We have been living through a time of sorrow. Our seed remains seed. Our nostrils are dusty.

Someday men will learn to irrigate and spread fertilizer instead of praying for fertility.

Ellis,_ he said. __ou__e watchin_ a miracle right under your nose._ He gave a few of the seeds to Ellis and let him drop them into the hole he had already made. __n each of them little things, God put life. Now you take care with it, and you feed it with water and sunlight. And, most important of all of __m, put it in good ground, and that life is gonna sprout right out.

A farmer, as one of his farmer correspondents once wrote to Liberty Hyde Bailey, is "a dispenser of the 'Mysteries of God.'"The husband, unlike the "manager" or the would-be objective scientist, belongs inherently to the complexity and the mystery that is to be husbanded, and so the husbanding mind is both careful and humble.

Through my history's despiteand ruin, I have cometo its remainder, and herehave made the beginningof a farm intended to becomemy art of being here.By it I would instructmy wants: they should belongto each other and to this place.Until my song comes hereto learn its words, my artis but the hope of song.(Part 2 from History is Clearing, p 174)

Life on the farm had fed his soul since he was a child. he was ever grateful to Gott for giving him a chance to work the land and live by the seasons. It was a good life...but a lonely one for a man his age, a man too old to be living with his family.