How does one depict poverty in a farming community?

Absolutely. This.

Towns may end up being built in the 'wrong' place, such as the ghost towns in the American west that were set up to benefit from the coming railroad. They were on the proposed route, but then the route changed and they got bypassed. No point to the town any more, and so they often died. But they didn't just spring up for no reason.

When you look at nearly all the main cities and towns in the world, most of them are on a watercourse of some kind. Along a river, even a creek. Oceans, large lakes, etc are fringed with settlements that do water-travel trade, travel and fishing.

Trade routes are also good locations for settlements. Ditto a central one that services a large, fertile farming community. Supply centres for rural homes, etc. The usefulness of these settings can wane, if circumstances change, including natural events like droughts, flooding, constant erosion, etc. But there was always a reason for them coming into being.

Ensure that your village makes sense as to where it is and how it got to be there.

 

WF Committee Village

Located by the founder near sources of potable, fresh and the clean water and the public health clinic and with an iron ore quarry and safely distance away the healthy people of Squatanddiddlyandasquattinnotintheriver we will hang you for that herded cattle after training high above and in mountain valleys during summertime sunshine carefully descending to barns during rain. Christmas children schooled in the progress school skipped through snow meadows skis aside instructors and the pastor organised his choir greeting a chocolate boat fresh arrived from the Africa twin-town, a fine supply on board of delicious chocolate served steaming warm in the reproduction sheep skulls among chaps from Africa like the brothers in the arms of commerce

 

I would paint an atmosphere of ignorance, and an accepted level of exploitation among poultry farmers. They can't eat the chickens. If they eat the chickens they are evicted by the corporation. Though in times passed sometimes they ate the diseased chickens from the dead store. Daddy defrosted a dead rooster for Christmas supper. It made all the kids ill and they died.

 

It doesn’t sound plausible at all.

1) Why use wells when the river is close by?

2) Why isn’t the village located on the river bank?

3) Why build a farming village where you cannot farm?

Doesn’t make any sense.

Settlements appear for a reason. If you come up with a reason; maybe an old prospectors village whee the resources are now sparse but enough to keep the residents clinging onto existence. People don’t start farming communities where they cannot farm.

Either way it seems that supplies would need to be brought in at some time of the year so I’d imagine the community would focus on such occurrences in order to both sustain themselves and hear the latest news/rumours.

If you can answer the question ‘Why the hell are they there in the first place?’, I reckon the rest will follow quickly enough - whatever they lack will determine how they live. No smith means they’d have to rely more on brute strength when things break. Lack of animals to hunt would mean less protein and hides, less furl would mean cold and greater emphasis or furs etc.,.

To repeat WHY THERE? No one would stay without good reason. Desperation would cause people to migrate not sit and nearly starve to death each year. What are they hoping for?

 

You've only mentioned the setting of a poverty stricken area. Poverty has a lot of social side-effects as well. A couple of the most obvious are:

Social unrest - Germans didn't follow Hitler because they were evil, war reparations and industrial stagnation crippled the economy so it cost a wheelbarrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread. The nazis offered financial stability.
Xenophobia - You're hard working, honest folks, how could you still be broke? Because the mexicans are taking all your jobs, or the jews are hording all the money...
Drug use - Life sucks, alcohol and drugs offer a temporary escape, often feeding a self-sustaining loop of outflowing cash.
Religious extremism - We life in the horrible end times, but worship our god, and you'll be granted access to paradise.
Crime - Farming loan crippling you? Meth is lucrative. An obvious solution to your problems.

 

@badgerjelly Here is my take based on my life on a dirt farm and books like, The Grapes of Wrath.

1) Wells were used for clean water even next to a river where you could hit water in as little as fifty feet.
2) As jannert mentioned towns (villages) were built along trade lines, which could include a river.
3) In Oklahoma, they farmed the soil out. It was the source for most of the produce until (through their greed) they turned it into a dust bowl. So it was still a farm but nothing grew.

 

But that’s so frustrating, if we in an attempt to discuss poverty in agricultural communities, simply rehash a depiction from the 1930s.

It is ‘witless’ in the proper sense of the word.

 

Finland is not part of Scandinavia. But there is a bunch of similarities. And I know some things about poor life in rough conditions, cold climate and so on.

- Threat of starvation can't be constant. When fish spawn (is this a right word) you get easily a lot of fish. In the summer berries. The time of starvation is early spring when your storages are empty and you fish does not come to shallow waters yet.
- Can't have dirt floors in cold environment. You have log huts with very solid floors. You have dried moss between logs as insulation. Only sauna or cellar might have dirt floors.
- Threat of raids? This I can't understand at all. Why?
- Iron? Every man must have an axe and a knife to stay alive. You build houses, saunas, sheds, barns, cattle sheds, roundpole fences... with an axe.
- In Scandinavia + Finland (together they are Fennoscandia) + Baltic countries + north-west Russia: sauna.

When a young couple wanted to clear a place for themselves they started by building a sauna. They could live there while building a small house. After that they built a cellar, a shed, a cattle shed if they could have a cow and a horse.

They built those in a form of rough and loose square because of security. (Animals, thieves, fire...)

One way to store food was a pig. You gave all spoiled food to a piglet in late summer, autumn and early winter. And you killed it before Christmas.

Rye + some barley + some oat (for porridge) + potato + swede + turnip + fish + birds (heathbird, wood grouse, duck...)

When you did not have enough rye, you got some pettu and mixed it with those rye flours you had. Pettu is phloem between pine bark and wood. You dried it. It ripped your guts so that shitted blood but it kept you alive.

When you did not have even that, you ate beard moss. (In Finland we have a word luppoaika - a beard moss time. It means time when you don't work. And that meant...)

And when you had enough rye, you baked rye bread with a hole in the middle. And you had kind of poles (orsi) inside your house near roof and you could put those rye breads to those poles and store them by that method.

 

I had a couple more thoughts.

One detail to clean up - the locale being so far from a river. Most villages are near a water source because people need water to live and also a convevient way of getting rid of garbage such as by throwing it into the river and it disappears. They also want trade/commerce from other tribes/peoples for things they can't make or harvest themselves. The two most likely reasons for a village to be far from a water source are either for protection from something like freshwater alligators that feast on the puny humans or the maruading raiders like Vikings that roam all over seeking women to rape and men to fight (slaughter?). The other reason is that there is something more valuable than water near the village like a gold mine.

So...perhaps your village is on top of a mountain for protection from predators and so that the inhabitants can mine for gold, diamonds or whatever other precious stones/gems are in the area.

You mentioned your character was a magican with the ability to cause plants to grow and to build infrastructure? Say he develops a very complex mining tunnel(s) with some branches dedicated to growing edible plants, a water source, housing for the villagers. There you go - he's got a base of operations with a population to serve as a workforce. A mine with one main entrance and if people are smart, a couple of smaller emergency exits is going to be easily defended by the workforce, especially if it is also supplemented with traps.

The weakness is going to be getting fresh meat and taking whatever people are mining to market. If the village is really isolated on top of a mountain without a ready (on the surface) water source, there will not be many animals around for the hunters to hunt or berries, edible plants for people to gather. In terms of the mining goods, if person X shows up in a trade centre with a handful of diamonds, it's bound to attract unwelcome attention from thieves and people who want to seize control of the resource for their own village/country/king/etc.

Play around with everything that's been said and see what happens. I'd love to read your story when you (if you?) post it.

 

If you had lumber and an axe, a grindstone and a knife you could have a huge variety of tools.

And when kids moved in forests they were told to injure young trees. So you could get funny shape branches which you could use for many purposes.

They got iron from lakes. (Bog iron.) Not much, but enough. It was not easy, but nothing was. And there was a smith in every village. And many men could forge. (Casting is not as easy.)

Again... Why conflicts? People had enough conflicts with nature and being poor. They did not have time or energy to useless conflicts with their neighbours. They helped their neighbours and their neighbours helped them. That way they could survive.

Cowsheds were two stores. Cow(s), horse and so on were down. Hay was in upper store. (Navetan ylisillä.)

You must get hay up so that it dries and stays dry. Otherwise you loose it. And then you loose your cow and horse.

Cows did not milk in winter time. They did not get enough hay for that.

No tech or effort?

You don't survive in rough conditions without tech and effort. This...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerimäki_Church

...was built in poor and distant area in Finland between 1844 and 1847. Only three years, 3 000 seats and total capacity of 5 00o people.

No tech or effort? How on earth can youu think that could be possible?

Six days a week everyone uses their working clothes. They go to sauna in saturday, wash their working clothes, let them dry (possible in sauna at winter time) and put their best clothes on on sunday.

Home made linen and wool, leather, even birch bark...

That is bigger problem in warm weather.

If some house got bedbugs before the time of water pipes, they opened their doors, windows, closets, drawers... when it was -25°C or colder. After few days there were no alive bedbugs.

Louse? We even have a word täisauna. (Louse sauna.) It means you warm your sauna enough and stay there until parasites are dead.

Nothing like that.

All human and animal urine and feces goes to fields. It is too valuable to be wasted. And ash goes to your garden. That's the way you can keep food coming from poor soil.

Near. Farmer pulls, wife steers. You need more power and wight in pulling.

Rivers are highways. If there is a river nearby, the risk of inbreeding is about the same as in today's New York.

Scandinavian winter kills a lot of them. And every rural house has a cat. Rat & mice populations stay low in those conditions.

Before we had much schools in Finland, we had things called kiertokoulu. (Touring school.) And also confirmations schools. If you wanted to get married, you had to pass a confirmation school. That meant you could read. You could not read, you could not breed.

Sex ia a powerful drive.

 

Ah shiss, I tried 3x to delete very eccentric posts...in draft...they keep on returning to screen

...sorry about that...

 

Please note that I said this is icy, cold mountains, of tech level medieval.

That means that, no, there won't be any meth production.

 

Exactly. Success always breeds success

 

Take a look at these videos for some ideas? It's modern and Canadian but who knows, there might be a gem of an idea in there somewhere.

https://www.cbc.ca/stillstanding/m/episodes/

 

Some thoughts/ideas:

• There are always social and wealth hierarchies. The poorest haven't got enough wealth to effectively work their own land (which requires tools, power, seeds) and survive by trading their labour (and their children's labour) to wealthier families for food, etc. The next group up scrapes by on their own land until tough times arrive (a bad harvest, terrible winter, raid, injury/death of husband, murrain wipes out their herd, etc.) and then they starve/freeze/sell their children/lose their land/go into debt/etc. The top category lives well by local standards. Relative poverty matters.

• There is strong social pressure to conform in everything – food/drink, dress, housing, sex/courtship/marriage, ceremonies, farming methods, etc. Survival requires fitting in, working together. People are held responsible for the actions of their kin. Outsiders are viewed with suspicion.

• Magic is viewed with suspicion, even if some magic-users are tolerated or even given high status. Every sort of perceived ill fortune is blamed on evil magic, and people living in poverty have a lot of ill fortune. Also, "common knowledge" about magic is probably mostly wrong.

• They frequently sacrifice long-term wealth/productive capacity for short-term survival – e.g., you might have wanted to keep last year's calf so you would have two cows instead of one, but instead you have to sell the calf to buy food to survive the winter/pay off extorters/meet your social obligations, etc. It's very hard to get ahead, and very easy to get behind.

• Being fat is prestigious, because you can only be fat if you have lots of extra food. Most people eat just enough - by spring, maybe not quite enough. The only time you really eat your fill is feast days.

• Kitchen implements & tableware are basic. You might have your own spoon, but be eating from a communal bowl and drinking from a communal cup.

• Salt is expensive – it's difficult to afford enough to salt meat, make butter/cheese, or pickle. Winter food is very basic.

• Families have few belongings. Beds & bedding are expensive – most families only have one. There isn't much privacy.

• No shoes (or shoes only worn for public events, eg 'church', festivals). People go barefoot (and maybe barelegged) most of the time. Reducing wear on clothes and keeping them mended/patched/darned is important – new clothes are a major outlay. Children's clothes are likely to be cut down from adult castoffs. If you don't have a good cloak, it's difficult to go outside in winter. Children might be kept in because they haven't clothes to keep warm.

• Most people own very little they can't fix. Most craft work is done during the winter when labour isn't needed for food production. Your doctor/midwife is not going to be kept busy by 100-200 people who can't afford to pay much for her services – most of her time is probably spent on subsistence chores too (tending the garden, milking the cow, cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc.)

• Agriculture is primitive – crops are few and yields are poor. Gathering is a major source of food, fodder, medicines, building & thatching material, basketry materials, etc. You don't grow it if you can gather it. Hunting provides a significant amount of their protein, but its hit-or-miss.

• Owning any livestock is a mark of wealth, because feeding them thru winter is a challenge. The rest of the year they're expected to feed themselves off the pastures & wastes. The herdsmen do their best, but sickness/starvation/predation take their toll.

• I agree that wherever they are, they're there for a reason. Did they get pushed out of their former nice settlement on the river by a more powerful group, and are now scratching for a living on a lousy mountainside? Were the raids so bad they retreated away from the trade & transportation routes? Do they need wells because they rebuilt their village with fortifications on a rocky outcrop to defend against raiders? Were they settled to take advantage of some resource or route that is no longer available/wanted?

• Somehow this village is linked to a larger network. Do they pay taxes/dues/fees/etc. to a noble or govt? On top of that there could be barter, gifting, brideprice/dowry, raiding, etc. and could be small & frequent or occasional & large. Either way, they probably need to 'import' salt, metals, and luxury goods (e.g. jewelry – for the wealthiest villagers only, to demonstrate their high status). What do they 'export' either as a tax of one kind or another, or in trade? Poverty might be reflected in small quantities exchanged, some people being unable to participate in these exchanges (eg no bride because you can't pay), or the poorest folks being used to acquire these trade materials (maybe even via enslavement).

 

This is extremely useful. Thank you. For that matter, they were driven out by force. I'm not too sure for the river part. Maybe have the nearby place be rapids, preventing trade, and so rock and the river bed must be reshaped?

 

You don't need to be a major land owner or a baron to use hired, and landless, workers to help out on your farm. Nor would you need to employ many of them. I find it to be perfectly possible for a farmer with a wife, and two or three children to have one or two guys/girls employed to help with work on the farm.

 

I'm not sure if this applies but in my country, some farmers don't get the amount of pay they deserve in their crops. Some also work for rich families so they constantly have to think about the lands they're working on. I've also heard stories where someone has to move in the city just to earn more.

By the way, does this also apply to fish farms? Maybe your setting could include having them to deal with weather or ship accidents. Weather is both a good thing and a bad thing here. Dealing with storm sucks esp. if you live in an area that is prone to flooding.

In my former work, my company held a community service for a town near the mountains. In there, we had to walk a long rocky road just to get to our destination. (a river where a bridge is being built) Most of us, including my boss, got sprains so we have to take short breaks. Every time a local passed us by, we always ask how far until we get back to town. They always reply, "About half an hour." But to us, it was way longer. I never imagined someone would take a long time to get from point A to point B. (only a handful of the locals have a means of transportation) So yeah, I believe roads and bridges are a concern in poverty.

^ I agree. That happens a lot here.