Monday, November 06, 2006
OUR ROOTS GO DEEP.....
It’s been a rainy day in the Ozarks. After such a dry summer and our water table so low we are delighted to see water in any form. Rain gets a bad rap at times when it spoils our plans but being without it very long can change your attitude quickly.
Not having rain effects everyone and everything. I am reminded how dependant Nature is on the balance of things……any shortage starts at the top and trickles on down. My dad used to say if the farmer goes broke, the country goes broke. A younger man laughed at him…… “It’s the large companies and industry that keep the country going…..they can overcome the farmer’s demise.” My dad laughed a knowing laugh and shook his head. “You’ll see,” he said….. “you’ll see.”
Within a few short years we all felt the pinch when the farmer’s dried out and didn’t have crops, didn’t have cattle, chickens, pork or other farm products to sell. The high prices at the grocery stores were felt by all of us and when the high gas prices hurt the farmer, we hurt right along with them. It makes me sad when someone demeans a “farmer” as if he were a second-class citizen.
Where would we be without the farmer? The American farmer feeds the world. His wife often teaches school or works at some job ‘in town’ while the children grow up learning about and respecting life……and caring for it. Often times he works at some other job as well to make ends meet. The family is a unit to take care of the land they call their own.
Where can you learn responsibility so young, to grow up free with lots of room? The rest of us work in buildings, some without windows…… we don’t feel the sun on our back or the sting of cold sleet…we work by the clock and with air conditioning, furnaces and vending machines. Offices filled with the noise of machines and people on phones……the instant life of business.
I remember walking out of our big building when the workday was done and it was like perfume to smell air so fresh after a rain. I grew up close to nature and I missed the sights and smells…..the sounds. Dad has been gone a long time now but the small pine trees he planted for mom are huge and a haven for the birds and squirrels…..the highest trees around. He would have been proud to see how they have grown.
I have a picture of him in his garden, leaning on his hoe as he gazed off in the distance. As a young man he had farmed with horses and crude machinery….in planting time, often by the light of the moon. His young bride would bring food for him to eat and they dreamed the dreams of the young. Now he was old and weathered, his cultivating was with a hoe held in his hand.
What were his thoughts as he stood there?...his feet on the ground he just tilled and his eyes to the sky. I wish I knew but they were never spoken.....
Until next time,
Essentially Esther
Not having rain effects everyone and everything. I am reminded how dependant Nature is on the balance of things……any shortage starts at the top and trickles on down. My dad used to say if the farmer goes broke, the country goes broke. A younger man laughed at him…… “It’s the large companies and industry that keep the country going…..they can overcome the farmer’s demise.” My dad laughed a knowing laugh and shook his head. “You’ll see,” he said….. “you’ll see.”
Within a few short years we all felt the pinch when the farmer’s dried out and didn’t have crops, didn’t have cattle, chickens, pork or other farm products to sell. The high prices at the grocery stores were felt by all of us and when the high gas prices hurt the farmer, we hurt right along with them. It makes me sad when someone demeans a “farmer” as if he were a second-class citizen.
Where would we be without the farmer? The American farmer feeds the world. His wife often teaches school or works at some job ‘in town’ while the children grow up learning about and respecting life……and caring for it. Often times he works at some other job as well to make ends meet. The family is a unit to take care of the land they call their own.
Where can you learn responsibility so young, to grow up free with lots of room? The rest of us work in buildings, some without windows…… we don’t feel the sun on our back or the sting of cold sleet…we work by the clock and with air conditioning, furnaces and vending machines. Offices filled with the noise of machines and people on phones……the instant life of business.
I remember walking out of our big building when the workday was done and it was like perfume to smell air so fresh after a rain. I grew up close to nature and I missed the sights and smells…..the sounds. Dad has been gone a long time now but the small pine trees he planted for mom are huge and a haven for the birds and squirrels…..the highest trees around. He would have been proud to see how they have grown.
I have a picture of him in his garden, leaning on his hoe as he gazed off in the distance. As a young man he had farmed with horses and crude machinery….in planting time, often by the light of the moon. His young bride would bring food for him to eat and they dreamed the dreams of the young. Now he was old and weathered, his cultivating was with a hoe held in his hand.
What were his thoughts as he stood there?...his feet on the ground he just tilled and his eyes to the sky. I wish I knew but they were never spoken.....
Until next time,
Essentially Esther
