VII 27th August 1996
A harvest of 185 tons, averaging just over 2.5 tons per hectare was a disappointment though it was an improvement on last year. We were planning to achieve 4 and did not expect the weeds, which attacked the crops, right at the end of the growing season to do so much damage. It was obviously our own fault not to have spotted the moment when chemistry should have been used. I try to keep up with the demands, visiting Leszczyn from London several times a year, staying weeks at a time, at the crucial times of ploughing, sowing and harvest; but it is not enough to satisfy the needs of a growing farm, where decisions are needed with split-second timing - as the sun turns a good field from promise to one rampant with weed. As on a battlefield, sometimes one needs the grapeshot of ʻAminopelikʼ, sometimes a charge of the guards, with Puma and Alert herbicides, or help of the sappers against fungus, with Caramba or Vista - and at the right moment reinforcement and counterattack with nitrogen - or a need for subterfuge - to make the enemy-weed show itself early, leaving itself open to attack and destruction, whilst helping your crop to gain strength, by slowing it down for greater power later. Obviously all this was not done, and much of the excellent work of planting was wasted. We changed the team again. One is looking for a farmer who, like a London taxi driver, has the ʻknowledgeʼ in his bones of fauna and flora around him - we need advice from moles, or ladybirds - making their decisions, or storks leaving or arriving early. We need local wisdom looking at expression on an old manʼs face when he checks the consistency of a lump of soil between his fingers or with a stick, to opine on timing of treatment needed: there is a great deal to learn, before we make a decision and proceed with action.
During harvesting we pleaded and negotiated with owners of combines to take advantage of the best weather; which is the time when they, understandably, need to cut a field for themselves or for an uncle, or old relative. Nonetheless it was all brought in and loaded into silos which store 3 cubic meters to 19 cm in height, which is an additional check on quantity gathered. For the next agricultural year, which starts on September 1st, we changed the planting rotation by sowing 66 % of winter wheat and the rest in barley. The wheat is sown - half after barley, which left the field lying fallow for six months in the autumn, and the other half directly after wheat, where we alternate the species with Kobra and Sukces.
ʻDorzynkiʼ is a Polish harvest festival celebrated like else- where in Europe with feasting, drinking, music and dancing. We made a communal table sitting 50 people, with tables borrowed from the huntersʼ lodge, which we set in the big barn and feted most of the village, with family and some guests from outside Leszczyn. The celebration starts traditionally with the owner being welcomed by representatives of the assembled company, with a loaf of bread which he has to accept with a sign of the cross; it is a sign for great cheers, followed by the owner and his wife being thrown high in the air by the lusty crowd. It is a festival of thank-you for the year which has gone, expressing joy as well as giving opportunity, amongst the company, to assess what went wrong, whose fault it was and why. Many undercurrents of relationships show in a small community - with long memories of wrongs done or services rendered - not as forceful as in Sicily, but nevertheless real. An occasion like this, arranged by the Dziedzic, Lord of the Manor, who is seen in this instance, as an Englishman and a stranger - with no knowledge of these shades, it can bring people together who may not have otherwise sat at the same table, and allow them to relax and to open up. Festivities which happen all over the Continent at this time.
The problem which recurs most frequently in European history concerns the question of liberty which compounds two ideals: of freedom and justice. It presents itself as a question: do you want freedom at the expense of justice or justice at the expense of freedom, are you more concerned with intellect or more taken by love? Is the intellect of Plato who seeks justice and law a natural enemy of the pale Galilean who puts love first? Are we to be confronted by the horror of individual freedom and licence, or is it better to surrender to dictatorial discipline? Of course we in Europe desire neither of the two to conquer; we want reconciliation not victory. And the problem of organising society always returns to the same question: how to reconcile the two, generally with leaders claiming justice and people seeking freedom. There were of course other factors like Black Death, Genghis Khan or famine, but the vision of the dichotomy affected the philosophers as much as conquerors. Some looked for the answer in religion of the Middle Ages, others in beauty in the Renaissance, yet others in Nationalism. Even today, we seek to reconcile freedom, which is bolstered by capitalism with justice established in socialism.
In the struggle for both, history tells us that citizens grouped themselves in larger and larger units, which became Nations, realised after the 100 year war - built partly on language, partly on geography and partly on history. It was soon characterized by men creating pure loyalty to the new concept, the willingness to sacrifice all, as well as establishing in it an expression of art and beauty. It has become a realisation of patriotism, which will be difficult to leave behind - however one may realise, in the cold light of the day, that the states are only human organisations, which have now become dangerous and more destructive than useful in Europe. Many struggle with the thought that the day of their last sunset will be a day of a great loss. Some nonetheless believe that when it comes, maybe with a Convention, or with a Constitution, or maybe facing a great challenge, it will be the day of new Ethicality in Europe, on par with what occurred at the dawn of the Middle Ages, or of Renaissance or was brought by the Great Revolutions - it will be a second Renaissance of Europe, or better, a new Ascendance of Europe.
In searching for this form the European Union will have to reach out to its Regions: from Callabria to Scotland, from Peloponese to Basque country, from Moscovy to Podlasie, from Yorkshire to Languedoc and Mazuria - and rediscover their inner meaning and joy of peoplesʼ traditions, skills and character living in them. A practical, non-dogmatic European can do this and make the Nations recede slowly into history, like the beautiful styles of Doric, Gothic or Baroque, which are today recalled with pride and pleasure but no longer relevant motivators of action or design. It is sure that England, France, Germany, Poland or Russia will remain as loved patronymics, but surfacing more as adjectives than as nouns, whilst a nominative of a Euroman will mint a new spirit in Europe.
We know that Europe was once such a collection of regions and principalities which saw themselves as independent - with love for which every child was brought up at the same time remaining a proud continent crossed by savants and troubadours. And that today on the island there are per- haps more Yorkshire-men than Britishers! Liberty and justice at the exaggerated scale of todayʼs state is in danger of becoming horror and licence on one part and nationalism and dictatorship on the other. The two concepts can perhaps be reconciled more comfortably by citizens of the Regions. Whilst the national groups have different characteristics, some brim with sureness for change and revolution and others with love of purity in tradition, some struggle for justice here with another for liberty there - a little surrealism facing much organic faith - a rich content for a citizens of Europa as a whole to savour and evolve in her Euregions. There are in life and nature no monopolies for preventing and suppressing new biological species, or new historical destinies and political sys- tems, so the genus europaeum can establish itself from the Atlantic to the Urals. So that a mountain hunter on the Urals feels as close to a fisherman in Agaves as a New Yorker feels for a Californian, but retaining the pride and personality of his enclave.
