Give good heed, Tornik, for this lesson is a most needful lesson for the husbandman — that he know how to order and divide his fields aright. First and before all, the bound of each several field must be marked off from the next, and balk-strips left between the fields, of at least three cubits' breadth. These balks, which without ever being plowed must always lie fallow, are not only for a road, that the carts may go easily upon firm ground; still more are they needful for the grass-growths. If the wheat-crop has great use for us, how needful then are the grass-growths for the laboring beasts! — when, lying at the fields' borders, they are as a pasture ready to hand for the cattle, which, loosed from the gutan,1 find at once their grazing-place, and no need remains to drive them to far-off places. In the old time — I have seen them — there were wide balks; for our forefathers were very careful men, and of good conscience: toward the beasts they had compassion, pity, and care. But in this present time that virtue is lifted out of the village people's heart: it knows only to think of its own bread, and for the poor beasts it has no care at all.
Now do you see, Tornik, how field is joined close to field, and not so much as one step's space is left between? If one field's master contrive to yoke his gutan before his neighbor, he will strive, openly before the sun, to steal a few furrows from his neighbor's field and mingle them with his own; and so, thieving without conscience from his fellow's portion of soil, he works a great injustice — whose issue is quarrel and strife without end between the two neighbors.
For this it is much and much needful that every field's master, drawing a bank round about his field, mark out in truth his field's bound; whereby not only is his property made sure, but the field's encircling bank has yet another profit besides: when the field is watered, the water does not run out of the field, flooding and opening gullies in time of swelling rains — above all when the field has no evenness, but is ridge and hollow.
For the good ordering of the fields there is one condition more: to level the field's hollow places, so that the surface of the field's extent, from the one end to the other end, be even and true. And that comes about very easily — not by the hand's labor alone: both the rain and the water, of their own nature washing down the soils of the ridges, fill up the hollow places, and it levels of itself. Only, the bank round about the field is not enough; banks must be drawn according to the field's bigness and its lie. Let me expound it by a plain example, Tornik, that you may grasp it well.
If we have a field that has two hundred cubits of length and a hundred cubits of breadth, and this field, beginning from the upper end of its length down to the lower end, falls slope by degrees — how must it be leveled? It will level very easily, if banks be drawn from the field's one breadth-side over to the other breadth's edge, in two or three places, regard being had to the rise and fall of the steep ground: if it is very steep, you must measure fifty cubits to each, and draw a bank; but if the slope is not so sheer, it is enough that at every seventy-five cubits a bank be drawn; whereby the field is parted into four parts, or three. The banks need be drawn but low; and laboring every year, in spring and in autumn, you shall see that within two and three years the field has found its degree of evenness.
Eh, Tornik — I know you will say that the field loses a good deal of its wholeness for those banks. No, that reckoning is wrong, Tornik: not only does it not lose, but it greatly gains; for the field's fruitfulness, growing twofold, fills up the account of the lost places. And have those banks no gain and profit of their own? Sow upon them the seed of lucerne, and see how excellent it proves: with its roots it makes the bank fast, and you receive grass abundant and strong for the winter.
Now let me speak, Tornik, of the cleanness of the fields, which must be one standing work of the husbandman's labor: ever, with all care, to carry out of the fields and clear away such stones within them as are a hindrance at plowing and at reaping-time. Leave the stones that show upon the field's face: there are found great stones under the soil besides, which, when the gutan's share strikes upon them in plowing, break it; the gutan stands idle until the share be carried to town and mended, whereby a good space of time passes empty. Therefore it is well that those stones, where they are met, be dug up out of the ground and carried off the field. It is proved that the gutan's shares break from other causes too; wherefore the able husbandman, being fore-provident, must keep one more share ready besides, to use at the pinch of need, and not suffer a working day to pass empty.
After the clearing of the stones, needful it is also to root up and clear away the tall-growing cruel thorns and the other rank weeds. Remember here, Tornik, the Gospel's parable — that the thorns choke the seeds, and they become unfruitful.2 More care still must be taken to pluck the tare-growth3 out of the field, when it grows and rises together with the wheat; at that time it is very easy to gather the tares from the wheat-growth. I grieve that the husbandmen of Van are very careless in this regard: they let the tare be reaped and mingled together with the wheat, and threshed with it together, and gathered into the granary; and do you know how hard it is afterward, sifting the wheat, to sort out the tares? There are many provinces where they make a great festival of wheat-washing: the whole family goes to the mill, and abiding there for days, they wash the wheat with great care; not the tare only, but the small stones too, and the other alien seed-grains, they clean away wholly, and then grind; whereby the bread is unmixed and very clean.
But for parting the tare-growths from the wheat there is an easier means: beforehand, while the field is not yet reaped, to pull them from within the field, when the tare rises tuft by tuft even with the wheat-growth and begins to bind its ear. As I am informed, the industrious families of Kharberd4 give us the example of this: in due season they pour into the fields and draw out the tare-tufts whole; whereby the wheat's growth gathers strength the more — for all self-sown grasses, the more they spring in a field, the more they press down and unstring the growth of our sown seed. It is a wonder, Tornik, how those self-sown, untilled grasses grow the stronger and the lustier. It is a proverb, which wise men speak, that the self-born growths are counted the true-born children of the mother soil, whom she nurses the more with her milk and her juice; while our sown seed is counted as stepchildren. But the mother soil's natural strength is impartial and equal toward all the growths: she is obedient to the natural law God has set; she is not like the mothers of this world's mankind, who love their true-born children only, and hate their stepchildren with hating.
Will you be curious, Tornik, what the natural cause is, and why we would weed the alien-sprung grasses out of our tilled ground?
Would that I could expound its cause to you like a man of science! But the people has understood by trial that the self-sown grasses are tyrannous enemies to our sown seed-growths; for they, growing and strengthening the more, subdue and choke our plants, and suffer them not to grow and gather strength. Therefore, weeding, they cast them out by the root; and then you shall see that the home-sown plants quickly begin to grow.
Learn, Tornik, what its inward and natural cause is. It seems to me that the thinner the plants stand, the stronger and the faster they wax; because they receive the more juice and nourishment from the mother soil, and the portion of juice of the weeded-out plants they suck up themselves, and thrive. A proverb the people speaks makes this meaning plainly understood: "the onion set thin puts forth the head." And have we not an example more natural still? When our mother bears twins, the milk of her breasts is portioned between two children; but when she bears one only child, the milk of both breasts together remains the newborn babe's portion; whereby the suckling child, drinking the more abundantly, grows the stronger. This much suffices for the cleanness of the fields; it is now the order that I speak upon the soil's fatness — which will increase the husbandman's profit and earnings, if he know how to put to work all those means that give the soil strength and fatness.