Hope you were able to afford a few animals such as some goats, pigs, ducks, cows, and geese. Animals were one of the most important things about farming. Animals helped you with jobs like trampling in the seeds, pulling your plow, eating unwanted grain or wheat and providing you with food and drink. But having these animals may have caused misfortune like if your donkey nibbled on someone else's crops the farmer could threaten to take you to court. Also if your animals were sick you had to do all the work that they did. If your animals were not marked they may have been stolen. Along with misfortunes came care. You had to take great care of your animals. You had to give them food, drink and you had to count your cattle. The herdsman drove the cattle past the overseer who counted them and wrote down the size of each cattle.
The pharaoh got the rich peasants to do the farm work on the rich lands. The peasants worked as either reapers or gleaners. The reapers went through the fields first and they did work such as plowing the field to loosen the dirt for the seeds to go in or they would winnow.Winnowing means to get the debris off of grain.
Egyptians grew some foods such as fig trees and wheat and barley. There were two seasons that affected farming: growing season and harvest season. In the harvest season you may not have been able to harvest the wheat you wanted because your landlord may have made you cut his first.
|
|---|
June is the flooding season, during floods Egyptians would mend tolls or make new ones. People would go fishing for food or extra money. Egyptians would go around in boats because every thing else would be under water.
Growing
SeasonIn the growing season all the crops were planted.
Harvest season is the last season. In this season Egyptians were repairing
their canals for the next flood.
The soil in Egypt was very fertile and easy to dig with your tools. There was only one soil that the Egyptians used. Well they reused the soil. Every year when the flood came the water went over the fields and it saturated the soil. When the floods went down there would be a fresh bunch of mud which was excellent soil to plant seeds in after it had been plowed. Ancient Egyptian farmers used the same soil for every field.
Ancient Egyptians had simple farming tools such as winnowing scoops, mattocks, flint-bladed sickles and plows. The Egyptian plow had a small blade on it that didn't cut very deep which was fine because the soil was fertile.
To water your crops you would need to have a canal connected to a river. To lift the water from the canal you would have a shaduf. A shaduf is a large pole balanced on a crossbeam, a rope and bucket on one end and a heavy counter weight at the other. By pulling the rope it lowered the bucket into the Nile. The counterweight would raise the bucket. The farmer would then carry the bucket to the field and water it.
Farmers would also go hunting for antelope in the desert beyond the hills.
The physical environment is different in other countries then Egypt because of hot weather. Egyptians can grow different things then some other people in other countries can because of the physical environment. Another thing that effects the type of farming in Ancient Egypt where it doesn't always effect in other places is the flood. Because of the flood Egyptians have to stop farming.