ROTATION OF CROPS

Field, Forest and Farm by Jean-Henri Fabre, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. ROTATION OF CROPS

CHAPTER XL. ROTATION OF CROPS

They are eating dinner at the farm. A large platter of pork cutlets and beans is smoking in the center of the table. Every one has been served. It is a pleasure to see these good people eat, they have such hearty appetites. Jacques, the big ox-driver, is the first to finish. He throws his bone away. Azor is there to seize it. He lies flat on his stomach and takes the bone in his fore paws. Hear him bite on his hard pittance. How it cracks! Let any one beware of teasing Azor now. An angry growl and a baring of his four formidable canine teeth would warn the rash intruder to have done with his joking at once, for if not—well, I will not be responsible for the consequences. Azor is not a surly dog; far from it; but he is well within his rights when he brooks no nonsense at his meals. He has done his duty most valiantly as a dog. Night before last some wolves were prowling about the sheep-fold, and he drove them off. Let Azor gnaw his bone in peace.

Ha, there! The big tortoise-shell cat, Master Minet, is otherwise minded. He draws near, hair erect, tail as large around as your arm, to try to frighten Azor and rob him of his allowance. Azor, [203]without dropping the bone, gives a low growl and lifts one paw. That is enough, the cat flees. So, my bold Minet, what were you after here? The bone is not for you; your teeth are not strong enough to bite it. Go away! Martha is calling you to give you some bread soaked in gravy. That will suit you better than a bone as hard as a stone.

Ah, here come some more guests. The door stands open and in come the hens from the poultry-yard. Tap, tap, tap, tap; they peck the crumbs fallen from the table. Azor has no use for such diet—tiny morsels much too small for him; nor does the cat want them either, they are too floury. But the hens feast on them.

And all, human beings, dog, cat, hens, dine at the same time; only each must make the best of what the others cannot use. Azor is content with the bone that big Jacques threw away; the cat is satisfied with a little bread soaked in gravy, a dish quite inadequate to Azor’s needs; the hens pick up the crumbs disdained by Jacques, Azor, and the cat. Martha, it seems, had prepared dinner only for the farm people, and behold, by utilizing the scraps that are worthless to some, many others join in the midday meal. From the scraps disdained by man the dog will gain strength to defend the flock; from those rejected by the dog the cat will acquire keen eyesight and sharp claws to see and to seize the mouse; from what is of no value to the cat the hens will make eggs; and everything, absolutely everything, will go to the profit of the farm.[204]

“Agriculture in its turn,” remarked Uncle Paul, turning to account this homely illustration in domestic economy, “prepares dinner for the crops in its own peculiar manner. It spreads the ground with manure, that fertile dressing so relished by growing plants. The table is set, or in other words the field is ready, well plowed and harrowed, and well manured. Whom shall we call first to the table, for it is plain we cannot invite all at once. Whom shall we call first? It shall be wheat, let us say, a plant with tastes hard to please, but one that in return gives us bread. So wheat is sown. In this soil, full of all sorts of good things, it cannot fail to thrive, however unfavorable the season may be. It will select what suits it best and leave the rest.

“Now that is done. The harvest is in, and it handsomely comes up to our hopes. The wheat has converted into magnificent grain the fertilizer put into the ground. Out of decay it has created nourishment. Surely it has well acquitted itself of its charge. It has made a clean sweep: all that could be turned into wheat it has appropriated, and there remains nothing further to be done. What would happen, then, if wheat were sown again in the same field? Exactly the same thing that would happen to Simon if he had nothing to eat but the bone that Jacques threw away. He would die of hunger. Simon must have man’s food, wheat must have wheat’s food. So if the first crop has exhausted the supply of material for making wheat, how can you expect to raise a second crop? Evidently that is asking [205]the impossible; it is running the risk of reaping only a very mediocre harvest or even none at all. Therefore it is the rule not to sow wheat twice in succession in the same field. And what is true of wheat is true also of all other crops. Where a plant has prospered one year, the same plant will not do well the second year, because the ingredients required by this plant are more or less exhausted. It is foolish to invite guests to a table that is stripped bare.

“If the table were spread again, if more fertilizer were added to the soil, that would be quite a different matter, and wheat would grow as well as it did the first time. But such a procedure would be bad management, for the very utmost should be made of one meal. Before further expenditure in the way of fertilizer let us exhaust the virtue of the fertilizer already applied. Azor dined well on what Jacques discarded; the hens were well fed with what Azor and the cat left. Let us take an example from this succession of eaters who utilize each in his own way the remnants worthless to the others. The wheat has exhausted, or nearly exhausted, all that is suitable for wheat; but just as Jacques the ox-driver left the bone, it has left in the soil a good many ingredients that make excellent food for other crops. In order, therefore, to utilize to the last ounce the first spreading of fertilizer, we must invite to the repast a guest of different tastes. This guest may be, for example, the potato. In soil that would have furnished but starvation diet for wheat the potato [206]will find quite enough to live on, its tastes not being the same as the cereal’s.

“Thus we have two successive crops for one coating of manure: we have sacks of potatoes with no additional outlay in fertilizer. Is that all? Not yet. After the wheat and the potatoes there is, to be sure, but meager nourishment left in the upper layer of the soil; but in the lower layers there remains the part of the fertilizer that the rain has washed down and dissolved and that the short roots of the preceding crops could not reach. To utilize this underlying matter and bring it up again to the surface in the form of forage let us now sow a plant with vigorous roots, such as clover, sainfoin, or, still better, lucerne, which will penetrate deeper. And so we get our third crop.

“After clover we can try a fourth crop, of a different kind; but it is evident that as the guests succeed one another at the same table the remnants become more and more scanty and difficult to utilize. Accordingly we must choose a hardy plant and one that is content with little. Finally a time will come, and at no very distant date, when the board will be bare: the coating of manure will have given up its last particle of nutritious matter. Then the table must be garnished afresh, the field fertilized anew before beginning again with the same crops or attempting others. Let us demand no more. You understand, my young friends, that in order to utilize to the utmost this precious substance that gives us every kind of food, such as bread, vegetables, forage, meat, [207]fruit, dairy products—to make the very best use of this we must, instead of raising the same crop in the same field year after year, adopt the plan of varying our crops, changing from one of one kind to another of a different character, so that what earlier plantings have left in the soil may be turned to account by later ones. This succession of different sorts of farm produce is called rotation of crops.”

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