A middle-aged fellow at Marshfield was running 26.2 miles last Saturday, the distance he’d have been running had a marathon he’d been training to run that day not been canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Some folks asked the fellow’s father-in-law why the guy still would go ahead and run that distance despite the marathon’s cancellation.
“If you have to ask, I doubt you’d understand the answer,” answered the old father-in-law, himself literally and figuratively the veteran of many marathons.
That sort of questioning historically has been asked where farming is concerned, too. There are the obvious answers that someone has to provide food for humanity to survive, and the farmers the folks doing it. But there also are those more philosophical questions about why someone would continue the the challenging labors and economics farmers see every day.
It’s that of the willingness to face such daily challenges in labor and economics which make many people wonder why farmers continue with their daily work. The answer provided by the marathon runner’s father-in-law fits the farming questions: “If you have to ask, I doubt you’d understand the answer.”
Perhaps plenty of farmers don’t really know why. It’s in their systems — they’re born with farming in their blood; the land beckons them; they have a love for animals or for growing crops. The truth is somewhere in the farmers’ spirits.
And then, more clear answers arrive in the early morning sky. They were there this morning as the region’s farmers headed across their farmyards in the pre-dawn darkness — the farmers’ eyes drawn to the brightness of the full Flower Moon heading toward its moonset on the west horizon.
Only a handful of jobs would give the farmers to see such a sight that time of the day, complete with the chance to pause for a moment to absorb the sunlight reflected from the moon and in it find more hope for the day’s labors.
Under that full Flower Moon the planting will continue and sprouted crops will find their ways to the surface. And then, under every phase of coming moons the farmers will watch their crops grow and give bounty for many people.
Under that full Flower Moon the farmers know the answers to many questions.
— Scott Schultz
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