At such work as this one’s mind often drops asleep, or at least goes dreaming, except for the narrow margin of awareness required for the simple processes of the hands.  Its orders have indeed been given:  you must kneel here, pull aside the stalks one by one, rip down the husks, and twist off the ear—­and there is the pile for the stripped stalks, and here the basket for the gathered corn, and these processes infinitely repeated.

While all this is going on, the mind itself wanders off to its own far sweet pastures, upon its own dear adventures—­or rests, or plays.  It is in these times that most of the airy flying things of this beautiful world come home to us—­things that heavy-footed reason never quite overtakes, nor stodgy knowledge ever knows.  I think sometimes (as Sterne says) we thus intercept thoughts never intended for us at all, or uncover strange primitive memories of older times than these—­racial memories.

At any rate, the hours pass and suddenly the mind comes home again, it comes home from its wanderings refreshed, stimulated, happy.  And nowhere, whether in cities, or travelling in trains, or sailing upon the sea, have I so often felt this curious enrichment as I have upon this hillside, working alone in field, or garden, or orchard, It seems to come up out of the soil, or respond to the touch of growing things.

What makes any work interesting is the fact that one can make experiments, try new things, develop specialties and grow.  And where can he do this with such success as on the land and in direct contact with nature.  The possibilities are here infinite new machinery, spraying, seed testing, fertilizers, experimentation with new varieties.  A thousand and one methods, all creative, which may be tried out in that great essential struggle of the farmer or gardener to command all the forces of nature.

Because there are farmers, and many of them, who do not experiment and do not grow, but make their occupation a veritable black drudgery, this is no reason for painting a sombre-hued picture of country life.  Any calling, the law, the ministry, the medical profession, can be blasted by fixing one’s eyes only upon its ugliest aspects.  And farming, at its best, has become a highly scientific, extraordinarily absorbing, and when all is said, a profitable, profession.  Neighbours of mine have developed systems of overhead irrigation to make rain when there is no rain, and have covered whole fields with cloth canopies to increase the warmth and to protect the crops from wind and hail, and by the analysis of the soil and exact methods of feeding it with fertilizers, have come as near a complete command of nature as any farmers in the world.  What independent, resourceful men they are!  And many of them have also grown rich in money.  It is not what nature does with a man that matters but what he does with nature.