Caretakers Of The Land

Farming:
Definition:
I found this definition while searching for the definition of farming today. I wanted to see what the perception of farming is by the bankers, traders, computer techies and even teachers and the web search engines. Not exactly what I expected to find.　

There's one thing that almost all successful real estate agents have done to develop their business in a specific area or market demographic. They "farm" the area for business. The term farm implies growing something. That's what you do when you farm a local subdivision. You plant the seeds of future business, nurture them with marketing and then hopefully reap the rewards in commissions.

The majority of people today all live in suburbia, surrounded by homes just alike. They each strive to see who can produce the nicest yards, the most lush green grass, with just the right amount of trees and shrubs to enhance the beauty of their home. Yes, they are pleased during the summer months with the results of watering their lawns as they sit on the outdoor furniture and admire their labors. Their quarter acre has cost them quite a sum of money for the results however. The many trips to the big box store for seed and fertilizer was worth it though, they have a beautiful lawn and it shows to all of their neighbors.They are pleased with their labors. These are the people that the realtor's " Farm".

The realtor is almost like the coyote sitting in the edge of the woods, waiting for his opportunity to steal a calf. He's patient and waits for the herd to leave the calf on the edge of the pasture...
stealing in at the moment the calf is asleep. The mother never knowing what happened..but searching frantically to find her baby, back and fourth she travels across the fields...in vain.

Beyond suburbia's world of busy lives so filled with things to do, a farmer stands leaning on a fence post with a blade of dry grass between his lips. He stares at the fields in front of him, with the grass burning up from lack of water, the rains won't come this year. He looks up to the sky in hopes of seeing a cloud with some water in it to quench the thirsty blades before him, he can't find a single one, the sky is clear and blue. He is taken back to a time when the field was barely covered by grass. He and his father had cleared the land of stumps and briars with a mule and sore hands and backs. It took them many months to make the land useful, with sweat and hard work, pulling out tree stumps to make way for the crop. The man was only a boy when he helped his father guide the mules across the land, to till it and then seed it and bring it to fruition, with a harvest to bring in come fall. Times have changed since then, progress has brought the tools to work many more acres than could be done with a mule and one man.

Progress brought them a tractor one day, along with a payment they weren't sure they could make and still put food on the table for the winter. But the garden had provided well for the winter months to come, and the hams and bacon were hanging in the smoke house, providing food for the winter. Cool fall days brought the local folks together to make sausage in large quantities. This was the way it was done, so that everyone could have the homemade sausage fried up with eggs and biscuits. Homemade biscuits, because the stores didn't have them lining the shelves to be bought everyday. This was the way, of the past.
Homemade clothes and homemade bread. The women didn't work outside of the home. There wouldn't have been time even if there had been a job to go to. They were few, back then.

The boy grew into a man and took over the care of the land, his father now too crippled from the years of labor to continue, as he sits in the truck and watches his son, unwilling to turn away completely from the land. The son, now grown with his own family, continues to care for the land in hopes that it will return to him the means to feed his own family another year.
Every year he goes to the bank and borrows enough money to take care of the land and grow a crop, doing the best he could to care for it, the land. Paying back the loan after the harvest, and what ever was left he could care for his family and maybe provide a few extras this year. The family couldn't afford all the things that others did, but they knew and understood, the land had to be cared for in order for them to eat. Each child knew that food was a precious commodity and they enjoyed the many meals from the garden. Each one of them had held those tomatoes in their hands and knelt on the ground to pick the potatoes up after they were dug, taking part in the garden that would provide them with food for many months.

The crop the farmer had raised was sold to put food food on the table for people all over the country. These people go to the store today and purchase all their food needs, without a single thought to how it is produced or that it will ever be gone. Farming, a word that is beneath their dignity. For most of the city dwellers that run to the store and buy most anything their hearts desire, think of "farmers" as low class people with dirt under their nails. Not someone they would invite into their homes for a meal. How ironic, that the people that feed the nation are thought of as lower class by the millions that enjoy filling their bellies every single day and demand good products in plentiful amounts. What if...the products become not so good..or not so healthy..

Standing in line at the local fair a mother smiles and asks the lady next to her what she does for a living. The well dressed lady replies that they are farmers and smiles. The mother moves away a few steps, not wanting to be too near...she was repelled by the word "farmer". The woman loved all the jellies and jams in the booth that had won ribbons, she was impressed with those, but not the farmer as she moved away. Her perception of what a farmer consisted of was a black and white picture from the twenties of a poor farmer, holding a shovel covered in dirt. She had no idea how those jellies had come to be in those jars, but more importantly, she didn't wonder at all. To her, the jars just got filled magically for her to purchase. How the food is produced, and how long it takes, has no impact on her. She works in an office with a very important job to do, food would always just be there for her, just because. She has no thougths or knowledge of caring for the land or the path that the food chain is on. For her, the land is where her house sits and she isn't capable of thinking past this. The woman with the important job and a mortgage, not understanding at all.

The farmers children understood how the land provided for them, giving back to them for the labor their father poured into it, seven days a week and long hours, leaving him tired when they wanted him to come to a game or go to a school play.
He did go to those games and was proud of his children as they strived to do their best, win or lose. Not always able to go to those games though, he had to be in the fields to beat the rains or the heat. He had instilled in them how to do their best by example, caring for the land. The man is old now too, past seventy, and yet he still takes care of the land as he has for almost all of those seventy years. His hands are riddled with arthritis now, showing the years and the hard work they have done, but he's not done yet. He takes care of the land now too, bent and humbled by the riches the land has given to him. Oh not by money, to be sure. But riches none the less.
The land had been in this family for generations, these caretakers didn't need someone that had never even lived on a farm, telling them how to take care of it now, the new way. Caring for it had been bred into them. But tell them they would, as politics came to the farm in a shiny new car and told them the better way to do things now, times were changing he was told. Worry creased the wrinkle in his brow as he thought about this.
The young man who stood in shiny shoes he didn't want to get dirty as he held out the map for the farmer to see, had never held the tools in his hands to till the land. This young man had never spent weeks and months, waiting and praying for the rain to come with sweat running down his back, from dawn til dusk. The young man got back in his car as the farmer got in his truck and headed back the same way he had come, from the city, with very clean hands and shoes.. and not a drop of sweat on his shirt.

What will happen to all those people in the city when the last farmer has laid down his plough? Of course the small farmer doesn't feed the masses by himself, but all together they will and do. The way it's been done for generations, handed down by families to care for the land and produce the food that feeds our country. Should we look to other countries for our food now? Have we progressed so far that we can't see beyond the end of our road? America has always been a great country, with great caretakers of the land and that hasn't changed. The politics have changed, gaining the power to govern how we take care of the land. Can you imagine what the landscape of our country will look like if bureaucracy takes over every inch of the land left in this country? Suburbia will take over for a while and fill the fields of grass with houses of wood and stone, before anyone notices that the landscape has disappeared.

No more fences along the miles of lush green pastures with horses and cattle grazing the fields for people to marvel at as they drive past on their way to a vacation spot. No more farmhouses with mothers making jelly and jam. No more children learning to care for the land and the way of life that has sustained our country for so very long.
Then what, what will be left in America? Will the grocery stores dot every corner with shelves filled to the brim..or will it resemble other countries..and have empty store shelves without a loaf of bread? Children looking to their parents with hollow empty eyes, hungry. Parents hanging their heads without an answer. They didn't know, they didn't know.

Farmers have long been the first environmentalists of this country. They didn't go to college to learn how to feed the land, the knowledge was passed down from one generation to the next. Rotating the crops from year to year so the land would remain fertile. The caretakers of the land learned from hard work, how to give back to the land so that it would continue to produce and return to them food for people and livestock. As time went on and progress reached the farmers, they took out the loans for the equipment to make bigger crops, hoping for a better future. Today, one piece of equipment can cost as much as a house. It won't last as long though, it will have to be replaced before too many years pass, much higher than a lawnmower too.

Long before the enlightened, progressive, well dressed college grads were born, the lowly farmer has taken care of the land. The land in return, has taken care of the people, the city people and the country people, all of them.