194 Quotes About Farming

The solution to problems with modern agriculture isn't just to return to the way things were done in the past. The solution to the problems of modern agriculture is to establish a Biblicle foundation for our agriculture and to seek to apply it in every area of our farming.

She said how ludicrous it was to plant huge fields of the same kinds of crops, guaranteeing pests -- and the need to use chemicals -- when, back home, the same crop was planted every seven rows. Mixing things up meant that a pest would starve before reaching the next row it needed to eat.

After a while they came through a clearing and emerged in a deep cleft of a valley whose high banks were covered in wild flowers and grasses. Blaze gasped; it was enchanting. There was an open pasture planted with mature oaks and beech trees and through the middle a meandering river with sheep grazing on one side, cattle on the other. Occasionally there was a break in the ribbon of green made by a drystone wall, a rambling hedge or a small copse, but otherwise the valley seemed endless.

The mundanity of those chores, the repetition, acts as a kind of meditation. I start each day with a series of numbers and questions written on a piece of paper, put them in my pocket and get on with the business of farming. By mid morning the answers are clear.

I'll just say that on any given day, Roz might have to be a mechanic or a veterinarian or a gardener or a plumber or a cleaner or a landscaper or an electrician, or all of the above. Farm life kept Rox very busy indeed.

Fighting a battle with the earth seems like a plenty noble calling to me. Putting food on your table and on the plates of others - it's a quieter way. But it's a good way.

Smart people don't work with their hands. If you have a brain, being outside and performing physical labor are the things you do on the weekends, or when you're young, not as a way to make a living.

Every day when I wake up and head out for chores, I'm struck by the beauty we enjoy on our farm. Based on visitors' comments, that's a shared awareness. Not one of our doors has a skull and crossbones. We want visitors to be struck not by what we've done, but rather by how we've caressed this beautiful niche of God's creation into a productive and profoundly inspiring place.

A Virginia subdivision now has restricted deed covenants against 'farming and other nuisances'. Can you imagine? In our culture, we are actually labeling farming as a nuisance. What have we done to ourselves, that the oldest and noblest vocation on earth, the educated agrarian proletariat envisioned by Thomas Jefferson, has been reduced to nothing more than a nuisance?