{"id":64590,"date":"2015-11-13T12:00:44","date_gmt":"2015-11-13T17:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=64590"},"modified":"2015-11-12T16:51:31","modified_gmt":"2015-11-12T21:51:31","slug":"harvest-time-and-two-small-potatoes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=64590","title":{"rendered":"Harvest Time and Two Small Potatoes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Musings of a Simple Country Man<\/p>\n

\"Hobie<\/a>
Hobie Morris<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Hobie Morris<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

There is harmony in autumn and a luster in the sky.<\/p>\n

–Percy Bysshe Shelley<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(Brookfield, NY \u2013 Nov. 2015) I\u2019m doing what I seem to have a great talent for\u2014shoveling horse manure. I\u2019ll be shoveling, and carrying in buckets, tons of heavy manure in the fallmonths.\u00a0 If the warm weather continues I expect our still growing sunflowers to reach 25 feet, and we\u2019ll have to hire a drone to take pics of the flowers, or better yet, I\u2019ll lean my extension ladder against them and climb to their summit.<\/p>\n

–Author\u2019s e-mail to friend<\/p>\n

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 \u201cthe soil is the great connector of our lives, the source and destination of all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aristotle once mused \u201cIn all things of Nature there is something of the marvelous.\u201d\u00a0 This is especially true in the fall, where there is an amazing smorgasbord of marvelous things to feast one\u2019s senses on.\u00a0 The annual biological destiny of God\u2019s flora and fauna has mostly been completed.\u00a0 Those of us who live close to the soil are gradually changing too as we prepare for the long, cold and snowy months ahead.\u00a0 But for these two simple country people, living off the grid for over 35 years brings no reprieve from our daily labors.\u00a0 Despite the unknown challenges and work ahead my amazing wife and I are rewarded\u00a0 daily as Nature\u00a0 continues to shape and change us into what I think is something better.<\/p>\n

Observing our hard working neighboring farmers, I often wonder what it would be like without them.\u00a0 A bumper sticker says \u201cNo Farms No Food.\u201d\u00a0 Indeed, they are America\u2019s greatest asset and I dare say most unappreciated, underpaid, overworked and endangered.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 They are largely invisible to most Americans as what they do and produce are taken for granted.\u00a0 But we minimize their presence with potentially catastrophic possibilities.<\/p>\n

Lois and I are small potatoes and grow small potatoes in our neighborhood.\u00a0 Every day as we admire our farming neighbors, we only minimally share in their frustrations, trials and tribulations.\u00a0 But we do share their optimism, determination, hard work and the innate satisfaction of completing a job as well as we can do it.\u00a0 While we grow small potatoes they grow huge quantities of corn, alfalfa and hay that are necessary to produce nutritious milk.\u00a0 It all looks so simple but as Carl Jung wisely wrote \u201cit would be a simple thing\u2026if only simplicity were not so difficult of all things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Compared to our hard working neighbors, my magnificent wife (in every way) and I are only small potatoes.\u00a0 It was Voltaire\u2019s \u201cCandide\u201d who said to the philosopher Pangloss \u201cwe must cultivate our garden.\u201d\u00a0 And indeed we have for over 35 years.<\/p>\n

Our organic, chemical free garden consists of five large, framed in raised beds.\u00a0 The soil is close to two feet deep, the result of annual amounts of compost, manure, leaves.\u00a0 The soil is porous and rich, smelling wonderfully alive.<\/p>\n

Our garden feeds us regardless of our topsy-turvy world.\u00a0 We are working in it most every day during our\u00a0 short growing season using only the hand tools that have been used for thousands of years.\u00a0 I love the feel of a wooden handle in my hand.\u00a0 It gives great satisfaction and joy to plant the tiny seeds that miraculously can produce 18 feet high sunflowers.\u00a0 Gardening is an\u00a0 amazingly soothing and calming experience as we connect with Nature and earth that sustains us all.\u00a0 The pace is slow, quiet and peaceful. \u00a0A natural pace that gives us time to think in an age that seldom does.<\/p>\n

As Mary Sarton has written \u201ceverything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow cycles of Nature is a help.\u00a0 Gardening is an instrument of grace.\u201d<\/p>\n

As summer slips into Fall, it\u2019s time to harvest our garden and prepare it for a well deserved rest.\u00a0 Our produce is buried in cans dug into the surrounding soil\u2014Nature\u2019s refrigerator.<\/p>\n

An old country song has these words: \u201cWhether autumn will bring wind or rain, I cannot know, but today I\u2019ll be working in the fields.\u201d\u00a0 Caring for plants with all the work involved is a great joy for these two simple people.\u00a0 If we are good stewards of the land the land will look after us.<\/p>\n

And now it\u2019s time to get back to my manure pile as we begin preparing.<\/p>\n

Hobie Morris is a Brookfield resident and simple country man. \u00a0<\/em> <\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 \u2013 Nov. 2015) I\u2019m doing what I seem to have a great talent for\u2014shoveling horse manure. I\u2019ll be shoveling, and carrying in buckets, tons of heavy manure in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43meu-gNM","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/madisoncountycourier.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Morris-head-new.jpg?fit=226%2C287&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}