ten feet long
and five wide. When you have done this brush in the seed with wooden
rakes: this is most important for otherwise the sprouts will be
withered by the sun. After the sowing no iron tool should touch the
beds; but, as I have said, they should be cultivated with wooden
rakes, and in the same manner they should be weeded so that no foreign
grass can choke out the young alfalfa. The first cutting should be
late, when the seed begins to fall: afterwards, when it is well
rooted, you can cut it as young as you wish to feed to the stock. Feed
it at first sparingly, until the stock becomes accustomed to it, for
it causes bloat and excess of blood. After cutting, irrigate the beds
frequently, and after a few days, when the roots begin to sprout, weed
out all other kinds of grass. Cultivated in this way alfalfa can be
mowed six times a year, and it will last for ten years."]

[Footnote 94: See the explanation of what the Romans meant by _terra
varia_ in the note on Cato V. _ante_, p. 40.]

[Footnote 95: It is interesting to note from the statements in the text
that in Varro's time the Roman farmer in Italy both sowed and reaped
substantially the same amount of wheat as does the American farmer
today. Varro says that the Romans sowed five modii of wheat to the
jugerum and reaped on the maximum fifteen for one. As the modius was
nearly the equivalent of our peck, the Roman allowance for sowing
corresponds to the present American practice of sowing seven pecks
of wheat to the acre: and on this basis a yield of 26 bushels to the
acre, which is not uncommon in the United States, is the equivalent of
the Roman harvest of fifteen for one.

It is fair to the average Italian farmer of the present day who is
held up by the economists to scorn because he does not produce
more than eleven bushels of wheat to the acre, to record that in
Columella's time, when agriculture had declined as compared with
Varro's experience, the average yield of grain in many parts of Italy
did not exceed four for one (_Columella_, III, 3), or say seven and a
half bushels to the acre.

Varro's statement that at Byzacium in Africa wheat yielded 100 for
one, which Pliny (_II.N._ XVIII, 23) increases to 150 for one, means
from 175 to 260 bushels per acre, seems incredible to us, but is
confirmed by the testimony of agricultural practice in Palestine.
Isaac claimed to reap an hundred fold, and the parable of the Sower
alludes to yields of 30, 60 and 1