Fifty Acres and a Fool: The Man NOT Born to Farming

Wendell Berry, the erudite farmer, novelist, poet, and essayist of rural Kentucky, has written one of my favorite poems.  It's titled "The Man Born to Farming" --

The Grower of Trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,

whose hands reach into the ground and sprout

to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death

yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down

in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.

His thought passes along the row ends like a mole.

What miraculous seed has he swallowed

That the unending sentence of his love flows out of his mouth

Like a vine clinging in the sunlight, and like water

Descending in the dark?

I admire that poem (and Berry) mightily.  But alas, even though I live on fifty acres of farmland that my wife Nancy and I (along with the help of various family, foresters, and occasional volunteers over the past eight years) have been turning from pastureland and production agriculture into forest and prairie, I am not "The Man Born to Farming."

Quite the opposite, it seems.  Until 8 years ago, I had never lived on a farm.  I grew up in the city and love it.  I still work in the city.  And love it.

But, for reasons that mostly God only knows, I have found myself entrusted with the care of this particular parcel of land.  And so many of my hours are spent on a John Deere or fixing some implement or battling invasive species -- in other words, acting like a farmer. 

I, and others, have been slow to recognize that role.  Even Nancy, recently, when I said that I was not a man born to farming, said, "You're not a farmer.  You don't raise anything that feeds anyone."  

Count on a farm girl to humble a city boy.

But I disagree.  I do grow something that feeds someone.  The 10,000 plus trees we've planted feed the atmosphere with good oxygen, the berries and nut trees feed all kinds of wild life, the prairie grasses and wildflowers feed the bees and butterflies and other of God's creatures.

And, and the end of day when what I call farming comes to an end and nothing has broken (including my glasses or nose), the work of my uncalloused hands feeds me, too.

This latter point has come as a major surprise.

Because, as I said, I am NOT the man born to farming.  And yet, a-farming I am.  

It sets me to musing.  Sometimes to grumbling.  Sometimes to prayer.  Sometimes to question.  

Today it has set me to resting.  The past few weeks have been filled with planting prairie, splitting wood, spraying thistle and brush honeysuckle, repairing equipment (why does it always break right in the middle of a job?!), mowing, and ...   But not today.  If I have learned anything from my life of faith, if not from farming, it is that even the first Farmer took a break occasionally.  "Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done." (Genesis 2:1-3)

So I'm taking a sabbath.  A light drizzle, and the fact that it is First-day (as we Quakes call Sunday) reminded me of my need for rest and God's setting that example.  So now, in the early afternoon after Meeting for Worship, I find myself sitting with my feet up, a John Deere blanket around my old legs, and watching a red-headed woodpecker make trips to the bird feeder attached to the picture window across the room from my chair.  Even Mr. Woodpecker is taking a day off.  Instead of knocking his head against a tree, he's eating out today.  Taking it easy.

Sweet rest.  Time to cease from my "not farming" and relax.  Pour another ginger ale, maybe read a book, maybe nap.

Ah, there is that pump on the sprayer that needs fixing.  It'll wait until tomorrow. Thanks be to God.

-- Brent

30 Days of Touch -- Woods and Mushrooms = Rest

Today has been a writing day. Deadlines have a wonderful way of focusing my attention. But unlike some writers I cannot write all day, hour after hour, without breaks of sorts. This morning I took a long one -- a walk in the woods.

It is a gloomy day, but I donned my boots, Carhart jacket, John Deere cap, grabbed my camera and went to see what the weather had wrought over the past few weeks while I've been mostly indoors. I tried to talk the dog into going with me, but Princess is even older than I am (at least in dog years) and figured there were no coyotes the direction I was heading, so declined. Ebony, the last surviving kitteh went with me part way, but then spotted a blue bird on a low branch -- and the stalking was on.

I walked on alone, feel the moist ground give beneath my old boots. I checked where there were newly fallen tree limbs that would need clearing come a drier day. I saw how much more bush honeysuckle needed pulling out, sawing down, or --*gasp* -- poisoned. That stuff is nasty. Much that I had cut last spring and fall, had come back. In force!

I also saw happily that in spite of some heavy rain, the creek bank had not eroded much. And I uncovered some of the tree saplings that had been engulfed in weeds and grass over the summer.

And, though the light was not great, I got some decent shots. Fallen logs covered with moss. Winter mushrooms. And then I heard shots. Close. To close. Very rapid. Large caliber. Large enough to put a fair sized hole in a guy my size, whose dressed in blue jeans and brown jacket and might be mistaken by some doofus as a deer or other critter worth shooting at -- legally or illegally, trespassing or not.

One would think that having 50 acres of land around you would guarantee a far amount of privacy and safety, but it is amazing how small an acre is when someone is firing a lot of ammunition very quickly and you can't tell what direction they are from you or what direction they are aiming.

So I decided to hotfoot it back up to the house. Indignantly, I returned -- my walk cut short.

Still, the walk and time away from words helped settle my mind and soul and get me ready to come back to words. Which I did with a renewed vigor -- and hopefully some decent writing.

I thought about that break as I thought about worship tomorrow. I thought about skipping it since I am in this writing mode. I have to go to Sunday school -- I'm teaching!! But, worship... hmmm, maybe I'll pass. After the walk, I thought, "No." I need to go. It will be the break I need to refresh and replenish my soul. If I am a writing a book that has a lot of God-talk in it, how in Heaven's name could I even consider not going and meeting with the One whom I'm writing about?

I'm slow sometimes. But eventually, God willing, I catch on. So tomorrow morning, I will arise and go to Jesus/ He will embrace me in his arms/ In the arms of my dear Savior/ O there are ten thousand charms.

And rest. Refreshment. Rejuvenation. And so much more.

-- Brent

Quaker Wisdom for Today

True leisureliness is a beautiful thing and may not lightly be given away. Indeed, it is one of the outstanding and most wonderful features of the life of Christ that, with all his work in preaching and healing and planning for the Kingdom, he leaves behind this sense of leisure, of time in which to pray and meditate, to stand and stare at the cornfields and fishing boats, and to listen to the confidences of neighbors and passers-by.

Most of us need from time to time the experience of something spacious or space-making, when Time ceases to be the enemy, goad-in-hand, and becomes our friend. To read good literature, gaze on natural beauty, to follow cultivated pursuits until our spirits are refreshed and expanded, will not unfit us for the up and doing of life. Rather will it help us to separate the essential from the unessential, to know where we are really needed and get a sense of proportion. We shall find ourselves giving the effect of leisure even in the midst of a full and busy life. People do not pour their joys or sorrows into the ears of those with an eye on the clock.

--Caroline C. Graveson