Food and Drink

Today we get food from all round the world, a vast array. Most of the plants we eat, from grain to fruit, have been bred and modified over the years to give high yield and good taste.

Then the food was largely home grown in the fields, but also what they could forage from the countryside. For everyday a porridge of oats, or bere barley, and bread from Emmer or Spelt were important. The morning meal of porridge of one sort or another would make a comforting break from work already undertaken in the field or woods. After that it was time to get all the chores of daily life done, some of them very hard work.

The evening meal would make up for all that. Bread and vegetables from local fields, root vegetables stored over the winter in pits. On high days, roast meat, but more usually a stew thickened with grain, and seasoned with hedgerow herbs. Bread and soft cheese, crab apples which could be stored well into winter, fruits of the brambles, and of the blue berries that the sheep love as well. In a good year they ate well. A bad year would use up their stocks, and force them to barter for more.

Farming took a lot of time and effort. A gelded ox would help with the ploughing, and the plough might be an antler tipped with steel, and fastened to a wooden handle. It was hard work. But a good surplus would stave off hunger if the following year was bad. And an excess gave you something to bargain with at the market.

Already water supplies were getting polluted, mostly by the livestock further up stream. A good spring with drinkable water could be hard to find, so they drank a lot of light ale. This involved boiling water and 'mashing' it with malt then adding yeast. It was much less alcoholic than modern beer, at about 1 to 3 % alcohol, depending on the brew. Hops or other bittering agents may have been used, but we don't know for sure. A brew would probably have to be made every 3 days or so, to give everyone enough to drink, as it would not keep for long.