The Musings of a Simple Country Man
By Hobie Morris
There is harmony in autumn and a luster in the sky.
–Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Brookfield, NY – Nov. 2015) I’m doing what I seem to have a great talent for—shoveling horse manure. I’ll be shoveling, and carrying in buckets, tons of heavy manure in the fallmonths. If the warm weather continues I expect our still growing sunflowers to reach 25 feet, and we’ll have to hire a drone to take pics of the flowers, or better yet, I’ll lean my extension ladder against them and climb to their summit.
–Author’s e-mail to friend
Autumn reminds this simple country man and his Mona Lisa beautiful wife Lois of the prophetic words penned by their good friend and great rural philosopher Wendell Berry, who reminds us that “the soil is the great connector of our lives, the source and destination of all.”
Aristotle once mused “In all things of Nature there is something of the marvelous.” This is especially true in the fall, where there is an amazing smorgasbord of marvelous things to feast one’s senses on. The annual biological destiny of God’s flora and fauna has mostly been completed. Those of us who live close to the soil are gradually changing too as we prepare for the long, cold and snowy months ahead. But for these two simple country people, living off the grid for over 35 years brings no reprieve from our daily labors. Despite the unknown challenges and work ahead my amazing wife and I are rewarded daily as Nature continues to shape and change us into what I think is something better.
Observing our hard working neighboring farmers, I often wonder what it would be like without them. A bumper sticker says “No Farms No Food.” Indeed, they are America’s greatest asset and I dare say most unappreciated, underpaid, overworked and endangered. They are largely invisible to most Americans as what they do and produce are taken for granted. But we minimize their presence with potentially catastrophic possibilities.
Lois and I are small potatoes and grow small potatoes in our neighborhood. Every day as we admire our farming neighbors, we only minimally share in their frustrations, trials and tribulations. But we do share their optimism, determination, hard work and the innate satisfaction of completing a job as well as we can do it. While we grow small potatoes they grow huge quantities of corn, alfalfa and hay that are necessary to produce nutritious milk. It all looks so simple but as Carl Jung wisely wrote “it would be a simple thing…if only simplicity were not so difficult of all things.”
Compared to our hard working neighbors, my magnificent wife (in every way) and I are only small potatoes. It was Voltaire’s “Candide” who said to the philosopher Pangloss “we must cultivate our garden.” And indeed we have for over 35 years.
Our organic, chemical free garden consists of five large, framed in raised beds. The soil is close to two feet deep, the result of annual amounts of compost, manure, leaves. The soil is porous and rich, smelling wonderfully alive.
Our garden feeds us regardless of our topsy-turvy world. We are working in it most every day during our short growing season using only the hand tools that have been used for thousands of years. I love the feel of a wooden handle in my hand. It gives great satisfaction and joy to plant the tiny seeds that miraculously can produce 18 feet high sunflowers. Gardening is an amazingly soothing and calming experience as we connect with Nature and earth that sustains us all. The pace is slow, quiet and peaceful. A natural pace that gives us time to think in an age that seldom does.
As Mary Sarton has written “everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow cycles of Nature is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.”
As summer slips into Fall, it’s time to harvest our garden and prepare it for a well deserved rest. Our produce is buried in cans dug into the surrounding soil—Nature’s refrigerator.
An old country song has these words: “Whether autumn will bring wind or rain, I cannot know, but today I’ll be working in the fields.” Caring for plants with all the work involved is a great joy for these two simple people. If we are good stewards of the land the land will look after us.
And now it’s time to get back to my manure pile as we begin preparing.
Hobie Morris is a Brookfield resident and simple country man.