Ploughing too was a communal affair. The heavy wheeled plough needed for northern soils was expensive, as were horses or oxen to pull it, so a team of horses and a plough worked successive strips of an open field for different peasants. The long narrow shape of the strips reflected the difficulty of turning the team at each end. In addition to the open fields, each village or manor had common land where peasants had the right to graze cattle, collect wood, cut turf and at times catch fish.