agricultural cycle Quotes

The white men of the South had better make up their minds that the blacks will remain in the South just as long as corn will tassel and cotton will bloom into whiteness.

A farmer does not grow something in the sense that he or she creates it. That human is only a small part of the whole process by which nature expresses its being.

For man, autumn is a time of harvest, of gathering together. For nature, it is a time of sowing, of scattering abroad.

There's no beginning to the farmer's year, / Only recurrent patterns on a scroll / Unwinding...

The spring rains woke the dormant tillers, and bright green shoots sprang from the moist earth and rose like sleepers stretching after a long nap. As spring gave way to summer, the bright green stalks darkened, became tan, turned golden brown. The days grew long and hot. Thick towers of swirling black clouds brought rain, and the brown stems glistened in the perpetual twilight that dwelled beneath the canopy. The wheat rose and the ripening heads bent in the prairie wind, a rippling curtain, an endless, undulating sea that stretched to the horizon.

One day you are drinking the wine, and they next day you are picking the grapes.

I trust in nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant and autumn garner to the end of time.

For out of old fields, as men saith, Cometh all this new corn from year to year; And out of old books, in good faith, Cometh all this new science that men learn.

Horses raise what the farmer eats and eats what the farmer raises. You can't plow the ground and get gasoline.

We eat the year away. We eat the spring and the summer and the fall. We wait for something to grow and then we eat it.

If the grain of wheat could know fear, it would be paralyzed with anxiety at the thought of being dropped in the ground, covered over, put out of sight, doomed to inactivity, yet what a glorious harvest awaits it!

This world could not exist if it were not so simple. The ground has been tilled a thousand years, yet its powers remain ever the same; a little rain, a little sun, and each spring it grows green again.

Our rural ancestors, with little blest, Patient of labor when the end was rest, Indulged the day that housed their annual grain, With feasts, and off'rings, and a thankful strain.

In traditional agriculture, the soil is the mother. She's the mother who gives, to whom you must give back.

Before the bud swells, before the grass springs, before the plough is started, comes the sugar harvest. It is sequel of the bitter frost; a sap run is the sweet goodbye of winter.

The lyf so short, the craft so longe to lerne. Th' assay so hard, so sharp the conquerynge, The dredful joye, alwey that slit so yerne; Al this mene I be love... For out of olde feldes, as men seith, Cometh al this new corn fro yeer to yere; And out of olde bokes, in good feith, Cometh al this newe science that men lere.

It was the fall into history that enslaved us to the labor cycle, to the agricultural cycle. And notice how fiendish it is.

Truths are first clouds; then rain, then harvest and food.