Some of the strips which belonged to the local lord, were farmed for him by the peasants under their feudal obligations. Strip-farming was central to the life of a medieval rural community. It involved an intrinsic element of fairness, for each peasant's strips were widely spread over the entire manor; every family would have the benefit of good land in some areas, while accepting a poor yield elsewhere. The strips also enforced an element of practical village democracy. The system only worked if everyone sowed the same crop on their strip of each open field. What to sow and when to harvest it were communal decisions. The field could not be fenced, or the cattle let into it, until each peasant had reaped his own harvest. When the harvest was in the peasant would compulsorily pay their lord to grind the corn in his mill.