Back in the Days of the Two Bottom Plows

"Back in the days of the two-bottom plows, this kind of weather didn't make much difference. Farmers didn't farm so much that a late Spring planting would break them and seed corn was 7 or 8 dollars a bag. Now they pay $150 to $175 a bag and farm so much they're not even farming. We need to get back to two-bottom plow days."

These are the words of an old farmer who spoke with me yesterday and, clearly, he remembers two-bottom plow farming . . . and can't remember a Spring that was ever quite so wet, which is going a piece when you think on his age. He remembers not being quite so pushed or quite so financially extended. He remembers when, even if you weren't a farmer, your neighbor was likely to be one or, at the very least, you knew one. He remembers the time it took with a two bottom plow to turn a field over in preparation for planting - and he remembers the time it took so well that he equates it with not being able to farm as many acres as farmers do today. He remembers . . . and he longs for what has been parked in fence rows and forgotten, or recovered and set in the front yard like a trophy, for the two bottom plow way of farming no longer exists any more than $7 a bushel seed corn.

My heart ached for this farmer as he spoke his piece for, in my heart of hearts, I have thought the same sort of thought: 'Why don't we all just slow down, do a little less, be willing to live on a little less, put in a little more effort, and recover the life we know once was ours to claim.' There is a part of me, too, that knows he is right . . . and that, I think, is what makes my heart heavy, because I know we can never go back to two bottom plows. Too many people depend on too few farmers for the consumable goods which grace the tables of homes all over the world.

Improved genetics have pushed the price of seed skyward. Intensive marketing has made the sweat of the farmers brow worth more - in more places - than ever before. And, the variables of petroleum costs, herbicide and insecticide costs, fertilizer costs, machinery costs, product development and marketing costs, educational costs, home costs, etc . . . all add weight to an industry that has a hard time holding young farmers on the farm anyway, thus even more dramatically reducing the number of farms, while increasing the size of those remaining. There is such an inevitability to this cycle that, in the name of soil conservation in many of our most heavily farmed areas, farmers no longer plow at all . . . and no-till farming is on the rise. Reduce cost, increase the potential for profitability. Put the two bottom plow at the bottom of the ravine and hope it slows down the erosion of our nation's greatness.

Some might say the church should take a lesson from all of this, but I wonder who folks thought taught the farmers this approach in the first place. So well have those lessons of progress and 'utilizing the most up to date practices and approaches to life' been preached from the pulpits, that the very parishioners who once has time to listen to the messages are nowhere to be found in the pews anymore. The two bottom plows of family time, prayer time, congregational fellowship time, youth ministries that don't require 'youth specialists', worship that doesn't require a 'technology minister', and evangelism that doesn't rely on a marketing and communications degree, have been left in the bulldozed tree lines of our lives, buried with the very soil that once had been its pride to work. And, when times get hard, the economy slumps, the Springtime of our life is wet, and folks aren't sure which way to turn, what they are left with somehow doesn't measure up to what they know their soul really needs . . . and the oldest among us quietly says, "Back in the days of the two bottom plows . . . ."

It is something to think about in our 'bigger is better' culture, with our 'we deserve more and should pay less' attitudes, that smirk in the faces of those in other lands that 'just don't seem to get it'. It's something to think about before we just dismiss the quiet words of an old farmer as he reflects on our current condition from the context he continues to live. Maybe, in the name of Jesus Christ, there is still something to be learned from two bottom plow living . . . maybe . . . if we haven't buried the possibility too deeply or rolled the stone into place too tightly.

Your servant in Christ,

Pastor Don