Some links may be affiliate links. I may earn money if you buy something or take an action after clicking one of these links on this site.
Rob Knowlan is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
National Farmer’s Day 2024
Living in lovely, rural Schuylkill County as I do, it makes National Farmer’s Day particularly meaningful to me. We’re blessed to be surrounded by such a variety of beautiful farms. When you live in the midst of so many farms, you’re sure to have farm fresh produce and products available throughout the year. After all, no farmers no food.
Farmers Who Put Food On Our Tables
Our deep respect for the land and its harvest is the legacy of generations of farmers who put food on our tables, preserved our landscape, and inspired us with a powerful work ethic. ~James H. Douglas, Jr.
Where I grew up was on the border between the Greater Philly suburbs and Dutch Wonderland.
Souderton isn’t explicitly rural, but it was close enough to honest-to-God farmland to feel rural-ish.
Essentially, we lived at the fence line. If you went one way, you get more and more urban until you hit downtown Philadelphia.
If you went the other way, it’s corn, wheat, cows and barns. Distelfinks and Hex Signs for miles around.
I generally went that way. I’m not a city guy. I can go into cities for specific purposes, but I prefer not to.
I like passing a half dozen farm stands on my way from A to B. I like wending through woods and cultivated fields of crops.
That’s my jam.
Without farmers, not only do I not have more fresh produce than I can shake a fork at, but I also don’t have beautiful vistas, placid herbivores wandering around or substantial stretches of unoccupied green space.
I like not being in a county-sized continuous neighborhood of townhouses, McMansions and culs de sac full of the same house you saw five hundred blocks back.
I appreciate farmers for keeping the food fresh, the environment clean, the spaces open and Pennsylvania wooded.
I couldn’t do it.
God knows umpteenth generation farmers can barely do it anymore, but I know I couldn’t.
So, God bless our farmers for what they do. Would be nice to see them encouraged instead of squeezed out.
🚫 No Farmers 🌾🌾🚜🌽🎃 No Food 🍽️
18 Futuristic Agriculture Machines And Tools: Revolutionizing Farming in the 21st Century 027
I have a lot of respect for these folks. These are the original Americans.
The first people off the boat set right to farming. No Farmers, No Food. The Pilgrims knew it. The Jamestown Settlers knew it.
There was no Lenapemart. Dollar Generals didn’t spring up like mushroom rings the way they do today.
It was understood that when you arrived, you were going to pick a parcel of land and grow your own food, produce your own wares, build your own house and live your own life.
It’s a bit too often that I hear political pundits yacking about how the Constitution assumed an agrarian society, as if it was something to leave behind.
A well-placed ERP and we’re right back in Colonial times, y’all. Actually, we’d be farther back than that because at least our 17th to early 20th Century forebears knew how to live without electricity and internal combustion engines. We’d be back in the early Bronze Age, reinventing civilization without all of our conveniences.
Not so our farmers. I’m not saying they’re all Amish. Plenty of farmers are taking full advantage of everything the early 21st Century has to offer, but they still have the family knowledge of how to live simply.
Farmers would have the easiest transition to post-Modern, post-ERP living because they already have land to plow and crops to harvest. They know how to can or dry or otherwise store their extra produce.
Hopefully, it will never happen. If it does, I’d rather live near a farm than an apartment block.
Lee Brice – Farmer (Official Music Video)
What’s In Your Barn?
If a farmer fills his barn with grain, he gets mice. If he leaves it empty, he gets actors. ~Walter Scott
If you’ve ever seen White Christmas, you know this to be the case. Honestly, is there anything more dramatic than a barn?
Barns, to us non-farmers, are romantic and mysterious things. What looks like a large, spacious building is deceptively simple.
Centuries of farmers have come up with interesting features to faciliate farmwork.
You’re housing your animals to protect them from weather and predators. You’re storing your tools. You’re storing bales of hay and straw to provide bedding and food.
There are all these curious nooks and crannies that look completely inscrutable to the non-farmer, but are ridiculously obvious to the farmer.
That’s how it is with the writer’s brain.
We have awkward corners set aside for odds and ends of random topical knowledge.
We have large attics full of grammar and style to provide structure and insulation for our stories.
People scratch their heads and wonder why we know such abstract and ridiculous things.
They wonder why we watch people the way farmers watch the clouds and the behavior of their livestock.
Unlike our rugged friends, we need not necessarily get up before the sun rises.
Some of us do, but many of us have the luxury to do our work when it works for us rather than what is needful by the light of day.
Sometimes we have mental droughts and sometimes we have bumper crops.
Unlike the farmer, we can typically fix the dry spells with a few mental exercises.
Like our farmer friends and most other people, we can enjoy and appreciate the beauty of the world around us.
It’s a beautiful October Saturday, so go out and find a patch of open space to take a walk and get a breath of fresh air.
That’s all for today. Have a lovely weekend and thank your friendly neighborhood farmers. We’d be awfully hungry without them.