NEW ALBANY — The following is taken from a recently published article in Mobile Bay Magazine, which is an excerpt from my book, “Feed My Sheep.”
Well-known authors Wendell Berry and Dr. RoseAnne Coleman also quoted parts of the passage. The time was in 1947, when I was 13 and being raised by my grandfather on a hill farm in Kentucky.
“Each day, the land paints a picture for you, but the picture is never the same. Each field, each tree, each blackberry patch and each part of the land has its own meaning. The surface of the land might change with a new crop or a growth of briars and bushes, but it all stays the same. “The heat of the sun might burn it and the freeze might stun it, but the land remains firm and strong. Walking over a hill, down a lane, on a cow path or through a woods, you know each part, and it is as familiar as your bed at night.
“You know each foot of the land like you know the cupboard in the kitchen. You know where the quail roost, where the squirrels scamper and where the foxes roam. You know the best corn ground, the best creek flats and the best groves. You live with the land, walk it, plow it, mow it and can sit down on a rock and listen to its life. It has a life of its own because it never sleeps and never dies.
“It’s like it’s always making a meal for you. After a long day forking hay in the hot sun, you can’t really explain how good it feels to wash up and then sit down on the cool back porch. The taste of the corn and the beans and the tomatoes and the meat and the biscuits and a sweet cobbler gives you the strength to go on. Each day, the land paints a picture for you, but the picture is never the same as the colors change with the sun and the clouds and the seasons. It changes like it’s a different meal, but it doesn’t change. I have mixed feelings when I think about how hard farm life can be. And yet, I feel so free and easy in a way, whenever I stop and think for a moment of how it has a hold on me.
“The feeling inside sort of just happens, and you can’t say this did it or that did it. It’s the many little things. It doesn’t seem like taking sweat-soaked harnesses off your tired, hot horses would be something you would notice much. Opening a barn door for the sheep standing out in a cold rain or throwing a few grains of corn to the chickens are small things, but these little things begin to add up in you, and you can be begin to understand that you’re important. You may not be real important like people who do great things that you read about in the newspaper, but you begin to feel that you’re important to all life around you.
“When I start thinking about how our animals and crops and woods and gardens sort of all fit together, then I get that good feeling inside and don’t worry much about what will happen to me.”
In the book, I ended the passage quoted above with, “The best feeling to have is that everything is going to work out. It’s about as hard to explain feelings as it is to explain how the cherry blossoms turn to sweet cherries on the tree behind the smokehouse.”
Many of my deepest feelings as a 13-year-old haven’t changed in 62 years. And it’s just as difficult trying to explain those sentiments, beliefs and feelings, as it is to explain how beautiful blossoms turn to sweet cherries.
I still believe the best feeling to have is that “everything is going to work out.” Underlying all that encompassed my early life on the farm, my grandfather taught by example and to his dying day, and unsurpassed lesson — never lose the faith.
During the past 60 years, change has been unfathomable. How can you feel “free and easy in a way” being perpetually involved and absorbed in a technical world, which seems to have pushed aside the human connection to the natural world? One regret is that my children and all their children will never, can never experience how the land “has a hold on me.”
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