We know from the orientation of many monuments that the equinoxes were crucially observed. An advantage of this is that there would be some indication of when the equinoctal spring and neap tides could be expected. In the UK there is a strong allotment tradition of setting out potatoes at Easter. What use is that ? Yet the growers are inevitably successful. Farmers start lambing on April the 7th, in SW Northumberland, and this date is dependent of when they put the tups with the ewes the autumn before. They stick closely to those dates, despite the obvious global warming and softer winters.

PeterH vomitted:
"Why? That seems a very speculative piece of speculation from a guy who prides himself on his scientific approach."

:o)

To be fair I did sprinkly my text with plenty of maybe's and perhaps's, principally because I wasn't really talking about crops. The main point of my posting was that they didn't necessarily have a calendar that required leap year compensation, which after all was how the tolpic started. The use of crops to illustrate that point was merely a convenient reference back to the previous posting. Making love or killing a goat would have served my purpose just as well. I certainly wasn't atempting to argue that farmers needed, or even heeded a calendar, though I don't rule it out either. There are certainly examples of such superstitions still being practiced. Who knows how far they may date back?

There was an old winemaker in Beuajolais that I knew in the 1980's who would only bottle his wine according the the ancient tradition of the area on a day when "the wind is in the west and the moon is on the wane".

(It might actually have been the east; I don't remember. So don't ask me to bottle any wine for you. I don't mind sampling it though!!)