Hello friends, John Prosper here in the heartland. Spring’s upon us and sowing is already on my mind, well, frankly it’s always on my mind. Heh-heh. I buried my truck in the muck this morning on the east side of the farm. Got to get some terraces built on that eighty before planting, or the creek’s gonna swallow more ground this year. It’s obviously too wet right now for the dozer.
I barely got back to the house and was cleaning up when that young lady Willa Mae was on my doorstep. She dropped off a book that she said was like a farmers’ almanac or somethin’…so I was just pe-rusing it, you know, for some planting advice. Man, can that lady run her motor. I thought she was going to burn up all her diesel and mine too! Sometimes I wish she would just drop and run…save me some precious daylight. One day I’ll just stuff her pipe and say “Willa Mae, daylight’s burning! It’s time to ‘get ‘ er done’…but, you know, she does have the hot line for some pretty darn good gossip, if she ain’t making it up. So, I let her stay awhile.
Anyway, here’s something in the ‘almanac’ that’s kind of caught my interest… “As long as the earth remains”…uh, as long as the earth remains; Earth, where are you going? Stay here! I’m a farmer, I need you! “…cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, seed, time, and harvest shall not cease.” Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, b-rilliant! What kind of deep-rooted advice is that? These publishers are making money on the obvious.
Wait, wait, wait, there’s something subterranean here though, and I’m beginning to plow it up. You know, when I was a boy, I was so bright my mother did call me “sun”. These agri-sages, too, just might be smarter than I’m thinkin’, what with their GPS and all. Let’s see what’s behind this bit of prescience. “Cold and heat”; the temperature’s not always the same; “summer and winter”; sometimes it’s one season and then another; “day and night”; sometimes its dark and sometimes it’s light…sow a seed, time passes and, there you have it, a harvest comes. Oh my, chicken fried, it’s almost uncommon sense when one meditates on this little pearl of wisdom. Now the milk’s squirtin’ out of the udder, you see. You know…the swill’s overflowing the trough.
That’s it, that’s it, that’s it! MY SEEDS ARE MY DEEDS, good or bad. It’s something that I do that is a catalyst to my harvest. Doesn’t matter the hour, the temperature or season when I do it. What seeds I sow, and how often, determine the reapage (well, it’s a word where I grew up) over time. That cycle will never cease while this old world turns. The pole light has come on! Pretty soon, if I’ve a notion to sow continuously, the harvester’s eventually going to come upon me, and overtake me. Well thank you and bless your big John Deere-loving heart Willa Mae! Any farm boy should be able to prosper following advisements of this nature. It sure is like a farmers’ almanac…or somethin’.
John Prosper 