Old Farming Quotes & Sayings

We're not going to do a Facebook game aimed at 35-year old women about farming. — Warren Spector

I see a time when the farmer will not need to live in a lonely cabin on a lonely farm. I see the farmers coming together in groups. I see them with time to read, and time to visit with their fellows. I see them enjoying lectures in beautiful halls, erected in every village. I see them gather like the Saxons of old upon the green at evening to sing and dance. I see cities rising near them with schools, and churches, and concert halls, and theaters. I see a day when the farmer will no longer be a drudge and his wife a bond slave, but happy men and women who will go singing to their pleasant tasks upon their fruitful farms. When the boys and girls will not go west nor to the city; when life will be worth living. In that day the moon will be brighter and the stars more glad, and pleasure and poetry and love of life come back to the man who tills the soil. — Hamlin Garland

It's my duty to sell the ideas. But there's always a question when it comes to beauty. — Peter Schjeldahl

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. — Rosalind Lauer

To husband is to use with care, to keep, to save, to make last, to conserve. Old usage tells us that there is a husbandry also of the land, of the soil, of the domestic plants and animals - obviously because of the importance of these things to the household. And there have been times, one of which is now, when some people have tried to practice a proper human husbandry of the nondomestic creatures in recognition of the dependence of our households and domestic life upon the wild world. Husbandry is the name of all practices that sustain life by connecting us conservingly to our places and our world; it is the art of keeping tied all the strands in the living network that sustains us.
And so it appears that most and perhaps all of industrial agriculture's manifest failures are the result of an attempt to make the land produce without husbandry. — Wendell Berry

I could go to a dozen houses, scrape away the dirt, and find his footprints, but my own prints evaporated before I ever looked back. — Brenda Sutton Rose

Trade is 10 times as old as farming. — Matt Ridley

I don't know of a better argument in favor of farming with horses than trying to start an old tractor in the winter time. — Gene Logsdon

In fact, Wen'an was the prefect location for the scrap-plastics trace: it was close, but not too close, to Beijing and Tianjin, two massive metropolises with lots of consumers and lots of factories in need of cheap raw materials. Even better, its traditional industry - farming - was disappearing as the region's once-plentiful streams and wells were run dry by the region's rampant, unregulated oil industry. So land was plentiful, and so were laborers desperate for a wage to replace the money lost when their fields died. As I hear these stories, I can't help but wonder: How much of the plastic that Wen'an recycles was made from the oil pumped from Wen'an's soil? Are all those old plastic bags blowing down Wen'an's streets ghosts of the fuel that used to run beneath them? — Adam Minter

Beautiful surroundings, the society of learned men, the charm of noble women, the graces of art, could not make up for the loss of those light-hearted mornings of the desert, for that wind that made one a boy again. He had noticed that this peculiar quality in the air of new countries vanished after they were tamed by man and made to bear harvests. Parts of Texas and Kansas that he had first known as open range had since been made into rich farming districts, and the air had quite lost that lightness, that dry, aromatic odour. The moisture of plowed land, the heaviness of labour and growth and grain-bearing, utterly destroyed it; one could breathe that only on the bright edges of the world, on the great grass plains or the sage-brush desert. — Willa Cather

We had different lives. We come from different places."
"Surely ye do. And you got different bodies, too. That's what marriage is about, Meggie-gal, making differences intertwine into something whole and new."
Meggie didn't want to argue. "He didn't love me, Pa," she said.
"I'll believe that when I see coons a-taking up farming," the old man answered. He raked his hair with his hands helplessly. "What do ye think love is, Meggie. Do you think it's heart pounding and breath stealing and verse reciting?" he asked. "Yes, ma'am, there is some of that involved, but mostly love is quiet and caring and friendlylike. It's wanting to tell that person something afore you whisper it to another soul. It's not being alone. — Pamela Morsi

My daughter is here in town doing a play, and her dog is staying with us. We live up in the hills, so he has access to thousands of acres of wilderness. — Rene Auberjonois

A farm includes the passion of the farmer's heart, the interest of the farm's customers, the biological activity in the soil, the pleasantness of the air about the farm
it's everything touching, emanating from, and supplying that piece of landscape. A farm is virtually a living organism. The tragedy of our time is that cultural philosophies and market realities are squeezing life's vitality out of most farms. And that is why the average farmer is now 60 years old. Serfdom just doesn't attract the best and brightest. — Joel Salatin

Kien, talking with Akabe, caught Ela's glance and grinned, luring her thoughts toward him. Gorgeous man! How dare he distract her?
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Akabe turned and saw what-or rather who-had distracted Kien mid-sentence. He should have known. And he understood. If Caitria had cast him such a loving smile, Akabe would have abandoned this impromptu conference altogether. But Caitria petted Issa, ignoring everyone else. Therefore...
Akabe backhanded Kien's shoulder. "Stop flirting with your wife and pay attention!"
Kien shot him a mock-threatening look. "I am your servant, sir."
A headstrong and unexpected servant, Akabe agreed silently. But most welcome. — R.J. Larson

Life is so endlessly delicious — Ruth Reichl

Sometimes I think I should have stayed longer and I should have done more films. — Doris Day

I would not say I am looking for God. Or, I am not looking for God precisely. I am not seeking the God I learned about as a Catholic child, as an 18-year-old novice in a religious community, as an agnostic graduate student, as - but who cares about my disguises? Or God's. — Mary Rose O'Reilley