VI. Plowing and Sowing, and the Other Labors of Tillage

Having spoken enough upon the tools of the laborer's work, I shall now begin, Tornik, to speak of plowing-and-sowing and the divers other labors. Our village people of Van plows the ground in two ways: if the ground is unbroken fallow, it plows with the gutan;¹ but if the ground was plowed the year before, and the soil is loosened, then it plows with the light plow — the haror — yoking one pair of buffaloes or oxen. Commonly the light plow is used about spring-time, for sowing barley and other things of grain. Sometimes at the end of the month of April, when spring comes early, and sometimes from the middle of May, they set the gutan going; and the first bout they call the milk-plowing, when the soil is soft and plows easily; afterward it hardens by degrees, and great clods come up as you plow. This is why our villagers make haste to yoke the gutan early, that the milk-plowing season pass not by. But on the shore of the sea of Van, the districts of Artske and Arjesh² have a different manner of plowing their ground, and a more fruitful; and that manner of tillage they call dir. They break their ground twice: the first time, at the beginning of spring, they plow deep with the light plow and drag it level, and so it lies until autumn's beginning; and then they begin to plow it over again, once more with a kind of light plow, behind whose share are joined two boards, a cubit and a half in length and a span in breadth, the lower part standing open a finger's breadth along the boards' whole length; so that the seed-man, walking behind this plow, casts the seeds by little handfuls in between the boards, and thence the grains of seed fall in order into the furrow, and the soil of the furrow's two sides, falling in, covers the seed. You should see, when they are sprung, how comely a form they have, rising from the furrow in a straight line; and in a prosperous year they yield twenty and twenty-five for one. The husbandmen of those parts have a gain in the seed besides; for where we sow one measure, they sow half a measure, and the grains of seed they sow spring up whole and entire, whereas of those sown after our fashion a third part is lost — as I shall relate in its place. The fruit of these two districts' tillage is so plenteous that it fills the land of Vaspurakan³ with wheat: in whatever year the harvests of these districts fail, it is a sign that in that year a dearth of bread begins. Writing only this much of the tillage of Arjesh and Artske, I turn back, Tornik, to continue the order of our own tillage.

The milk-plowing tilth does not last long: after some weeks the fields yet to be plowed begin to harden; and then see with what labor the gutan cleaves its furrows, and what great stubborn clods lie lump on lump along the furrows. Our villagers do not yet know the easy remedy of this; but the man of Kharberd⁴ knows it well: the fields grown hard and stiff he first waters, and then plows, so that no clods form at all — for at gutan-time the waters still run plentiful.

How well it were, Tornik, if we too, following this example, set an order, and watered the hardened fields one after another, and so plowed! And do you know, this means is gainful two ways? Not only is the field plowed with ease and gives no clods; the water besides gives strength to the soil and increases its growing power. And more: when a field is sown while the tilth bears great clods, one part of the sown seed, falling beneath those coarse clods, is lost; another part, when the tilth is watered, is swept away by the water; if we reckon besides how many grains the waterman's foot carries down the slope — and then, when there has been no choosing of seed, the lean and withered grains stay unsprouted also. Reckoning all this, of one measure of seed-wheat scarce the half springs up, and half goes to loss.

We must reckon also the watermen's day-wages, which come much higher for such fields — above all when they water the sown tilths without drawing the guide-furrow, as with the fields of the townsfolk round Van and of other villages. In this regard I am very glad, Tornik, that our Archak villagers are well practiced in drawing the guide-furrow; and our fields too, being level, one waterman serves in the place of four: he lets as much as a millstream of water into one field, and is able to govern it.

The clods of the tilth give one other fearful hardship, when, after the sowing, the laborer harrows with the manker.⁵ You have seen the manker: a thick beam of hard and heavy elm, four cubits long, whereon are set in row ten wooden teeth or more; and on it stands the laborer, holding one end of a rope whose other end is bound to the yoke. See — there they are harrowing a sown field: let us go, see it with your own eye, Tornik, that you may believe that among all the labors of tillage the most fearful hardship is the manker. See how, dashed hard against the great clods and grinding over them, the manker now leaps and is flung forward; now the mighty clods, meeting it head-on, bring the manker to a stand — but the conscienceless laborer's whip drives it forward again; and at the last the dumb young buffaloes, with torment past contriving, finish the manker's work.

Ask, Tornik, in what way this insufferable part of the labor may be eased. I said above that one means is this: the fields left over after the milk-plowing, let them first water and then plow. There are yet other devices, which the ingenious European has invented expressly for the breaking of the fields' clods; but what avails it? our poor village people has no means to procure those tools. Better that we think out shifts with our own natural wit.

I say, Tornik: what need is there that our gutan-work drag out so long, whereby the last fields to be plowed harden? Since the new plow works with two yoke, it is very easy then: we yoke two plows, and in twenty days' space we do forty days' work; and so, within the milk-plowing season, we finish the work of our spring tilths.

But those tilths which we plow this year, if we let the winter pass over them — you will see in spring that the snow and the frosts have crumbled those clods and turned them to flour; and at autumn's beginning, when they are once more plowed over light and sown, they come much the more fruitful.

I have heard it — let me tell you, Tornik. They say VIRGIL, in his husbandman's poetry, gave counsel to the Romans; whose lines I have kept in my mind:⁶

Let me expound it to you: that plowed tilth fills the laborer's desire which stands twice against the summer's heat and twice against the winter's frost. For two summers' heat bakes the soil the more, and the double winter besides dissolves the clods of earth and crumbles them.

Will you not say, Tornik: I come from the school, and it is you who talk of Virgil? Eh, Tornik — having sat a few years in school, you fancy you know as much as Papik; I these fifty years am learning by hearing, by seeing, and by trial. I never entered a school as you did; but the things of the world and the world's men are a school to me, and I learn still in this my old age — while you, new come out of school, think you know everything. You must yet eat much bread before you know as much as Papik. Your Papik has memory enough: who knows how many years ago it was, when Hayrik⁷ expounded those lines of Virgil to the pupils, and I, listening, kept them in my mind.

Would that we could till our fields like the old Romans! From Virgil's counsel we learn this, that the soil must be turned the more; for the more the soil is turned over, bottom upmost, the more fruitful it becomes — because then the soil bakes evenly before the sun, and the under-soils do not lie raw; above all under cold climates this order is very needful. The villagers of Van in this regard are very unknowing and untried, while the village people of Kharberd, of Karin, and of Basen⁸ is more knowing and practiced: it never grudges the labor of turning the soil — plowing over its once-plowed field with the light plow twice, three times, even four times. As food, being stirred upon the fire, cooks evenly, so the clever villager has understood by trial that the more the soil is turned and aired before the sun, the more growing strength it gathers; and that quickening strength it gives to the sown seed, whereby the field bears twofold and threefold fruit.

But ask, Tornik, why the villagers of Van plow their field once only, and follow not the practiced example of the men of the other provinces. The causes of it are very plain, Tornik, and I would tell them to you at large; for this lesson is the weightiest part of all my lessons.

You see, Tornik, that our land of Vaspurakan is exceeding wide: it has many pasture-plains, mountains, valleys, glens, and tillable soils; the water likewise is most plentiful. For this our village people is very rich in soil, and every house has great allotments of land, which by the old village law, and agreeably to the crown registers, have been portioned out upon every family.

But come and see, Tornik, how greedy of soil the peasant folk is — I cannot tell it: as this world's rich treasure-lords, though they heap up gold mountain-high, still say not "enough," so the plowing folk, however wide the soils in its hand, says not "it suffices"; it is ever unfilled, and ever in chase of holding more soil. If a house have twenty or thirty fields, mark the villager's reckoning: he says within himself, every year I will sow ten fields, and leave the rest fallow, that they may yield the more. There is the first cause — his greed; and the pity is that our villagers, for the strengthening of a field, know one means only: to leave it fallow. Dull is his mind; he cannot think that for the fattening of the soil there are many other and divers means. Let alone what craft has taught: he does not know even the usefulness of the dung heaped pile on pile before his own door and in the village. And more: our laboring people, with its greed of soil, has also a burning craving — to plow much, sow much, and take much fruit. Poor man, he is no economist, no arithmetician, to know how to reckon that the issue of much plowing-and-sowing is this: after the multiplying of the labor, many charges are added besides. Let me number them for you, Tornik: the labor of plowing, the labor of sowing, the grievous labor of the manker, the labor of watering in autumn and in summer, the labor of reaping, the labor of carrying from field to threshing-floor; and heap upon all these labors the laborers' day-wages. And the wonder of it is that the husbandman master of the house never sets in the account the labor of his own household and children.

If the villager so thinks and so does, it is no marvel, Tornik. But what of the monastic brethren of our Armenian monasteries, who know how to read and write, and have wide soils for the tilling, and have no whit of advantage over the village folk? — with the same wit, and in the same fashion, goes the manner of their agriculture. Whose duty it were, at the least, to carry the works of tillage some little forward, whereby they might have been able to give example to the diocesan villages. Though it must be confessed: there has not been, to this day, one standing monastic council for the monasteries, able to set order and give direction.

Let us leave these things in their place. Have you well understood, Tornik, our villagers' principle? That he ever seeks to spread his plowing-and-sowing wide is very hurtful; and he knows not, and will not, gather it in, so as thereby to be master of tilling his soils well. Instead of working ten fields with grinding toil, is it not better and more profitable to work five fields only, and work them well — so that the fruit of the five fields equal the ten's? whereby both the labor and the charge are greatly measured down.

Do not say, Tornik, that Papik contradicts himself — because, when ten fields' labor is to be heaped upon the five fields, what with double-plowing the fields, what with dunging and other divers labors, the labor then will be the same. No, it is not so: there is a great difference between tillage spread abroad and tillage gathered in — in the manner of the labor, in the lasting of the time, and above all in the easiness of the way; I need not expound it to you minutely: in working trials you shall see it and learn it.

Ask, Tornik: when we hold it enough to work five fields only, and work them well, shall the remaining five fields lie untilled and fruitless? Of that I shall write in its own order; now let me recall only this much: is anything wanting, then, for the villager to sow? Let him till grass; let him sow lucerne, sow sainfoin, sow oats (yulaf), sow potatoes, sow turnips, sow beets, sow beans, sow lentils, sow onions — melon, cucumber, watermelon, and many things besides, which all alike are the necessaries of our life. Alas, that the villagers of Van are used to sow only wheat, barley, and millet, and give no weight to the other most needful things!

Ending the lesson of the tilth, I shall now speak upon the choosing of seeds, which for the good husbandman is a thing most needful.