Making and Knowing
A minimal edition of BnF Ms Fr 640 in English Translation

- - - - - folio image: 009r - - - - -

Plowman

Since millet is naturally very dry, harvesters thresh it most often in the cool of night and in moonlight. Which could not be done with another, wetter, grain, because you must let the sunbeams pass over it, and one rarely threshes it before midday. Immediately after the millet is harvested, the earth needs to be plowed because its roots eat and make lean the soil as much as if the millet was still standing. The ground where millet will have been sown becomes quite diminished in fertility, which you can tell next time it is sown. But more than any other the grain called pomole in Gasconyor or baillard in northern France, makes the earth shake, according to the common saying, seven years later. Broad beans improve and enrich the soil, provided that one lets the roots and stems rot in it.