Page:Farmers of forty centuries.djvu/200

182 layers of thin mud dipped from the canal, and left it to ferment. The eight men were removing this compost to the pit seen in Fig. 99, then nearly filled. Near by in the same field was a second pit seen in Fig. 100, excavated three feet deep and rimmed about with the earth removed, making it two feet deeper.

Fig. 98.— Eight bearers moving a pile of winter compost to the recently excavated pit in the field seen in Fig. 99. The boatload in the foreground is a mixture of manure and ashes just arrived from the home village.

After these pits had been filled the clover which was in blossom beyond the pits would be cut and stacked upon them to a hight of five to eight feet and this also saturated, layer by layer, with mud brought from the canal, and allowed to ferment twenty to thirty days until the juices set free had been absorbed by the winter compost beneath, helping to carry the ripening of that still further, and until the time had arrived for fitting the ground for the next crop. This organic matter, fermented with the canal mud, would then be distributed by the men over the field, carried a third time on their shoulders, notwithstanding its weight was many tons.