{"id":1749,"date":"2013-10-06T13:28:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-06T13:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2013\/10\/in-praise-of-farming.html"},"modified":"2013-10-06T13:28:00","modified_gmt":"2013-10-06T13:28:00","slug":"in-praise-of-farming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2013\/10\/in-praise-of-farming.html","title":{"rendered":"In praise of farming"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
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Our county jail as I remember it<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

I\u2019m no expert on farming or the various issues that no doubt plague it today. \u00a0I grew up in a small, rural farming community in north central Ohio. \u00a0We were in the County Seat, which meant many of the county\u2019s professionals and leaders were in our town. \u00a0In fact, we had one of the highest median household incomes for the state when I was there. \u00a0So it was a strange mixture of well-to-do suburbanites surrounded by fields and farmlands.<\/p>\n

Of course, it wasn\u2019t always pristine. \u00a0It was smaller farms than, say, in Iowa or Kansas. \u00a0As often as not, they were fields broken by hills and woodlands. \u00a0Winding country roads with old, dilapidated houses and rusting farm equipment, sitting year after year, helping to reduce taxes on the annual submissions. \u00a0At times, truth be told, it looked downright dirty out there. \u00a0Junked up yards, old vehicles. \u00a0Every now and then a farm house itself looked good, but only until you drove a little and saw this or that rundown, abandoned building with boards over the windows and doors. \u00a0Again, tax shelters agricultural style.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, at night, it could be downright scary. \u00a0One night when I was little, my Aunt and Grandma were visiting and we were coming home from nearby Marion. \u00a0It was pouring rain, and the car got stuck near home. \u00a0My Mom got out and went to a nearby farmhouse. \u00a0It was old, the wood grayed and the porch <\/p>\n

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buckled. \u00a0She knocked on the door, and an old woman with stringy gray hair answered. \u00a0She invited my Mom to use the phone. \u00a0Mom went into a room decorated in serious 19th century farm deco, with old dusty furniture and a single lamp lighting the entire downstairs. \u00a0A staircase ascended into darkness. \u00a0Mature as my Mom was, she got the shivers. \u00a0My cousins visited with my sister once, and they stayed the night at a neighboring farmhouse. \u00a0The next morning they swore they had stayed in a haunted house.<\/p>\n

Still, there was something about it. \u00a0Our school area sat in the middle of the older neighborhoods in town, with the high school and its sports fields the farthest north, flanked by houses, woods and a corn field. \u00a0Football on Friday nights just doesn\u2019t seem the same without looking at the buildings along one side and the field to the north.<\/p>\n

And you had the FFA \u2013 that\u2019s Future Farmers of America to us, a select subgroup of the high school culture, snuff in cheeks and able to take apart a tractor with one arm tied behind their backs. \u00a0Those kids had been driving grain trucks before most of us were playing with toy soldiers. <\/p>\n

And then there was the harvest time. \u00a0The house my Dad rebuilt, when I was about two years old, sat outside town in the inner-skirts of the farming regions. \u00a0He had \u2013 at the time \u2013 30 acres. \u00a0Most of it was woods. \u00a0Nearby was a field to the west. \u00a0Against the recommendations of nearby farmers, he had a large garden next to that field. \u00a0It grew wonderfully. \u00a0Corn, beans, tomatoes, cantaloupe (the best anyone ever ate), pumpkins \u2013 he even tried watermelon once. \u00a0And at harvest time, back then, you still saw cornstalks and haystacks, old scarecrows in fields and sincere pumpkin patches. <\/p>\n

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And the creme de la creme<\/i> of small town living, farmers in the fields at night, harvesting the fruits of their labor. \u00a0To this day, there is something about driving home at night and seeing tractors \u2013 or more likely today combines \u2013 in the fields, depositing \u00a0the grains and cobs into a nearby wagon. \u00a0The lights illuminate the scene every time in a way that just tugs at something inside, something that makes you think about a life on the land, near nature, bound to the harvests and the seasons. \u00a0Even with half million dollar combines with televisions, computers and central air, there\u2019s a natural connection. \u00a0It invokes. \u00a0It reminds me that for all the benefits of technology and industry and the latest smartphone app, we\u2019ve lost something. \u00a0In those lights in the night, I think every time that there is something to be said about a life with nature and nature\u2019s God. \u00a0Not that no farmers are atheists, but there has to be something that connects you in a way that the tech savvy cosmopolitan could never understand. \u00a0Not that I\u2019m ready to do an Oliver Wendell Douglas, but it is something I think on every harvest time when I see those farmers working until the wee hours of the night.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our county jail as I remember it I\u2019m no expert on farming or the various issues that no doubt plague it today. \u00a0I grew up in a small, rural farming community in north central Ohio. \u00a0We were in the County Seat, which meant many of the county\u2019s professionals and leaders were in our town. \u00a0In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2805,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nIn praise of farming<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Our county jail as I remember itI'm no expert on farming or the various issues that no doubt plague it today.  I grew up in a small, rural farming\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" 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