With this post we will finish the long but important fourth paragraph of the 1848 Franztal community report. As before, the entire paragraph is repeated for context.
The village is laid out in the direction from northeast to southwest. The Iushanle forms the border between the village and the land of the Tatars; the distance to the opposite border of the village Chernigov is 7 versts. On the northwestern side of the village along the lane are the orchards, each of which is a dessiatine in area and is already planted with a considerable number of fine fruit trees. At the end of the orchards rises the tree grove, which offers a lovely sight from the village with its green-leafed trees. On the west the village borders on Grossweide, on the east Pastwa, and it is 60 versts from the district seat Berdyansk. The numerous ancient burial mounds (Mohilen) give the land, one might say, a warty shape. The surface is almost everywhere black soil, in places containing saltpeter, with a layer of gravel and quarry stone, which lies over a Faden deep and in places comes to light. Although the productivity of the land does not equal that of the Molochna, trees, grains, and food crops thrive here as well. Violent storms often destroy the grain fields in rows.
black soil. The German term used, “schwarze Erde,” no doubt refers to the characteristic chernozem (Russian), or black soil, region of the Eurasian steppe. We devoted an entire post to this soil type last year (see here). As explained in greater detail there, the humus content of the black soil made the steppe region, as Stephen Rudnitsky puts is, “the granary of Russia.” He adds that “the black earth is a product of the transformation of loess, with a strong admixture of the products of decomposition” (1918, 104).
saltpeter. Although the community report does not elaborate on the significance of the saltpeter, its mention is most likely negative. Saltpeter was, to be sure, used in the manufacture of gunpowder and in some meat-curing processes at that time. (The use of saltpeter as a fertilizer seems to have come later.) However, several sources mention that the presence of saltpeter rendered soil less suitable for agriculture, whether for field crops or for pasture (see, e.g., here). Thus it seems that the reference to saltpeter here carried the same sort of negative implication.
which lies over a Faden deep and in places comes to light. Careful readers will note a correction to the translation here, from “over a thread/strand” to “over a Faden.” Although we encountered this term earlier in the report, I had forgotten that a Faden is a Prussian unit of measurement equivalent to 6 Prussian fuss (comparable to our foot; see Carrington 1864, 77). Thus the apparent meaning of this statement is that the gravel layer and quarry stone (the report does not say what type of stone) was, in some areas, 6 feet below the surface of the ground (see also Rudnitsky 1918, 104). However, in other places the black soil was much thinner, to the extent that the quarry stone breached the surface of the ground.
does not equal that of the Molochna. The statement that the Franztal land did not equal that of the Molochna in terms of productivity may sound odd, given the fact that Franztal was located in the Molotschna colony, but the reference is probably to the land east of the Molochna River from which the colony took its name. In other words, the land associated with Franztal was not as fertile as that associated with the villages established in Molotschna colony on the left bank of the Molochna River. The Molochna River runs from north to south on the wast edge of the map below; the villages to its east were the first Mennonite villages in Molotschna. Franztal, on the other hand, is on the far right a little below center. The distance from Franztal to the Molochna River was over 30 miles, which certainly was distance enough to explain a change in productivity.
grain fields in rows. Although all the words in this short phrase are straightforward, the meaning of the word strichweise, translated “in rows,” is not completely clear. The first part of the sentence tells us that violent storms frequently destroyed the field crops of Franztal’s farmers in some manner, but exactly how the crops were destroyed is uncertain. The phrase “in rows” might make one think of a row crop such as corn, and the German word used here (Kornfelder) could be translated “corn fields.” However, the word more commonly refers generically to grain fields, and it almost certainly does in this instance, since Russian Mennonites in the 1840s did not grow fields of corn.
This leaves us with the dilemma of how to understand the phrase “in rows.” Perhaps the meaning is comparable to what we see today with wheat or barley fields after a storm with violent winds passes through. The winds blow the grain in the field over, laying it flat, although not always uniformly. As seen in the photo to the right, some patches of grain remain standing even when all the other around is on the ground. It may be that the writers of the Gemeindebericht are trying to describe such a phenomenon. Even if this is not the exact meaning, we are clearly to envision violent storms frequently arising on the steppe and damaging the Franztal farmers’ crops as they swept through and across the grain fields.
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The next paragraph in the community report offers fascinating historical background about the naming of the village; we will turn to that paragraph in the next post in this series.
Work Cited
Carrington, Robert C. 1864. Foreign Measures and Their English Values. London: Potter. Available online here.
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