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Originally Posted by Boromir88
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But what do we know of she-orcs? Were there hort-orcs and were they primarily female?~Bethberry
We aren't told much about female orcs, but I think that a good guess would be that they did do a lot of horiculture:
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There must have been orc women. But in stories that seldom see the Orcs except as soldiers of armies in the service of evillords we naturally would not learn much about their lives. Not much was known.~The Munby Letter
Bottomline is we really don't know squat, except that their are orc-women and they do have little orc babies.
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A most fortunate find, The Munby Letter,
Boro--and I must say what a delight it is to find someone else with access to the unpublished Letters which are housed at the Bodleian--but I think we should read passages subsequent to that which you quote. Orc-armies do not march on their stomachs alone and in the following passages we find that Munby has ably delineated several of the professions which she-orcs undertook to ensure that stomachs and indeed all parts of orc armies were well satiated.
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Originally Posted by complete Munby letter passage
No doubt it can be surmised from their labouring in horiculture (sic) that she-orcs became dominant in one particularly needful area of orc health, that of ailments afflicting the degeneration of the mind, an attribute which was never in large measure among orcs to start with. It is said that the old women's remedy, baa'hfoil, a healing herb, was particularly helpful in redressing the more unfortunate symptoms of this condition. Other professions which I have discovered include that of flither-gathering, where orc-lasses would collect winkles and mussels for fish-market days. This was a most fortuitous first occupation, as familiarity with krimp or binding ropes, meant that as she-orcs developed they could move easily into the whip industry. In fact, I came to learn of one prosperous she-orc who with industry was able to attain such a level of income that she left off such service and became a respectable owner of an establishment that can but be marvelled at, a coffeehouse.
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Based on Munby's observations--and these must of course be correlated with other papers in the unpublished Tolkien papers, as hitherto it was not known that Tolkien had any knowledge of Munby's work, I would hazard a guess that it was she-orcs, with their at first homey knowledge of horticulture who developed that huge money-making trade in coffee which, as we all know, Saruman brought into the shire.