I replant the field. Most-ideal of a non-ideal situation—it didn’t work. Looking over field post-emergence, you can see the slopes and seeps and holds where water keeps—all of them were drowned, blank spots in stand of corn.
July, I plant beans. Money for the nitrogen is lost; but decomposition of the ground cover will cycle other nutrients back; and while many make fuss over fertilizer numbers, I hold to an archaic (and historical) belief that good soil matters more than chemistry and that without the first the second is irrelevant—but you can’t sell topsoil and organic matter like you can salts, so salts and chemicals are what industry pushes.
I consider myself a farmer, not a producer—they are not the same. One is fading while the other, perceiving themselves prosperous, faces faster extinction as they find they cannot afford to keep pace with the devaluation of their produce and expense of production that makes them slave to lenders and sellers while all progresses ever-further to terminal point of complete automation and non-necessity of man in the post-modern that despite trendiness of sound implies “non-present” and “non-living”, “non-man”—the end state of evil.
This time, I do not plant straight and lined. The ground is not level. The ground is not square; so I adapt to the earth—not expecting it to change for me. I plant to the contour and lay of the land, keeping parallel or slightly sloped to elevation of the land. By this, every plant and row becomes retainer and controller of water, nutrients, and—most important—soil. Acres don’t pay if they are crap. We must be better with our land; and straight rows—fast and efficient for equipment—leave earth that is eroded, washed, in linear path taking sheets of the only part of the field that pays and piling them in waterways and against fence and tree rows and hillside bottoms and field boundaries where nature, grass, and growth absorb and retain what producer has turned to waste; expendable economy, racing and mechanically efficient, not seeing earth works in a different way.
I’m not a producer. I’m hardly a farmer—but I notice and see as farmers should, of caretaker and not extortioner’s intent. I’ll leave it better than I found it; not getting all that I can but what I may so that earth and I may both benefit of the time and labor and love.
Idealistic—yes—but I’d hate a life operated and lived for less. It’s empty in the end—taking more than is returned.
Failure of first-attempt, I try again: effort, attention, and care again so that we both (earth and I) might improve upon our last.
I’m optimistic—as idealists should be.