Gleaning Fall Harvest Lessons

This past month, farmers headed to their fields to begin gathering fall harvests. For those with at least a pint of farm blood coursing through their veins, a day like last Tuesday was a sight to behold.

Driving my sister and nephew from Connecticut through the countryside with Mom, who was seeing her 96th harvest, we listened as Mom reminisced about “the good ole harvest days.”

She can still hear the sounds of harvest. Her brother Harry was responsible for those rhythmic “thuds” as he grabbed a dry yellow cornstock, yanked off its ear and pitched the corn against the high wooden backboard set onto the wagon just for harvest. Slowly the team of horses pulled the wagon forward as Harry kept up the rhythmic thud, pause, thud, pause, thud.

Uncle Harry was among the best harvesters in their Kansas community. He could pick 100 bushels of corn a day. Not everybody could do that.

One hundred a day.

We asked if that total was shelled or unshelled. Mom wasn’t sure, she just knew Harry had a reputation for picking 100 bushels a day.

I can almost guess how today’s farmers would feel if at the end of a day of harvesting they had 100 bushels to show for their efforts.

Times have changed. With many cornfields likely to yield 200 bushels an acre this fall, either Uncle Harry’s arms would grow weary before he’d moved very far into a field, or it’d take a lot of Uncle Harrys to complete the corn harvest.

Regardless, though, of the modernization of genetically engineering seed, easier methods for preparing soil and tending fields to limit loss and triumph over weeds or infestations of some sort, one basic principle has stood the test of time: you reap what you sow. A farmer of any age knows when he’s planted corn, if it survives until harvest, he’ll harvest corn.

Harvests’ lessons include both reward for work and dependence upon God for what we cannot control, and reaffirm that because actions produce consequences, throughout life we tend to reap what we sow. The timeless lesson holds true for farmers, individuals, businesses, churches, families, and nations.

Understanding the sowing-reaping principle is basic to our education, maturity and survival.

In the United States, where presidential appointees are accountable to the president, who is, remember, accountable to citizens and to God (we all are), we citizens can justifiably question whether education czar Kevin Jennings will sow in the field of education what we want students, and the future, to reap.

If we survive until we’re 96, will we fondly recall harvest’s “thud, thud, thud” if we don’t inspect the seed approved for planting by each administration?

Marge Warder is a general assignment reporter. E-mail her at news@redoakexpress.com.