I do not particularly like the word 'work.' Human beings are the only animals who have to work, and I think that is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Other animals make their livings by living, but people work like crazy, thinking that they have to in order to stay alive. The bigger the job, the greater the challenge, the more wonderful they think it is. It would be good to give up that way of thinking and live an easy, comfortable life with plenty of free time. I think that the way animals live in the tropics, stepping outside in the morning and evening to see if there is something to eat, and taking a long nap in the afternoon, must be a wonderful life. For human beings, a life of such simplicity would be possible if one worked to produce directly his daily necessities. In such a life, work is not work as people generally think of it, but simply doing what needs to be done.

A farm regulated to production of raw commodities is not a farm at all. It is a temporary blip until the land is used up, the water polluted, the neighbors nauseated, and the air unbreathable. The farmhouse, the concrete, the machinery, and outbuildings become relics of a bygone vibrancy when another family farm moves to the city financial centers for relief.

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.

Only a very foolish person would think that specialized knowledge is important in everything apart from agriculture and farming

The ripen fruit is for a sacred season.

Whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before would deserve better of mankind and do more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together.

Farmers are patient men. They got to be. Got to see those seeds come up week by week, fraction by fraction, and sweat it out for some days not knowing yet is it weeds or vegetables ...

Praise the ripe field not the green corn.

You must plough with such oxen as you have.

Better reap two days too soon than one day too late.

You've a darned long row to hoe.

Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest.

Even if a farmer intends to loaf, he gets up in time to get an early start.

The diligent farmer plants trees, of which he himself will never see the fruit.

As you have sown, so shall you reap.

... for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

You may grow good corn in a little field.

Let gleaners glean, though crops be lean.

He who skimps on the seed will raise a poor harvest.

He that would reap well must sow well.