forestry-msg

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forestry-msg – 7/21/07

Medieval forestry. Forestry laws.

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From: Tim at f4229.n124.z1.fidonet.org (Tim)

Newsgroups: rec.org.sca

Subject: Re: Thought Experiment

Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1993 22:14:56

Scripsit Charles the Clerk:

C> And yes, the reason there was a royal palace in Wilton (maybe ten miles

C> away) way because of the game forest. But hunting in the King's

C> private forests is not going to make us popular.

Well, we'll be about four miles north of what will eventually become the

Forest of Grovely. The New Forest, farther south, wasn't 'established'

until 1079, but apparently the Saxon and Danish kings had a similar area

(called 'Ytena') used for similar purposes, and governed by similar laws.

Considering that the royal capital of Winchester is only about twenty

miles or so due east, I suspect that Good King Aethelred might have some

serious misgivings about 8000 newbies trucking through his turf... and

apparently the New Forest area was no great prize, agriculturally

speaking.

Interesting reading for those so inclined:

Ralph Whitlock, _Historic Forests of England_ (A.S. Barnes & Co., 1979)

Charles R. Young, _The Royal Forests of Medieval England_ (Univ. of Pa.

Press, 1979)

Raymond Grant, _The Royal Forests of England_ (Alan Sutton, 1991)

N.D.G. James, _A History of English Forestry_ (Basil Blackwell-Oxford,

1981)

Whitlock contains a "Gazeteer" covering most of the important forests,

with good maps. Young is very well written, with even better maps. Grant

is the most detailed with respect to medieval forest law and

administration. James covers the hands-on management of a forest estate,

extending into recent times. Fascinating stuff....

Tadhg, Hanaper

ocitor!tim.4229 at rwsys.lonestar.org

From: lsteele at mtholyoke.edu (Lisa Steele)

Newsgroups: rec.org.sca

Subject: Re: Need info on Period Forestry

Date: 15 Oct 1995 21:04:58 GMT

Organization: Mount Holyoke College

> We are looking for information on period forestry, if such a thing

> existed, and considering the need for wood, I suspect it did. If anyone

> could recomend some books, or even a quick overview on what period

> forestry entailed, it would be much appreciated.

I don't have the cites to hand, but there are a couple of good books on

English royal forests (The Forest of Dean is one title, I think) which

cover forest management and law.

--Esclarmonde

From: tangle at iadfw.net (Tim of Angle)

Newsgroups: rec.org.sca

Subject: Re: Need info on Period Forestry

Date: Thu, 19 Oct 1995 01:51:34 GMT

Scripsit lsteele at mtholyoke.edu (Lisa Steele) :

> > We are looking for information on period forestry, if such a thing

> > existed, and considering the need for wood, I suspect it did. If anyone

> > could recomend some books, or even a quick overview on what period

> > forestry entailed, it would be much appreciated.

> I don't have the cites to hand, but there are a couple of good books on

> English royal forests (The Forest of Dean is one title, I think) which

> cover forest management and law.

Try:

Forests of Britain, Thomas Hinde, 1985, ISBN 0575035064

Historic Forests of England, Ralph Whitlock, 1980, ISBN 0498024296

Trees and Man: The Forest in the Middle Ages,Roland Bechman, 1990, ISBN

155778034X

Also useful:

An Historical Dictionary of Forestry and Woodland Terms, N.D.G.James, 1991, ISBN

0631176365

To: SCALibrarians at topica.com

From: john j cash <jcash at indiana.edu>

Subject: RE: [SCALibrarians] Cnut and mastiffs

Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2001 00:18:31 -0500 (EST)

A little on-line research has provided us with an interesting tale of

forgery. As one of our number suspected, forest rights began with the

Normans. However, being legal-minded folks, they required some form of

precedent to afforest parts of the country for the king's use. This

precedent was the Forest Laws of Cnut.

A sample of the citations our first poster found reads as follows (from

the home page of the Mastiff Club of America,

http://mastiff.org/faq/mhistory.mv):

"The Mastiff was one of the few breeds mentioned by name in The Forest

Laws of King Canute, the first written laws of England. There, Mastiffs

were required to be checked by the tax collector, who would make sure the

middle toes of each front foot were removed so the dog could not run fast

enough to catch the deer (which traditionally belonged to royalty)."

As noted by our second poster, the Forest Laws seem to date only to the

Normans' arrival, at least 30 years after Cnut's death. As it turns out,

there are many references to these Forest Laws. Most references to these

Forest Laws refer to William the Conquerer as the initiator; some also

refer to a copy of these laws of the later 1100's.

The background to the Forest Laws is summed up by the online source

"England, a narrative history" by Peter N. Williams, chapter 5

(http://www.britannia.com/history/narmedhist.html):

"William's insistence that the prime duty of any man holding land from the

king was to produce on demand a set quota of mounted knights produced a

new ruling class in England, one entirely different from that which had

been in place for so long.

"This was not the Saxon way of doing things: it constituted a total

revolution. The simple rents of ale and barley or work upon the lord's

manor were now supplemented by military service of a new kind: one that

had been practiced only by and thus familiar to a Norman. In such a

system, those at the bottom suffered most, losing all their rights as free

men and coming to be regarded as mere property, assets belonging to the

manor. In all intents and purposes, they were no more than slaves. In

addition, further restrictions and hardship came from William's New Forest

laws and his vast extension of new royal forests in which all hunting

rights belonged to the king."

Further information comes from the "New Forest History" off the County of

Hampshire (UK) website

(http://www.hants.gov.uk/newforest/history/history1.html):

"William justified the severity of his laws by producing a document - a

Charter of Cnut - apparently declaring that the exclusive rights of the

chase were vested in the king (this document is now discredited). It

was used to support the tradition that the Forests were for the pleasure

of the king.

"An account in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (translated by Anne Savage)

recounts that William

"'...set many deer free, and laid a law upon it, that whoever

slew hart or hind should be blinded. As he forbade the killing

of harts he forbade the killing of boars, and he loved the stags

as if he were their father. He decreed also that hares must go

free. The rich complained, the poor lamented; but he was so hard

he set their hate at naught...'"

"In fact, there is no evidence that sovereigns before William claimed the

royal prerogative for hunting in the wood of their subjects. Cnut claimed

hunting rights in his own woods. Trespassers and poachers were punished by

Common Law, not a Forest Law. Forest Law was a Norman institution imported

from the continent. In English eyes it was an unprecedented tyranny."

Note that, according to the Hampshire site, William "produced" this

document, now discredited, as precedent for legislation in his own

interest. This would imply the Forest Laws of Cnut are a forgery -- but a

forgery from the 12th century at the latest. Now if mastiffs are mentioned

in a forgery dating to the 12th century, it would nonetheless be valid

documentation of mastiffs to the early Middle Ages. The question is, did

the term "mastiff" refer to a breed of dog, such as terrier or spaniel,

or a more general sort of dog, such as hound?

The Oxford English Dictionary indicates the latter:

"The form of the Eng. word is difficult to account for. Possibly the word

was first known to Englishmen in the Pr. form masti-s; as this coincides

with the form that would have been assumed in early OFr. by the

subject-case of a noun *mastif, the <alpha>forms may be due to grammatical

interpretation, while the <beta>and <gamma>forms may have been taken

directly from Pr. The word was more or less confused with OFr; mestif

mongrel. The form mastin occurs only in Caxton's translations from Fr.:

cf. mtin."

OED's earliest citation of mastiff comes from 1330. The set of these early

examples may be useful to read:

"C. 1330 R. Brunne Chron. (1810) 189 On er first eschel he smot in fulle

hastif, & orgh am ilka del, als grehound or mastif;

1387 Trevisa Higden (Rolls) VIII. 187 Houndes and masteves [MSS. <beta>,

<gamma> mastyves, Caxton maistyves] bee i-slawe in all e forestes of

Engelond;

C. 1400 Maundev. (1839) xv. 167 There ben Rattes in that Ile, als grete as

Houndes here: and men taken hem with grete Mastyfes.

1494 Fabyan Chron. vii. ccxxxi. 263 A mastife or great curre dogge.

? A. 1500 Forest Laws Sect.12 in Sc. Acts (1814) I. 690/2 Ande gif ony

mastice be fundyn in e forest [etc.];

1509 Fisher Serm. Hen. VII, Wks. (1876) 278 Euen as ye se these wood

dogges these grete mastyues that be tyed in chaynes.

1513 Douglas neis ix. Prol. 49 The cur, or mastis, he haldis at small

availl.

A. 1529 Skelton Sp. Parrot 321 Suche malyncoly mastyvys and mangye

curre dogges Ar mete for a swyneherde to hunte after hogges.

1550 Crowley Epigr. 11 b, To kepe wyth daunger, a greate mastyfe dogge.

1599 Shaks. Hen. V, iii. vii 59 Their Mastiffes are of vnmatchable

courage.

1601 Holland Pliny I. 218 The Colophonians and Castabaleans maintained

certain squadrons of mastiue dogs for their war seruice."

It would seem "mastiff" refers to any large, fast dog often found or

used in the forests, and was used to describe not so much a dog's breed as

its set of qualities throughout our period.

More on the "Forest Laws of Cnut":

http://www.snowcrest.net/siskfarm/Forest.html

-- johannes v.n.

Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 11:44:59 -0400

From: "Phlip" <phlip at 99main.com>

Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Forest management (was ovens)

To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

> This brings up a question that has nagged at me for years. We moderns

> look at forests, woodlands and unkempt urban lots and see lots and lots

> of "dead and down" wood. Those of us who live in the West also see a

> catastrophic wildfire waiting to happen. But it took many, many years

> for those forests to get that way.

> Here's the question: how much "dead and down" does a managed forest

> generate? If the pressure from the local population is constant, there

> should be very little. So it is up to the professional foresters to

> trim/thin the trees to maintain a constant supply of firewood while

> protecting the forest from wholesale destruction - yes? I seem to

> recall

> that there were penalties for ordinary folk cutting live wood. Bear?

> MD/Marged

Standard wisdom is that a properly managed 5 acre wood lot can provide

sufficient wood for a family's needs. This refers to a temperate forest, and

a family which uses wood almost exclusively for heating and cooking, and

requires occasional thinning of diseased or otherwise "worthless" trees, but

also allows harvesting of some trees for other uses, such as furniture or

fenceposts.

I suspect this would vary, depending on the particular mixture of trees

therein, and some of the more exotic usages- sugar maples, for sap and

syrup, and so forth, and includes cutting and trimming necessary trees a

year before they are used, in order to allow them to dry and season, but

this is a rough guesstimate, based on a reasonably managed second or so

growth forest.

Saint Phlip,

CoD

Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 13:45:30 -0500

From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net>

Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Forest management (was ovens)

To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

I'm more familiar with German practice. The owner of a woodland hires ein

Forstmeister to take care of the woods. The Forstmeister hires foresters as

need to help him with the task and it was common when I was living in

Germany to have had one family serving as a region's foresters for

centuries. The forest law, while tempered by modern jurisprudence and

forestry practices, was based on forestry regulations over a thousand years

old.

The forest law (as I remember it) permits anyone to use any part of the tree

that has fallen to the ground, nuts, pine cones, limbs, whole trees, etc.

There were fines for damaging live trees and causing a wildfire was a

serious offense. The forester is responsible for seeing that trees for

lumber are harvested for the owner, that diseased and trash trees are cut

down for use by the locals, and that the forest land is kept within the

dictates of the law and the owners directives. In return, the Forstmeister

receives wages and some privileges to the harvest and sale of forest

products.

One of the key duties which was becoming less important was to be sure that

enough trees would be downed to ensure firewood for the locals during the

winter. In a completely managed forest, the "dead and downed" timber

changes as much through the dictates of economics as from natural

causes.

Bear

Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 21:01:55 -0800

From: "Laura C. Minnick" <lcm at jeffnet.org>

Subject: [Sca-cooks] Back to the Forest! Fwd: RE: forestry reference?

To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org

Hi there!

A day or two ago I mentioned that Countess Morwyn had been doing some

research on forests and forestry- well this is what I got back from

her- Enjoy!

> The book I've been referring to most is _Trees & Woodland in the British

> Landscape: The Complete History of Britain's Trees, Woods & Hedgerows_ by

> Oliver Rackham, first published in 1976 and revised 1990, ISBN

> 1-84212-469-2 (paperback). I also am reading another book by Mr Rackham,

> _The Illustrated History of the Countryside_ (2003, ISBN 0-297-84335-4)

> which is a wider look at all the types of landscape in Britain, and how

> they have been used and managed throughout the centuries. I bought both of

> these through David Brown / Oxbow Books (dangerous place!). Rackham

> describes how the forces of nature, the shape and composition of land

> forms, the particular plants and animals and the actions of man, have

> interacted since the end of the last Ice Age to shape the landscape

> through the millennia. He brings together archaeological evidence,

> historical documents, a knowledge of plants and animals, and a lifetime of

> observing the land, walking the land and seeing what is actually there, to

> give a history that is rich with detail and specifics, related directly to

> what is still to be seen now. The majority of what he has to say is about

> the SCA's time period.

> These books have given me a real jolt, showing me just how different

> Britain is from America (especially here on the west coast), and how many

> of my / our assumptions and things we think we know are wrong. Some things

> that have made a particular impression on me:

> The end of the last Ice Age in Britain, when the ice finally retreated

> from the land, was only 10,000 years ago. Man has been there, shaping the

> landscape, for half of that time. There is no piece of this land that man

> has not set foot on.

> Every piece of land in Britain has a name, and a physical boundary. Even

> the woods and fields have edges defined by banks, ditches, and hedges.

> Some of these boundaries date back to Roman times or earlier. Even a hedge

> can be a thousand years old.

> Most of the ways the land was used, and the patterns of their

> distribution, changed little between 500 BC and 1500 AD. Much has still

> not changed. Most of the land which is field now was cleared by Roman

> times, so the image of the medieval landscape as covered with trees, which

> were gradually cleared as the centuries marched on, is simply not

> substantiated.

> The word "Forest" does not necessarily imply wooded land - it originally

> meant an area officially designated for deer, and might have little or no

> wooded land. This confusion is partly responsible for the misconception

> that Britain was much more heavily wooded in the middle ages than it

> is now.

> The supposed disappearance of the woodlands of Britain has been accounted

> for by a number of scenarios which have been contradicted by the evidence.

> The British navy is supposed to have taken most of the large oaks of

> England to build ships to fight everyone from the Spanish to Napoleon, and

> yet neither navy or merchant shipbuilders ever experienced any real

> shortage in supply. The tanneries of the period were using even more bark

> than the shipbuilders were using timber, and they weren't running out of

> trees either. Another scenario has it that various fuel-intensive

> industries such as ironworking used up all the trees in their areas and

> finally had to turn to coke instead. Like the previous idea, this ignores

> the regenerative nature of the British woodland, and in fact, the

> industrial areas actually seem to have added some woodland, as industry

> wisely provided for its own fuel needs in the traditional way. The switch

> to coke came when it became cheaper than wood because of labor costs, not

> because of lack of supply.

> Most of the land was not left to grow wild, but was intensively managed

> throughout the SCA's time period. For instance, the nature of the

> particular trees that grow in Britain (and many other parts of Europe) has

> led to a particular sort of woodland management, which has been practiced

> since the Bronze Age. Some types of trees die when they are cut down, but

> others do not, and send up instead new shoots or suckers which can grow to

> tree size themselves. The tree can actually be rejuvenated by this

> cutting, and live longer than an uncut tree. Most of the trees which grow

> in Britain are the sort that regrow after cutting, and the people there

> have made the most of this property. The majority of woodlands in our

> period were managed by coppicing. This meant that most of the trees were

> cut to the ground, area by area on a scheduled rotation, allowed to grow

> back for a certain number of years (usually 5-12) and then cut again.

> Individual trees can be cut repeatedly, for hundreds of years, so that the

> woodland provides a self-sustaining harvest of wood, pretty much

> indefinitely, much as a grassy field can be cut for hay year after year

> without replanting. The shoots that regrow are vigorous, tall, and

> straight, since they are fed by an already established root system. Where

> grazing was allowed , and on the edges of the woodland, the trees were cut

> off higher up than the local wildlife could browse, and this is called

> pollarding (which some do now on our street trees just for the

> "decorative" effect). Coppicing and pollarding produced large quantities,

> reliably, of wood of a size convenient for felling and hauling out of the

> woods to where it was needed. Enormous amounts were needed for firewood,

> for heat, cooking and industry. In addition, most of the wooden products,

> from houses down to baskets and wattle fences, were designed to use the

> small logs, poles and withies that came from different ages of regrowth.

> We tend to think in terms of cutting big trees and then sawing them into

> smaller pieces to suit our needs - they probably would have considered

> this an enormous waste of time and effort. It made much more sense to just

> let the trees grow to the size of the pieces you wanted and cut them then,

> when minimal shaping would be needed. It is also true that some larger

> trees were needed for really large projects. While the small growth was

> spoken of as "wood", these single trees allowed to grow large were

> referred to as "timber", and the two were always differentiated. Through

> most of our time period, timber trees were grown scattered in amongst the

> coppiced trees more often than they were grown in areas by themselves.

> So to sum up, what this means is that my whole mental image of the

> medieval landscape as covered in deep dark forests full of huge gnarled

> trees relieved only by scattered hard-won fields, has now been blown away.

> I have had to replace it with a much more domesticated one of well-defined

> (if irregular) fields and pastures bounded by banks, ditches and thick

> hedges studded with large oaks and elms, wide areas of managed heath and

> marsh, and woodlands with scattered tall trees among recently cut stumps,

> brushy new undergrowth, and groves of slim-trunked regrown trees awaiting

> their turn to be cut. Robin Hood, who used to stand triumphantly in the

> thick branches of a mighty oak tree, seems now to be more likely skulking

> through the brush, and I can't help but picture him vainly trying to hide

> in the nest of branches at the top of a knobby old pollard!

> For another excellent look at the relationship between the people and the

> land they live with, I also recommend _Rural England: An Illustrated

> History of the Landscape_ edited by Joan Thirsk (Oxford University Press,

> 2000) ISBN 0-19-860619-2 (paperback) (also available from David Brown /

> Oxford). The main idea I took away from this book was how deeply tied the

> people were to the nature of the area in which they lived. It influenced

> how you built your house, and what of, what you burned for fuel, which

> determined how you cooked and how you kept warm, what animals and crops

> you could raise, how (and whether) you traveled, what you could produce

> that other areas couldn't, and what you had to trade to get. Humans are

> highly adaptable, and it fascinates me to see how people have made the

> most of the unique resources of each particular area.

> All of these books have given me a new feeling for how deeply important it

> is to learn about the nature of the particular place you call home, if you

> want to really understand and feel what your persona would have lived.

> Well, that's more than you really asked for, but as you can tell, the

> subject has really grabbed me. I think the relation to the land is

> something we tend to overlook in the SCA, since our modern society is

> doing its best to make differences between areas, time of year, etc.

> irrelevant, even though they have been the most important things in life

> for most of human existance.

> Morwyn / Linda

Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 14:48:55 -0700

From: "Laura C. Minnick" <lcm at jeffnet.org>

Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Rotten meat and spices...

To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

> --- "Laura C. Minnick" <lcm at jeffnet.org> wrote:

>> If you are so poor as to be forced to eat rotting meat

>> (and no, I don't buy that- people that poor seldom had meat in their

>> diets) you aren't going to spend what little you have on spices.

>> 'Lainie

> I don't buy that either, but on the other hand,

> I don't entirely buy the "the poor seldom had

> meat" way of thinking either. Yes, probably the

> poor in the cities seldom had meat, but the poor

> in the country had as much meat as they could

> catch.

That of course is much dependent on where and when. Was reading recently

about the great famine in the early 14th century, and animal life fared

little better than humans, at least in England. Most of what we know about

forest laws are English, so here's a bit of Anglo-centric stuff...

It should be remembered that many of these were _managed_ forests, not the

wild 'woods' that we played in as kids (at least I did- back in the days

when it was ok to play cowboys and Indians). The boundaries of the Forest

may acually embrace cultivated land, even homesteads and small townships.

(This can be a royal pain, as we will see shortly.) The _Dialogus de

Scaccario_ says that the forests are "the privy places of kings and their

great delight. Thither they go for hunting, and having laid aside their

cares, to enjoy a little quiet. There, away from the continuous business

and incessant turmoil of the court, they may for a little time breathe in

the gracious freedom of nature. And that is why those who despoil it are

subject to the royal censure alone... The king's Forest is a safe abode for

wild animals, not of every sort, but of the sort that dwell in woodland,

and not everywhere but in places suitable for the purpose... in the wooded

counties, where wild beasts have their lairs and plentiful feeding

grounds."

> Depending on what they were hunting or

> fishing, some animals, like rabbits, were legal

> for commoners to hunt, and others, like deer

> or boar, were restricted.

In the king's Forest, the beasts of the chase- red deer, fallow deer, roe,

wild boar- could only be taken by the king or by someone who had an express

warrant from the king. As to other animals, even if the land was part of a

homestead or village, if the land fell within the Forest, the tenants were

restricted to hares and coneys, foxes, wolves, badgers, etc- *AND* only if

they had a royal license.

The Forest was a wildlife refuge of sorts, but it must be remembered that

the wildlife was regularly hunted for the purpose of supplying the king's

table. Laws protecting the habitat of the game are pretty specific, and

downright annoying for someone, for instance, who lived in a village that

was within the boundaries of the king's Forest. Gathering firewood and

cutting timber were tightly regulated (ever wonder why the 'woodcutter' in

the fairy tales was always so poor? This is why), clearing portions of the

woods to increase cultivated area was limited. Pigs could be grazed in the

Forest- *if* they were supervised and the owner had paid the fee. And if

the deer were fawning- forget it. (Pigs will eat about anything, including

baby Bambi.) Taking your cart offroad, carrying bow and arrows, letting

your dogs off leash, were all forbidden (much like getting caught in the

woods carrying a rifle the weekend before hunting season opens. Just

sighting it in? Ja, sure.)

> But, then they may still have hunted them otherwise why is

> were there laws against poaching?

Poaching is illegal today, but I don't know of anyone who ignores the laws

to supply a regular portion of their diet.

There's a reason why the idea of the Sheriff of Nottingham chasing Robin

Hood sticks so well in the imagination. Because that's... what sheriffs

did. Forest laws had exceptionally harsh punishments too. (Oddly enough,

the privilege of clergy did not apply to those offending under Forest

laws.) These varied from reign to reign. Henry II was noted as being

considerably more lenient than his grandfather, Henry I, while John was

known for his harshness.

Personally, I think our preoccupation with meat is in part due to our own

habits of meat consumption (in general- quite a bit) and for us in

particular, the fact that the extant menus and recipes are basically those

of the upper classes, which ate more meat. If Matilda, John the Farmer's

wife had written down her recipes and menus, we might see a very different

picture.

'Lainie

Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 16:05:50 -0700 (PDT)

From: Huette von Ahrens <ahrenshav at yahoo.com>

Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Rotten meat and spices...

To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

In researching the poaching idea, I ran across

this book, which I have just ordered:

Manning, Roger B. (Roger Burrow)

Hunters and poachers : a social and cultural

history of unlawful hunting in England, 1485-1640

/ Roger B. Manning. Oxford [England] : Clarendon

Press ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1993.

xi, 255 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.

ISBN: 0198203241 (acid-free paper)

It sounds like an interesting read.

Huette

From: "hippo" <hippo at south-sudan.net>

Newsgroups: soc.history.medieval,soc.history.ancient

Subject: Re: Clearing Forests

Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 12:51:08 -0400

> I'm trying to understand how one clears a forest back then. Both axes

> and forest fires leave stumps. How do you clear the stumps? I know

> lots of ways of doing it today, but I'm mystified how the ancients

> cleared forests well enough to plow without either dynomite or a

> mechanical grinder.

> Any guess how long it took to clear well forested land?

In the earliest times trees were girded years in advance with a stone axe.

This can be done very close to ground level. The tree dies, falls over, is

burnt in place, and planting done in the ash using a pointed wooden stick or

later hoe, not a plow. The ox drawn ard was developed later. It was only

used to loosen the soil, not turn it like the later heavy plow. The ard

could only be used on lighter soils. The stump rots naturally or can be

drilled out and slow-burnt. It was no impediment to planting until the

advent of the ard. -the Troll

From: Paul J Gans <gans at panix.com>

Newsgroups: soc.history.medieval,soc.history.ancient

Subject: Re: Clearing Forests

Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 19:50:47 +0000 (UTC)

Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC

In soc.history.medieval hippo <hippo at south-sudan.net> wrote:

>> I'm trying to understand how one clears a forest back then. Both axes

>> and forest fires leave stumps. How do you clear the stumps? I know

>> lots of ways of doing it today, but I'm mystified how the ancients

>> cleared forests well enough to plow without either dynomite or a

>> mechanical grinder.

>> Any guess how long it took to clear well forested land?

>In the earliest times trees were girded years in advance with a stone axe.

>This can be done very close to ground level. The tree dies, falls over, is

>burnt in place, and planting done in the ash using a pointed wooden stick or

>later hoe, not a plow. The ox drawn ard was developed later. It was only

>used to loosen the soil, not turn it like the later heavy plow. The ard

>could only be used on lighter soils. The stump rots naturally or can be

>drilled out and slow-burnt. It was no impediment to planting until the

>advent of the ard. -the Troll

I think you need to date that. What you describe is certainly

pre-medieval.

---- Paul J. Gans

From: "John Kane" <jrkrideau at gmail.com>

Newsgroups: soc.history.medieval,soc.history.ancient

Subject: Re: Clearing Forests

Date: 18 Sep 2006 09:37:57 -0700

kitplane01 at gmail.com wrote:

> I'm trying to understand how one clears a forest back then. Both axes

> and forest fires leave stumps. How do you clear the stumps? I know

> lots of ways of doing it today, but I'm mystified how the ancients

> cleared forests well enough to plow without either dynomite or a

> mechanical grinder.

> Any guess how long it took to clear well forested land?

> -Much Thanks

> -Charles Talleyrand

Matt Givver's desciption is not all that far off how Ontario settlers

did it in the late 18th and early 19th C. Something I read about

clearing land then also stood out: You don't have to get rid of the

stumps to farm althought it is easier.

If you were working with a light plow, or even more likely some kind of

digging stick or shovel you could work up a fair amount of ground

between and among the stumps and then hand seed. Since you were

harvesting with a sickle (or at best a scythe?) you simply worked

around the stumps for the first two -5 years as they rotted or you

burned them out as time permitted..

John Kane, Kingston ON Canada

From: Matt Giwer <jull43 at tampabay.REMover.rr.com>

Newsgroups: soc.history.medieval,soc.history.ancient

Subject: Re: Clearing Forests

Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 09:47:13 GMT

kitplane01 at gmail.com wrote:

> I'm trying to understand how one clears a forest back then. Both axes

> and forest fires leave stumps. How do you clear the stumps? I know

> lots of ways of doing it today, but I'm mystified how the ancients

> cleared forests well enough to plow without either dynomite or a

> mechanical grinder.

> Any guess how long it took to clear well forested land?

First logging and then fire.

Start fires on the stumps and they burn out hollow. And then they rot. Without the rest of the tree the roots send shitloads of sap into the old stump to help the rotting.

And you keep fires going to control new growth. And you have patience and your sons will have the hunk of forest you burned in your youth.

And that is just the lazy man's way to do it.

The settlers in America's New England did not wait for decay to do its job but did give it a year or three to work. Then they used horses and ropes and axes to remove the stumps from the ground. And then they used the stones to build fences. In pre-horsecollar Europe there were oxen better suited for the task so expect them to have been used rather than the opening generational method.

It is a shitload of work no questions asked. But if you wanted to eat what else were you going to do?

Now lets take a more practical case.

A place gets started as a modest patch for vegetables around the house. That house needs firewood. They cut down trees to get it. They burn out the stump and eventually use oxen to remove it. They can grow more vegetables. They always need firewood so the trees keep being cut and the productive land increases. Eventually they can grow grain.

With no special effort, just needing firewood, farmland increases. Any other use for wood like expanding the house, fences, barns, just makes the farmland increase faster. Sell firewood to the townsfolk and it is faster.

Anothing thing: You might be thinking of the stumps Hollywood brings out for the Pilgrims movies. If you go to a normal real forest the average trunk is well under a foot for most place in the world. We are not talking redwood forests. We are talking real forests where most trees never reach get close to their size potential and most trees do not have that much size potential or life span. Trees have life spans believe it or not. So a real forest would have only a small percentage of challenging large stumps to removed.