Franztal 16

As seems to be common with these reports, the 1848 Franztal Gemeindebericht ends with a summary listing of significant events over the course of the village’s history. In this case, the list begins with the first year of Franztal’s existence and continues through a damaging storm early in the same year that the report was written. 

Although it will take us several posts to work through all the details, the entire final paragraph of the Franztal report follows.  

Because of the late sowing, only a little millet was harvested in the first year. The following two summers yielded harvests of only three- to fourfold at high grain prices: 1 chetvert [?] rye cost 20 and wheat 24 paper rubles. In the three years that followed, the grasshoppers destroyed blessed crops. The harsh winter of 1825 and the year 1833 with its famine and cattle epidemic are still fresh in the memory of the settlers. As a result of the earthquake on 11 January 1838, at half past ten in the evening, the water in the well has risen significantly. In 1838 the four-field system and fallow land were introduced. In 1845 there was no hay, only sowing of grain.  The years 1846 and 1847 were blessed harvests, but on 17 June of last year a hailstorm destroyed the whole crop. The storm of 25 December 1847 to 16 January 1848 caused many houses to collapse, whereby the affected families came into great need.

Because of the late sowing. As we learned from the report’s first paragraph (see here), the settlers did not arrive on the scene until April of 1820, and then they spent at least six weeks digging a (dry) well before locating the village along the Iushanle River (see here). Adding time to prepare the steppe land for cultivation, it was no doubt late May at the earliest before they began sowing their crop.

millet. According to the Wikipedia entry, millet is frequently used as a grain for human consumption and in livestock fodder. It is favored in a variety of locales “due to its productivity and short growing season under dry, high-temperature conditions.” Given the reference to the late sowing in the opening clause, the short growing season presumably played the key role in the settlers’ choice of this grain.

harvests of only three- to fourfold. The entire sentence of which this phrase is a part is difficult to understand, and both the translation and explanation should be regarded as provisional. The difficulty in this phrase is with the German “3 bis 4fältige.” The lack of a space between the 4 and its following word at first appeared to be a typo, but I now understand fältige to be a suffix meaning “fold” (note the resemblance of these cognate words: German f-l-t equals English f-l-d). Thus the construction seems to be saying that the harvest was only a threefold or fourfold return on the seed planted. Put in terms of life today, we might say that planting a bushel of wheat produced a crop of 3–4 bushels, which is an abysmally poor return. 

at high grain prices. One wonders why the report shifts from the low yield to high grain prices. The answer that makes the best sense in context is that the report is explaining just how bad the situation was during the first two years of Franztal’s life. Not only did the crops produce low yields, but the seed the settlers had to purchase to sow was expensive. Recall that the settlers had not previously raised rye or wheat in Molotschna; consequently, they had no seed grain with which to start. They had no choice but to buy seed from others, and the report tells us that they paid a premium for that seed. Putting the two pieces of the sentence together: it was bad enough that the settlers had to buy expensive seed; to make matters worse, they received a terrible return on their expensive investment. 

chetvert. The question mark after this word in the translation indicates that this is my best guess. The German original uses the abbreviation Tscht. (not Tscbt., as is reported, e.g., here). I do not know that this is how the Franztal writers would have abbreviated chetvert (assuming they pronounced a tsch- consonant cluster at the beginning of the word), but I think this must be the dry measure in view. A Russian chetvert was the equivalent of 5.957 U.S. bushels.

rye … and wheat. Whereas in the first year the settlers grew millet, in the next two years (and for a long time thereafter) the most common grains raised were rye and wheat.

paper rubles. On paper rubles as the most common currency at this time, see here.

We have reached a good place to stop for the time being; the following post will pick up the account with the first report of grasshopper plagues.