Farming inefficient? tracking production difficult? Markets weird?

[Firelock]

I enjoyed the first steps in the game. but there seem to be definate areas needing attention.

Supposedly, the game is somewhat relaxing and history minded. The staple of many, if not most, medieval european villages was agriculture. Farming took a long time to set up and you worked year round with no immediate result, but in the end brought home a harvest to last you a year.

In this game, it seems it takes 8 or more families working the farms all year, to produce enough food to last them 2-4 months, tops.

fertility immediately plunges even with crop rotation.

This does not feel right, esp. on easy difficulty.

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if the villagers DO finally bring home the harvest, damned if i know what happens. i may or may not see some wheat popping up in the farmhouse inventory, but often i dont. the windmill is fully staffed, so are the ovens. but it seems the farmers throw away the wheat rather than thrashing it. and I simply can't look at any reliable way to check, if the mill or ovens are doing anything or not. I find it mildly annoying not to be able to track production at all.
Not that the year's worth of field labour yields anything of consequence, anyways...

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I grew up in a small, rural village. Close to 900 years old, judging by the first mention in the documents. The village was small enough to have neither church nor market, well into the 20th C.
every lot was a farm house, where people grew crops and raised animals. the smith, inn and trader etc. all were farmers with a side-business of doing the other bits.

Mostly, they produced what they needed themselves. if they needes something else, it was brought in by the trader etc.
Nobody threw a tantrum over not having a market stall within throwing distance of their house. I reckon, many medieval villages, too, lacked a 'market' (wasnt that a town/city thing as well?) and I increasingly dislike the super short distance anything has to be from anything in games, or people wouldnt be happy.

Feels a bit like super needy 21st c. villagers, rather than medieval folks...