemesis-- the weeds-- that take over every year (housewives of the
Tudor era didn’t kill the weeds straight-off, just in case they needed to eat
them). I offer my compliments to the
vocational program participants at Pathfinder Village, who have already planted
several seed beds in the Button Greenhouse in preparation of this year’s Hoop
House gardens. As the seedlings grow,
I’ll be sure to share some pictures with you.
Until next
time, be well and plan to plant,
Lori
