What hath mowing wrought?

I spent the better part of my afternoon driving in circles around a field of grass on a tractor pulling a haybine. It was hot and dirty work, and when I got the ‘bine all bound up, it was hard work as well.

I think I am in love.

Some might wonder how it is possible that a few hours mowing around a hay field suddenly illicits such a profound declaration, but I can assure you this idea has been a long time in coming.

Today, as I mowed my way around that field, I was a part of something that has rested at the edges of my brain for quite a while now. In that field, I was doing honest work. I knew what the task was and I knew what the product was intended to be.

Nature surrounded me in the birds that lighted on the freshly mown grass to eat the bugs or seeds revealed by each pass. In the grass around me, insects went about their business harvesting pollen and fertilizing plants in return.

Nearby, cows grazed in another field, the very creatures for which the hay I mowed was destined. Those cows and that hay represent a cycle of life that I sat in the middle of on the tractor.

I know my hay will feed those cows, maybe around Christmas time when they have their calves. My hay will be there when those calves take their first tentative nibbles at something other than their mother’s teat.

My hay will make those calves grow into cows, some destined for auction, and perhaps one fattened for slaughter for the farm’s residents. In the mean time, those cows will eat grass and fertilize the ground with their waste, completing a system of which I was briefly a part.

As an unrepentant carnivore, I have no problem knowing that I mowed grass to fatten animals that I will eventually eat. That is the system of life into which my God put me.

More importantly, I like the fact that I can look my food in the eye. On that farm, in that field, I am connected to life in a way no grocery store can provide. I do not have to wonder about what is in the food on that farm. I do not have to wonder how its producers handled it. I do not have to wonder about the people who produce that food because I know them.

Hence the reason I am in love.

I am totally enchanted with the notion of taking myself off of the corporate ration and replacing it with the ration produced by my own hands and sweat. Sure, that destiny is thistles and thorns, but it is also produce and meat and eggs whose source I trust and whose destination I understand.

In the next weeks and months, I will have more opportunities to test this newfound love as I continue to work at that farm, but so far I am convinced. I am looking forward to it.

-=DLH=-