Ecology, Russian

This all comes back to the verities lost in the lust for science and chemical shortcuts. Joel Salatin says he's first and foremost a grass farmer, and in this passage from Anna Karenina, Tolstoy talks about rotational grazing, returning the nutrients to the soil, and the sensitive, meditating stewardship of the land. Listen, as well, to the mesmerizing cadences of Tolstoy's prose. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky's translation is duly lauded.

The further he rode, the happier he felt, and plans for the estate, one better than another, arose in his mind: to plant willows along the meridional lines of all the fields, so that the snow would not stay too long under them; to divide them into six fertilized fields and three set aside for grass; to build a cattle-yard at the far end fo the field and dig a pond; to set up movable pens for the cattle so as to manure the fields. And then he would have eight hundred acres of wheat, two hundred and fifty of potatoes, and four hundred of clover, and not a single acre exhausted.

And now because it's late, I have something for you hearty young men. May you dream tonight of strong white calves, fresh in the spring:

Having admired the cows, familiar to him down to the smallest details, Levin ordered them driven to pasture and the calves let out into the pen. The cowherd ran merrily to get ready for the pasture. The dairymaids, hitching up their skirts, their bare, white, as yet untanned legs splashing in the mud, ran with switches after the calves and drove them, lowing and crazed with spring joy, into the yard.