Hundreds of years ago medieval peasants shared common fields around their villages. In those fields they grew their crops for their own food and to pay tribute to their lords. Each row in the field was called as furh (now modern “furrow”). The length of a furh was about 1/8 of the old Roman mile (about 5000 feet). So a furlong is about 1/8 of a Roman mile, because it is the length of a furh.
A successful furh provided a family with food and rent for a year. How many furhs each villager tended may have varied but they were important measurements in medieval society.
We wanted to pace ourselves with a small shared blog. We thought about how we would measure success on that blog and finally thought it would be a nice pun to call it a “furlong”, a successful row in a productive common field.
It could be that the title is too esoteric but we were also faced with the fact that all the good titles were taken. So we took Furlong. We trust that you will find this site both entertaining and informative.