Trial of itself, like a schoolmaster, teaches us, Tornik: when we plow and sow a field over and over, without giving it rest, we see that the first year it gives great fruit; the following year it begins to lessen; the third year, altogether weakened, it becomes fruitless. The village people has known this thing by trial from of old; therefore it puts to work means of two kinds to give the weakened soil its strength again: either it lets be, that the field rest of itself some years and, taking strength, grow fat; or, giving the field dung, filling the place of its wasted strength, it tills on — and so it leaves not the field idle: every year it plows and sows and takes its fruit; only one must know to change the seed. That is: if the first year wheat was sown, the next year he must sow grass; or, dunging the field, till it with garden stuff; and at autumn's end, the garden things being taken up, he can plow the field and sow wheat, whereby the following year he takes a twofold fruit. The husbandmen of the city of Van know this manner of tillage very well. As for our village people, it has great means in its hand for giving its fields strength; I do not say it is so ignorant as not to know — for the example of the town husbandmen is before its eye; rather must one say that it is slothful, and loves not more labor; and, as I said in my former lessons, one great cause besides is this, that it holds soils beyond its measure in its hand, and leaves them unplowed, that only by lying fallow they may strengthen.
Do you see, Tornik? — there is our village before your eye: how many ash-heaps there are, which have made great hills before every house's door! Leave the ash-heaps — there are many refuse-heaps besides, here and there in the streets, turning to soil under foot; and our dull husbandmen know not how to use those serviceable, enriching heaps of dung. Is it then so hard, in spring and in autumn, to carry the dung-heaps out to the fields in little carts? — whereby, the soil's spent strength being given back to it, the soil is renewed again, and begins to give the same first fruit. Do you know, Tornik, this is a law of nature: the soil too, like man, has its life; if you use it continually — plow it, sow it, without ever giving it strength — know that it grows old, turns barren, and ceases from its fruit-bearing. They say that the soils of the land of Europe are grown old to the last degree. But what does that toiling, crafty people do? It has found so many means of giving the soil strength, that that aged soil turns young again, and brings forward fruits of many births. A man marvels when we hear that from the far land of America dung is carried in ships to Europe. Do you see? even the dung our eye despises has passed into the order of merchandise; for to the husbandman dung is more serviceable and more precious than the diamond — that noble stone, it is true, is a great adornment for the nobility; yet when a man is famished, he sells the diamond and gets him bread.
Alas, I cry, for our sloth — and more for our dullness, Tornik! Our dung comes not from America: it lies heaped mountain-high before the doors of our houses, and we, sluggish as we are, can hardly bring ourselves to carry it as far as the field. Nor was it only of our fields' fruitfulness that we ought to have thought; we ought to have taken thought also for the cleanness of the village square and of the streets.
Eh, Tornik, I think I have spoken and judged somewhat overmuch: can the peasant people, without schooling, have any notion or taste of cleanness? It is not justice to blame the unschooled village people, which — let alone its ignorance — is beset with the manifold pains of life, while from the other side deep prejudice has fettered and bound its natural mind. If you say — Brother Kirakos, before your door so much dung lies heaped; why do you not carry it out and spread it in your fields? — "Eh," he answers, "that is more labor; for me a few fields a year are enough: I plow them, I sow them; the rest I leave — let them go fallow and strengthen of themselves. Our forefathers tilled without dung: did they not earn their bread? I call to witness of my word all the everlasting ash-heaps, piled up from our forefathers' days — surely it was not we who piled them." There is your peasant's pleading, Tornik: so thinking and so speaking, he stays unmoved in the siege of his own mind, and the ash-heap too stays in its place. We must wait, then, for time and for schooling, that they come and move the peasant people's mind toward progress: then of himself he will come to know the dung's usefulness; and the villages' present dung-heaps they will carry, every one, and spread in their own fields — fighting for them, and snatching them out of one another's hands. It is enough that they once see its fruitfulness by trial, and be persuaded how gainful dung is for the field. Now must I speak of the preparing of the dung: how it must be gathered and prepared, that it may be the more profitable.
If the dung got from each several house in the village be left thrown where it falls, as now, and become so many mounds of earth, it has no profit at all: first, the sun's heat draws out the dung's juicy strength; second, the pouring rains, coming, wash over the dung-place and take away the juice and strength within it; and then the dung-heap, dried out of its juicy strength, turns worthless and unprofitable. Therefore the villagers' houses, each severally, must prepare for themselves their own dung-pits apart, where it lies fit — knowing beforehand how much dung is got within the year, and in measure of that quantity they must open long four-square pits, at the least two cubits deep on every side; so that neither the rain's waters nor the melted snows' may ever run out of the dung-pits. Needful it is to know also what the stuffs are that go to be thrown into the dung-pit, and of how many divers things dung is compounded: the ash of the tonir,1 the leavings of the privies, rotted straws and grasses, the house's residues, the coarse refuse-straw taken up from the threshing-floor, which the beasts will not eat, the scraps left over in the mangers, and so on. All these things are stuff for the dung-pit — and I had forgotten to name the spoiled zhazhik2 of pots gone bad, and the like things, which one and all make up the dung-pit's stuff; and these, mingling in one place, rot, ferment, and sour, and become one mighty stuff for the enriching of the earth.
Let me speak now of what season is fit for dunging the fields. Both spring's beginning and autumn's end are the just time: the gardens of pot-herbs they commonly dung at the spring sowing-time, and likewise the fields of spring-sown seeds, be it wheat, be it barley or other grain. But better far, and more profitable, is it to dung in autumn-time those fields which have been plowed in autumn, and in spring shall go under the light plow again for the sowing. Do you know, Tornik — I too have proved it — how gainful and fruitful it comes, if they be dunged in autumn, and the dung spread even over the field's face? First the rain and then the snow coming, the dung's strength soaks wholly through into the soil, and until spring the soil fattens with the dung's strength; whereas the spring dung has not the same working upon the soil — for if the rain be scant, the sun's heat draws the dung's airy strength upward, whereby the dunged field bears not so much fruit. And besides, the husbandman has more time in autumn for carrying dung to the field than in spring, which is days of sowing and of other labor. Nay, even in the winter days, while yet the snow and the cold give no such hindrance, the brisk, well-girt husbandman can carry dung to the field, and spread it straightway.
Speaking this much only upon the usefulness of dung, I leave it to you, Tornik, that by working trial you learn of yourself its fruitful gain — and suffer not any of the things that are stuff for dung to be wasted for naught.