Roman Farm Management: The Treatises of Cato and Varro

by Marcus Porcius Cato; Marcus Terentius Varro

LII. The heaviest and best of the sheaves should be selected on the threshing floor and the spikes laid aside for seed. The grain is threshed from the spikes on the threshing floor, an operation which some perform by means of a sledge drawn by a yoke of oxen: this sledge consisting of a wooden platform, studded underneath with flints or iron spikes, on which either the driver rides or some heavy weight is imposed in order, as it is drawn around, to separate the grain from the chaff: others use for this purpose what is called the punic cart, consisting of a series of axle trees, equipped with toothed rollers, on which some one sits and drives the cattle which draw it, as they do in hither Spain and other places. Others cause the grain to be trodden out under the hoofs of a herd of driven cattle, which are kept moving by goading them with long poles.

When the grain has been threshed it should be tossed from the ground by means of a winnowing basket or a winnowing shovel when the wind is blowing gently, and this is done in such way that the lightest part, which is called the chaff, is blown away beyond the threshing floor, while the heavy part, which is the corn, comes clean into the basket.[100]

Gleaning

LIII. After the harvest is over the grain fields should be gleaned of shattered grain, and the straw left in the field should be gathered and housed, but if there is little to be gained by such work, and the expense is disproportionate, the stubble should be grazed: for in farming it is of the greatest importance that the expense of an operation shall not exceed the return from it.

Of the vintage

LIV. In vineyards the vintage should begin when the grape is ripe, but care must be taken with what kind of grapes and in what part of the vineyard you begin: for the early grapes and the mixed variety, which is called black, ripen some time before the others and should be gathered first, like the fruit grown on the side of the arbustum, or of the vineyard, which is exposed to the sun. During the gathering those grapes from which you expect to make wine should be separated from those reserved for the table: the choicer being carried to the wine press and collected in empty jars, while those reserved to eat are collected in separate baskets, transferred to little pots and stored in jars packed with marc, though some are immersed in the pond in jars daubed with pitch and some raised to a shelf in the store room.

The stems and the skins of the grapes which have been trodden out should be put under the press so that any must left in them may be added to the supply in the vat. When this marc ceases to yield a flow, it is chopped with a knife and pressed again, and the must expressed by this final operation is hence called circumcisitum[101] and is kept by itself because it smacks of the knife. The marc finally remaining is thrown into jars, to which water is added, thus preparing a drink which is called after-wine or grape juice, and is given to the hands in the winter instead of wine.

Of the olive harvest

LV. And now of the harvest of the olive yard.[102] You should pick by hand, rather than beat from the tree, all the olives which can be reached from the ground or from a ladder, because this fruit becomes arid when it has been struck and does not yield so much oil: and in picking by hand it is better to do so with the bare fingers rather than with a tool because the texture of a tool not only injures the berry but barks the branches and leaves them exposed to the frost. So it is better to use a reed than a pole to strike down the fruit which cannot be reached by hand, for (as the proverb is) the heavier the blow, the more need there is for a surgeon. He who beats his trees should beware of doing injury, for often an olive when it is struck away brings down with it from the branch a twig, and when this happens the fruit of the following year is lost: and this is not the least reason why it is said that the olive bears fruit, or much fruit, only every other year.

Like the grape, the olive serves a two-fold function after it is gathered. Some are set aside to be eaten and the rest are made into oil, which comforts the body of man not only within but without, for it follows us into the bath and the gymnasium. Those berries from which it is proposed to make oil are usually stored in heaps on tables for several days where they may mellow a little. Each heap in turn is carried in crates to the oil jars and to the trapetus, or pressing mill, which is equipped with both hard and rough stones. If the olives are left too long in the heap they heat and spoil and the oil is rancid, so if you are unable to grind promptly the heaps of olives should be ventilated by moving them. The yield of the olive is of two kinds, oil which is well known and amurca, of the use of which many are so ignorant that one can often see it streaming from the mill and wasting upon the ground where it not only discolours the soil, but in places where it collects even makes it sterile: while if applied intelligently it has many uses of the greatest importance to agriculture, as, for instance, by pouring it around the roots of trees, chiefly the olive itself, or wherever it is desired to destroy weeds.[103]