Page:Farmers of forty centuries.djvu/268

250 Against the pit and without partition, but cut off from the court, was the home of the pigs, both under a common roof continuous with a closed structure joining with the sleeping apartments, while behind us and along the alleyway by which we had entered were other dwelling and storage compartments. Thus was the large family of four generations provided with a peculiarly private open court where they could work and come out for sun and air, both, from our standards, too meagerly provided in the houses. We had come to learn more of the methods of fertilizing practiced by these people. The manure midden was before us and the piles of earth brought in from the fields, for use in the process, were stacked in the street, where we had photographed them at the entrance, as seen in Fig. 135. There a father, with his pipe, and two boys stand at the extreme left; beyond them is a large pile of earth brought into the village and carefully stacked in the narrow street; on the other side of the street, at the corner of the first building, is a pile of partly fermented compost thrown from a pit behind the walls. Further along in the street, on the same side, is a second large stack of soil where two boys are standing at either end and another little boy was in a near-by doorway. In front of the tree, on the left side of the street, stands a third boy, near him a small donkey and still another boy. Beyond this boy stands a third large stack of soil, while still beyond and across the way is another pile partly composted. Notwithstanding the cattle in the preceding illustration, the donkey, the men, the boys, the three long high stacks of soil and the two piles of compost, the ten rods of narrow street possessed a width of available travelway and a cleanliness which would appear impossible. Each farmer's household had its stack of soil in the street, and in walking through the village we passed dozens of men turning and mixing the soil and compost, preparing it for the field.

The compost pit in front of where we sat was two-thirds