Arable and pastoral farming
Fountains needed to acquire or have access to vast tracts of lands,
to sustain arable and pastoral farming and thereby support the
self-sufficiency of the house. This land was primarily worked
by the lay-brothers, whose activities were co-ordinated from
agricultural centres known as granges.
[Read more about Fountains and the grange system of farming]
The
Fountains community cultivated a variety of crops, primarily, wheat,
oats, rye and barley. Although the Cistercians were and
are essentially associated with sheep-farming, Fountains, like
other Cistercian communities, kept a wide range of livestock, including
oxen, cattle, goats, pigs and horses - brood mares and foals, carthorses,
packhorses and saddlehorses. Dairy farming was particularly important
on Fountains’ estates in Nidderdale and became increasingly
so from the mid-fourteenth century, when less energy was channelled
into wool production and more into dairy farming.(71) Indeed,
by the time of the Dissolution there was a 2:1 ratio of cattle
to
sheep
at Nidderdale, a sizeable difference to the 5:1 ratio in the thirteenth
century.(72) Fountains had a number
of vaccaries [cattle farms] in Nidderdale, which would have supplied
the monastery with fresh
dairy produce. Bewerley grange was central to dairy farming in
the region; other important vaccaries were at Bouthwaite, Bramley
Grange and Dacre.(73)
Pig fodder
The Cistercians were clearly thrifty, and might feed their pigs dregs
of malt from the brewhouse, bran from the bakehouse or waste from the
kitchen. Fountains’ pigs at Morker grange were fed grey pease.
[Williams, Cistercians in the Early
Middle Ages, p. 354; Memorials of Fountains
III, pp. xxvii, 166.]