The life of a farmer in Utopia seems not very different from that of an English farmer in More’s day, with the exception of the housing of 40 or more people together. The Utopian farmer owned neither the land he farmed nor the house he lived in, but that was true of a good many English farmers as well. It was simply a question of who owned the place you farmed—a rich lord or squire in England, or the state in Utopia. What is really different is that an opportunity was provided to change activities and scenery. This, to More, was intended to equalize labor assignments because farm work was more strenuous than most city occupations.
The only oddity mentioned in working the farm was that of hatching chickens by means of a kind of incubator system. That practice was recommended because the chicks hatched in that fashion regarded the person who fed them as their mother.
