There was a time when many people thought that farming was menial work and "beneath" them.  This is not so, because every action has eternal value.  Tossing garbage cans and manure around have the same value as writing a thesis or working at any other occupation that appears to be cleaner.  There is nothing dirty about farming.  Everything the farmer deals with is clean and everything has a purpose.  The manure is going to help give us food for next year.  The hog will be eaten.  The cow will produce calves and give milk and meat.  Everything on the farm leads to the feeding of mankind.  How can farming be dirty when it feeds the temple of God, our Mother Earth.

Farming must be approached with great humility.  The learned man, the really learned one, is aware that he knows very little.  The farmer has for his teacher God, the Creator, and the natural world he created.  The farmer learns at the source of all schooling, where everything began, where all knowledge originally comes from.  He is reverent of the school of nature and its experience, and isn't afraid of it.

However learned, he never shows his learning to others with words puffed up with pride.  He uses humble similes, like the biblical parables.  He has the right to do so because he has lived them.  A farmer is understanding of others because he is understood by the world around him and he continues to contemplate on the mystery of life in the country.

A farmer walks purposefully; he doesn't waste one moment of time, a precious, God-given commodity.  If he misses a day, there will be no hay.  If he plows a little too late, there will be no harvest.  If he seeds one hour too late and a storm comes, then all his work will be undone.  He respects time and knows that it makes up seasons and hours.  he knows how he must use it, and neither allows it to be his master nor makes it his slave.

The farmer follows its call promptly and joyously, even if it lifts him out of his warm bed early in the morning and brings him back to his warm bed only late at night.  He knows it is his call.

~ excerpt from Apostolic Farming, Healing the Earth, by Catherine Doherty