Quotes About Agriculture

The local farmers, of course, were bitching because the bean and corn harvests were going to be huge and the prices depressed. Of course, if it hadn't rained, they'd be bitching because their crops were small, even if the prices were high. You couldn't win with farmers.

First goddamn chicken we've had to count, and I'm counting the sonofabitch

any dairies or pig farms around there. We could

We could live offa the fatta the lan'.

The fields were fruitful, and starving men moved on the roads.

Why don't you go on west to California? There's work there, and it never gets cold. Why, you can reach out anywhere and pick an orange. Why, there's always some kind of crop to work in. Why don't you go there?

Prayer never brought in no side-meat. Takes a shoat to bring in pork.

There's a passage in John Steinbeck's "East of Eden" that does a pretty good job describing California's rainfall patterns: The water came in a 30-year cycle. There would be five to six wet and wonderful years when there might be 19 to 25 inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass. Then would come six or seven pretty good years of 12 to 16 inches of rain. And then the dry years would come ...

And then the leaves break out on the trees, and the petals drop from the fruit trees and carpet the earth with pink and white. The centers of the blossoms swell and grow and color: cherries and apples, peaches and pears, figs which close the flower in the fruit. All California quickens with produce, and the fruit grows heavy, and the limbs bend gradually under the fruit so that little crutches must be placed under them to support the weight.

There's no money in that," said Will. "Farmers don't make any money. It's the man who buys from him and sells. You'll never make any money farming." Will knew that Cal was feeling him, testing him, observing him, and he approved of that.

The receding waves of foreign peon labor are leaving California agriculture to the mercies of our own people. The old methods of intimidation and starvation perfected against the foreign peons are being used against the new white migrant workers. But they will not be successful.

Little kid comes in late ta school. Teacher says, Why ya late? Kid says, Had a take a heifer down—get 'er bred. Teacher says, Couldn't your ol' man do it? Kid says, Sure he could, but not as good as the bull.

A crop raised--why, that makes ownership. Land hoed and the carrots eaten--a man might fight for land he's taken food from. Get him off quick! He'll think he owns it. He might even die fighting for the little plot among the Jimson weed.

A farmer cannot think too much evil of a good farmer.

Just think what this land would raise with plenty of water! Why, it will be a frigging garden!

Then crop failure, drought, and flood were no longer little deaths within life, but simple losses of money. And all their love was thinned with money, and all their fierceness dribbled away in interest until they were no longer farmers at all, but little shopkeepers of crops, little manufacturers who must sell before they can make.

SOMETIMES, BUT NOT OFTEN, a rain comes to the Salinas Valley in November. It is so rare that the Journal or the Index or both carry editorials about it. The hills turn to a soft green overnight and the air smells good. Rain at this time is not particularly good in an agricultural sense unless it is going to continue, and this is extremely unusual. More commonly, the dryness comes back and the fuzz of grass withers or a little frost

we Americans bring in mercenaries to do our hard and humble work. I hope we may not be overwhelmed one day by peoples not too proud or too lazy or too soft to bend to the earth and pick up the things we eat.

Little kid comes in late ta school. Teacher says, "Why ya late?" Kid says, "Had a take a heifer down—get 'er bred." Teacher says, "Couldn't your ol' man do it?" Kid says, "Sure he could, but not as good as the bull." Mae

And the owners not only did not work the farms any more, many of them had never seen the farms they owned.

A million people hungry, needing the fruit—and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.

He wasn' doing nothin' against the law, Ma. I been thinkin' a hell of a lot, thinkin' about our people livin' like pigs, an' the good rich lan' layin' fallow, or maybe one fella with a million acres, while a hunderd thousan' good farmers is starvin'. An' I been wonderin' if all our folks got together an' yelled, like them fellas yelled, only a few of 'em at the Hooper ranch—

we're gonna have a little house and a couple of acres an' a cow and some pigs

dissipated. The sun flared down on the growing corn day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each green