Soil depletion

You, your family, your friends, people from your village, they all depend on the yield of the land. That is why you, as a farmer in prehistoric Drenthe, ensure that your land does not become exhausted, so that it always produces enough to live on, as you have learned from the many generations before you. Your land is divided into small square fields surrounded by earthen walls (nowadays known as Celtic fields). When the production of a field decreases, you let it lie fallow for a few years and use the field next to it instead.  

To prepare a field for sowing, it must be ploughed. A lesson you also learned from your parents, who learned it from their parents, and so on. You use a so-called ‘ard’, the oldest kind of plough we know. A wooden frame with iron ploughshares. You tie it behind an ox or other draught animal to plough the field. 

This is how you take care of yourself, your family, your friends, your village. But what will happen to you if all fields are exhausted?