The hunger gap 150 years ago: peasants ate grass, leaves and bark

Prof. Andrzej Chwalba describes the hardest period in the life of the old countryside — the hunger gap, the time between exhausted stores and new harvests. In the second half of the 19th century, Polish peasants turned to grass, leaves and tree bark to survive. Reymont's farmer Caban in "The Peasants" put it plainly: "from sowing to harvest, not everyone will live."