User avatar
Gary350
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 7392
Joined: Mon Mar 23, 2009 1:59 pm
Location: TN. 50 years of gardening experience.

HOW did people manage to live off the land 500 years ago.

I try to grow enough of certain foods to have in the pantry for a whole year but there are lots of things we can not grow. People that lived 500 years ago must have had a very limited number of foods, corn, beans, wheat, meat. Indians made corn meal by grinding it by hand with rocks. No baking powder corn meal pancake or what every they cooked must have been like eating a piece of dry plaster. No vegetables in winter I guess they could boil corn, beans, wheat, eat it cooked like that every day for 9 months every year. If they had cows & chickens they could have milk and eggs. No potato chips, no snack food, no salt, no pepper, no sugar, no ice cream, no pie, no cookies, no coffee, no tea. I bet most of every day was spend preparing food. Tomorrow when you wake up try to make breakfast without a stove, no refrigerator or anything in the refrigerator, nothing factory made. Only thing we have in the house that is not processed food is dry rice and dry beans plus what we grew in the garden but garden things to not count I don't think mason jars and pressure cookers were invented yet 500 years ago. If I put dry rice & dry beans in water before bed maybe they be soft enough to eat raw for breakfast tomorrow morning. What about lunch and dinner, I guess I need a trap or make a bow and arrow to kill a squirrel or rabbit for dinner. I don't like squirrel or rabbit no wander people were not over weight 500 years ago. The more I try to grow a year supply of food the more I realize how hard life was 500 years ago. A large amount of each crop needs to be saved for seeds to have another crop next year. I bet 90% of every day was devoted to catching food and cooking food and growing food in summer. I read online about 200 years ago tomatoes were believed to be poison because they are red color. No wonder man invented machines to make life easier.

gumbo2176
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 3065
Joined: Mon Jul 19, 2010 2:01 am
Location: New Orleans

And yet they survived. You forgot pesticides and their effect in keeping pests at bay as opposed to growing everything organically and losing a good bit of their crop to pests, diseases, fungal issues, etc.

No doubt most of civilization did not have the BMI numbers of todays society due to the stress and difficulty in their daily lives just to exist from day to day.

As far as salt, one just had to live near a source of saltwater to have all they needed, but yes, most of civilization didn't have that access.

Also, as far as living on rabbit and squirrel, you'd learn to like it if that is all you had to eat-------what would be the alternative. You'd be surprised by what you'd put in your mouth to eat if hungry enough.

I've been following the TV show "Alone" since it first aired and some of those contestants have eaten slugs, mice, tea made from pine needles, crustaceans, mussels, snakes, etc. and were damn happy to eat them just to get a few calories and some protein in their systems.

The will to survive trumps what you'd not like to eat when push comes to shove.

SQWIB
Greener Thumb
Posts: 970
Joined: Tue Feb 16, 2016 9:21 am
Location: Zone 7A - Philadelphia, PA

This goes back before your question of 500 years ago but thought it was interesting.
I guess they were hunters and gatherers before agriculture, interesting read from Wiki below

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-ga ... l_evidence

Agriculture started around 12,000 years ago and I would guess most foods may have been preserved.
Lacto Fermentation goes back 10,200–8800 BC.

SQWIB
Greener Thumb
Posts: 970
Joined: Tue Feb 16, 2016 9:21 am
Location: Zone 7A - Philadelphia, PA

12,000 BC: Sun Drying
500 BC: Jam
1400 AD: Curing
1784 AD: Refrigeration
1809 AD: Canning
1871 AD: Pasteurization
1940 AD: Dehydration
1945 AD: Vacuum Packaging
1905 AD: Irradiation
2000+ AD: Chemical Preservatives

SQWIB
Greener Thumb
Posts: 970
Joined: Tue Feb 16, 2016 9:21 am
Location: Zone 7A - Philadelphia, PA

Gary I do know that when I was a young'n that if I was out all day during the summer, I would eat crabapples, black berries, raspberries, cherries, peaches, pears, plums etc... food was abundant in the summer months in my urban neighborhood. It seemed like everyone had a fruit tree. We would walk the railroad tracks and pick berries to munch on. A veggie or two were sometimes "borrowed" when we were out all night. Back then it seemed like the world shut down at midnight, No Taco Bell or Wawa (7 eleven in my day). Plus when I was that young I didn't have money anyway and I didn't need it.
My mom always wondered why I wasn't hungry at dinner, lol.

gumbo2176
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 3065
Joined: Mon Jul 19, 2010 2:01 am
Location: New Orleans

SQWIB wrote:Gary I do know that when I was a young'n that if I was out all day during the summer, I would eat crabapples, black berries, raspberries, cherries, peaches, pears, plums etc... food was abundant in the summer months in my urban neighborhood. It seemed like everyone had a fruit tree. We would walk the railroad tracks and pick berries to munch on. A veggie or two were sometimes "borrowed" when we were out all night. Back then it seemed like the world shut down at midnight, No Taco Bell or Wawa (7 eleven in my day). Plus when I was that young I didn't have money anyway and I didn't need it.
My mom always wondered why I wasn't hungry at dinner, lol.

Similar experience for me as a kid. Never home during the day in the summer months, unlike kids of today who frown on heading outside because "It's hot and I want to play games on the computer in the A/C" mentality. Many of those days were spent fishing along the Mississippi River for catfish, drum and the occasional striped bass to bring home to eat.

Also like you, just about every other house had some sort of fruit tree in their yards. The guy next door had figs, Japanese Plums, cooking pears and persimmons in his big yard. Finding blackberries was as easy as finding an overgrown fence line or set of railroad tracks and mulberry trees were growing close to canals and other waterways in my area.

I can easily recall stores shutting down for the night and hardly any 24 hr. places to get something to eat like diners or fast food joints-----just like the TV that had all 3 channels go off the air at midnight...….If you wanted to stare at it past midnight, all you'd see until around 5:30 the following morning was a test pattern.

User avatar
Gary350
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 7392
Joined: Mon Mar 23, 2009 1:59 pm
Location: TN. 50 years of gardening experience.

SQWIB wrote:Gary I do know that when I was a young'n that if I was out all day during the summer, I would eat crabapples, black berries, raspberries, cherries, peaches, pears, plums etc... food was abundant in the summer months in my urban neighborhood. It seemed like everyone had a fruit tree. We would walk the railroad tracks and pick berries to munch on. A veggie or two were sometimes "borrowed" when we were out all night. Back then it seemed like the world shut down at midnight, No Taco Bell or Wawa (7 eleven in my day). Plus when I was that young I didn't have money anyway and I didn't need it.
My mom always wondered why I wasn't hungry at dinner, lol.
When I was a kid soon as I woke up I could hear 100s of birds singing, all our windows were open, no AC and hot weather never felt hot but if it did jump in one of the 3 local ponds or the stream in the forest 1/4 mile across the field. There were blackberries, apples, lots of things to eat but only while they were ripe for 2 weeks every summer. My legs never stopped moving from the time I woke up until I went to sleep at night. Those were the good old days. 500 years ago people had to learn how to survive lots of things were probably dried to eat later. I think people ate lots of meat back then there were more animals than now. My grandmother told me when she was 10 yrs old her family killed a pig every hall when weather was cold enough then put all the meat in the smoke house to freeze for 4 weeks then packed the meat in salt barrels it would be good all summer in hot weather until they killed the next pig. I think the art of saving food with no refrigerator and not canning in jars has been lost.

imafan26
Mod
Posts: 13947
Joined: Tue Jan 01, 2013 8:32 am
Location: Hawaii, zone 12a 587 ft elev.

I think 500 years ago life was much simpler. around 1500 was the renaissance. A rebirth of literature, art, culture with relative political stability. The rise of the merchant class and the establishment of trade routes like the silk road, exploration by the seafaring nations discovering new continents and opening up many new opportunities for colonization. On the dark side, it also was the start of the slave trade.

Simple people still lived a more agrarian life, so they were used to living off the land and making the most of their resources. There were fewer people then and most did not live in cities and there weren't too many super markets around. They had much bigger pieces of land to work. Most of the farmers were actually serfs of the Lord of the Manor who owned the land. Farmers did not always have a large plot of land to support their family. A farmer in an open field system may only have had 10 acres or less. The plague, climate change and the fall of the Roman empire caused the deaths of about 1/3 of all the people. There wasn't any synthetic fertilizer, so everything had to be organic. Nitrogen was not very good since there weren't enough animals to produce the manure. They also supplemented their diet by hunting, fishing as well as by growing their own food. Agricultural yields of the period were very low compared to today, so it was actually a good thing that the population had declined. In 1500 55%-75% were engaged in agriculture. With the improvements of synthetic fertilizer, farm mechanization, and crop breeding, about 2% of the population produces more food per acre on fewer acres. As the food supply became more stable, people had more time to devote to culture and the arts. and as agriculture methods advanced, more and more people specialized and became tradesman. People no longer had to make their clothing, soap, candles, etc. They still had to preserve foods. Depending on where they lived, they could smoke, dry, pickle, cure (like ham) to preserve their food. Except for semi permafrost areas, there would not have been any refrigeration.



Return to “What Doesn't Fit Elsewhere”