Authors: Sam Barone
“Noble Rebba, I know little about farming. I know that farmers provide much of the food for Orak, but I grew up among the barbarians and they don’t think highly of farming.”
“They consider us dirt diggers, do they not?” Rebba answered with a laugh. “I suppose that’s true enough. But they do enough farming on their own, despite what they think of us.” He saw the look of puzzlement on Esk kar’s face. “Ah, I see that you are not aware of how important farming is even to the Alur Meriki.” He stroked his beard. “Perhaps that’s as good a place to begin as any.” He turned to Trella, sitting at Esk kar’s side. “I understand you grew up in a village to the south. Did you learn the ways of the farmers there?”
“No, Noble Rebba,” Trella answered. “I know very little about the mysteries of the farmer and the herder.”
“Then I’ll try to explain a little to you both. A farm is not only a place to grow the wheat and barley, but a place to hold herds of goats, sheep, and other food animals. The barbarians herd their own flocks, even as we do, only they take them with them as they wander.”
“But they don’t plant crops,” Esk kar countered. “They’re never in one place long enough for crops to grow.”
“Ah, but they do harvest, Esk kar. But they do it in a different way.”
Rebba smiled. “The Alur Meriki harvest crops as they travel, looking for stands of barley, emmer wheat, even peas and other vegetables. These crops they encounter along the way are as important to them as they are to us. And there are many wild crops throughout the land, such as wheat, beans, and flax. They gather those as well.”
Esk kar accepted the correction. “Well, yes, I know the women gather anything they find on the march.”
“Exactly. Even warriors cannot live on meat alone. They need milk and cheese from the goats and cows, wool from the sheep, as well as vegetables and fruits from the lands they pass through. And of course, they seize much grain and other crops from the farmers of the lands they occupy. I’m sure you know a horse grows stronger and more powerful if fed a mixture of grains besides what it gathers grazing. So farming is as important to them as it is to us.”
“Yes, horses need grain,” Esk kar replied. “Whenever possible horses are fed a mixture of grains before being ridden hard.” He began to think along the lines Rebba had suggested. “And extra grain is carried to feed the horses when they raid, while the women bake bread for the warriors to carry with them.”
Bread was light enough to carry on horseback as well as nourishing, and would last longer without spoiling than meat. Esk kar’s men had done exactly the same when they rode out on their own scouting party. He’d forgotten these little details of steppes life, and now he realized they might be more important than he’d thought.
“Yes, bread is very important to us all,” Rebba agreed. “It is bread that feeds your soldiers. More than that, bread pays the wages of your soldiers.
Without bread, there would be no builders, smiths, taverns, or weavers.
Bread makes possible the trade on the river that brings you the lumber and ores from the north for your wall. Without bread, there would be no gold, no silver, no horses, no weapons. Without the farmer, there would be no great village of Orak.”
Despite himself, Esk kar had become interested. “I’m ashamed to admit I do not understand these things, Rebba. But I’m willing to learn.”
“You learn very quickly, Esk kar, as all of us have noticed.” Rebba smiled at that, and his eyes took in Trella as well. “But that’s all to the good. If you’re to defend the village, you should understand these things.
And don’t be embarrassed by your lack of knowledge; few even in Orak understand these things. It’s like the mystery of counting. That is a mystery I see you understand.”
Esk kar had never considered counting to be mysterious. Difficult, to be sure, and many men never grasped anything beyond the basic concept of ten fingers. But as a soldier, Esk kar had been forced to learn to count many things.
Like everyone he started with his fingers and some pebbles. You used your fingers to count to ten, then you moved a pebble from one hand to the other, and started over again. When you were finished, you counted your pebbles, knowing that each represented ten of whatever it was you were counting. In this way you counted how many men you had, exactly as you counted how many were with your adversary. You counted your arrows, your horses, your weapons, and even how many handfuls of grain you could feed to your horse.
“I didn’t know counting was a mystery, Rebba,” he said, “though I admit that I have difficulty when the sum is much over a hundred.”
“It is a very great mystery, and one I believe was discovered as men learned to farm. We learned to store grain in bushels, baskets, and sacks, and then count the sacks for storage or trade. Farmers had to learn how to divide grain among themselves, and they had to learn how many loaves of bread come from each bushel. A special part of that counting was learning how to divide up the land, so that each farmer could have the same amount of earth to sow. Now farmers know how to count into the thousands, and we’ve learned to mark these numbers in clay as a permanent record.”
Rebba sipped from his cup before he went on. “Did you know, it was something you said months ago that made me support you and your plan to fight off the barbarians? It was when you said that the barbarians would be back in another five or ten years. You’re right about their migrations.
It’s that cycle of migration we must break, and that’s why I decided to stay and resist. We may fail, but it must be tried. We can no longer rebuild everything we create every ten years at the whim of every passing band of marauders. The crops are too precious to lose, even for a single growing season.”
“What’s so valuable about the crops?” Esk
kar asked, his curiosity
aroused. “Crops have been burned many times in the past. They can always be replanted.”
“Ah, now we’re back to the mysteries!” Rebba answered, smiling again.
He stood up. “Come. Let’s take a walk down to the fields.”
They walked to the rear of the house, then went down a narrow dirt track that curved between the canals. Here rough planks that could be easily moved bridged the water channels, each barely wide enough to get a small cart across. In moments they were surrounded by crops—large fields of waist - high wheat and barley, smaller fields containing peas, len-tils, beets, and even some melons. Another field grew flax, which even Eskkar knew was grown not for food but for its stem fibers that could be spun into linen. There were other plants that Esk kar didn’t recognize.
The smell of animals had vanished and now the air held strangely pleasant odors given off by the growing plants, all of them at various stages of growth. The occasional fruit tree and jasmine added their scents to the air, and the mix of all these growing things combined to create a kind of perfume, hard to describe but somehow satisfying.
Rebba led them down a narrow path and soon they were surrounded by wheat, most of it still growing, but already above the farmer’s knees.
“This is emmer wheat,” he said, indicating the field on his left. “And this is einkorn wheat. These two are the most important crops on this farm. From them we harvest the seeds that we grind into flour to make bread. It’s the wheat that gives us the most food for each hectare.”
Rebba moved in among the growing plants, looking closely at some, glancing quickly at others. Finally he selected a handful of wheat from one plant, then a few moments later, another handful from a different plant. Then he rejoined his two students.
“Here, Esk kar, look at these clusters of wheat.” Rebba held one in each hand, extending them to Esk kar. “Now, tell me which of these you would plant next year, and which you would make into flour.”
Esk kar stared down at the clusters, looking from one to the other. “I see no difference between them, Rebba,” he answered. “They look the same.”
Rebba offered his hands to Trella. “And you. Which would you choose?”
Trella examined them more closely than Esk kar. She took first one, than the other, into her own hands, and brought them within inches of her eyes, looking at them from all sides. “They seem the same to me also, Noble Rebba. Though, perhaps, the grains in one are slightly larger than the other.”
“You have good eyes, Mistress Trella,” Rebba said. “Yes, this plant is producing slightly larger seeds than the other.” He let the smaller cluster drop to the ground and held up the other. “This plant, and others like it, will be used as seed for the next crop. When we are ready to harvest the field, my farmers will look at every plant, selecting first those that produce the largest clusters and the biggest seeds, until they’ve gathered enough for the next year’s planting.”
Rebba lifted the cluster up to his nose, then took one of the seeds into his mouth for a moment. “Of course, we must taste each one, to make sure the flour we grind is not too harsh or bitter. It wouldn’t do to harvest a crop next season that made poor or bitter bread. If we did, no one would eat it, and we’d get less for what we sell on the river.”
Esk kar shook his head. The seeds had seemed the same size to him.
“So, the largest seeds will go back into the earth, to start the next crop?
Why does that matter?”
“Do you know how much wheat a hectare of land produces, Esk kar?”
Esk kar shook his head. “I am not even sure what a hectare is.”
“Ah, I’ve rushed ahead,” Rebba apologized. “A hectare is a square plot of earth exactly one hundred long paces on each side.” He waited until Esk kar nodded in understanding. “Each hectare of wheat yields about thirty - three bushels of seeds. Each bushel, after it is ground into flour, will make over seventy loaves of bread. On this farm, there are thirty hectares planted with wheat, so we will harvest almost a thousand bushels. Some will be saved for the next planting, a few go to feed the farmers and their families, and some are lost to rodents or rot during storage or transport.
Say, three hundred bushels in all. The remaining seven hundred bushels are available to be stored or sold. With what we sell, we can pay the smiths for our tools, the carpenters for our plows, the builders for our houses, and the traders for what few luxuries we need. And do not forget the herders—whose animals we use or sell for their meat.”
Rebba smiled at Esk kar. “With all the excess food produced on this farm, and others like it, those of us who own the land around Orak can even afford the most expensive luxury of all—supporting soldiers and their insatiable demands for weapons and horses.”
A thousand bushels of wheat! Esk kar was astonished. And that was just from this farm. There were dozens of farms around Orak, though not many larger than Rebba’s. “I didn’t know so much could be harvested, Rebba.”
“Orak is very fortunate in that the soil is very rich and water plentiful. A few miles away from the river, the farms produce much less. The farther you go from the Tigris, the smaller the harvest; eventually a farm will produce only enough to feed those who labor on it. Go beyond that and the lands are too dry to support even the poorest and most desperate farmer. That is why we choose to risk our lives staying here and fighting the barbarians.”
Rebba shook his head at the follies of men before continuing. “So you see, each cycle of growth and harvest is important, and that’s the answer to your question, Esk kar. The largest seeds go into the earth, and from the next harvest we will select once again the largest seeds. In this manner, over tens of years, we increase slightly the amount of wheat grown from each hectare. So each season there is a tiny bit more food produced, because we select and plant with care.” He turned back to Trella. “That is the mystery. The cycle goes on each season—sow, grow, harvest, select, and sow. And with each cycle we can feed more people.
Or buy more weapons.
“And that’s why, Esk kar,” Rebba continued, “we don’t want to lose even a single crop to the barbarians. Once the crops are destroyed or the land damaged, the work of ten or twenty years is undone, and the next harvest will yield less food. Instead of a rich harvest, we may not have enough to feed our own people. We’ve planted early this season, because of the news of the barbarians. We will harvest earlier, so this season’s crop will already be smaller. And this season’s seed crop will be stored in Orak, hidden in underground chambers so that even if the village falls, our families across the river may yet find them for the next planting.”
“Esk kar will not let the village fall, Noble Rebba,” Trella said.
Rebba looked from one to the other. “When Nicar declared his intent to stay and fight, I had grave doubts about our chances. Nevertheless, I remained here, even though I know my fields will be burned or flooded.”
He shook his head sadly at the thought. “Let’s return to the house. There’s still much to show you.” Rebba looked up at the sun and saw that nearly an hour had passed. “You will never be a farmer, Esk kar, but by sundown, you will at least know the value of a farm.”
For the rest of the afternoon Rebba talked about each crop, explaining the differences between the various types of wheat, how linen was made from flax, and how the animals were bred and raised. The last hour they studied the irrigation ditches, the channels that carried water not only to all parts of the farm, but continued on to the next farm, one owned by another wealthy villager.
Rebba and his family knew all about moving water, explaining how the ditches grew narrower and narrower as they carried precisely the right amount of water to the fields. “The water must move with the right amount of force. If there is too much force, we cannot control the water flow. The amount of water used to irrigate the plants is important also—too much water and the plants drown, or are sickly. Too little, and they die from the heat. Too much force, and the channels themselves collapse. Too little, and the water dries up before it reaches its destination.”
Esk kar had known that fact, though in a casual way, and without really understanding how critical the transport of water through the irrigation ditches was. Water was another one of the mysteries—a key to another part of the puzzle. Between the wells and the river, there was plenty of water for everyone, including the farms and all the herds of animals.