71Likewise you will let your fallows rest in alternate years after reaping, and the idle field harden as it lies unused; 73or, when the star has changed, you will sow golden spelt where before you have lifted the glad pulse with its rattling pod, or the slender offspring of the vetch, and the brittle stalks and rustling forest of the bitter lupin. 77For a crop of flax burns the field, a crop of oats burns it, poppies steeped in Lethe's sleep burn it: but even so, by alternation the toil is easy, only do not be ashamed to soak the dry soil with rich dung, or to scatter dirty ash over exhausted fields.
82So too, by a change of crops, the fields find rest; 83nor meanwhile is there no gain from unploughed land. 84Often too it has helped to set fire to barren fields and to burn the light stubble in crackling flames: whether the fields draw from it hidden strength and the rich nourishment of the earth, or every fault is baked out of them by the fire and the useless moisture sweats away, or that heat opens more passages and loosens hidden pores, by which the sap may come to the new blades, or rather hardens it and binds up the gaping veins, so that the fine rains or the fiercer power of the scorching sun or the piercing cold of the North Wind may not sear it.
94Much indeed does he help the fields who breaks the sluggish clods with mattocks and drags wicker hurdles over them, and golden Ceres does not watch him in vain from high Olympus; 97and he too who, turning his plough crosswise, breaks again through the ridges he raised when the plain was first cleft, and works the ground constantly and gives orders to the fields. 100Pray for wet summers and fine winters, farmers; 101with winter's dust the spelt is most glad, glad the field: by no tillage does Mysia so pride herself, and Gargarus itself marvels at its harvests. 104Why should I speak of him who, having cast the seed, follows up the fields at close quarters and levels the heaps of barren sand, then brings a stream onto the sown crop, and channels that follow, and, when the parched field swelters with dying plants, look, from the brow of a sloping track he coaxes out the water?
109It, falling, stirs a hoarse murmur over smooth stones, and tempers the thirsty fields with its gushing. 111Why speak of him who, so that the stalk may not lie flat under heavy ears, grazes down the luxuriance of the crop in its tender blade, as soon as the young corn is level with the furrows? 113and of him who draws off the gathered water of a marsh with thirsty sand? 115Especially if in the uncertain months a river in flood goes out and covers everything far and wide with a coat of mud, from which the hollow ditches sweat with warm moisture.