Epitaphs

“There is a time for everything, a season for every activity under heaven.  A time to be born and a time to die.  A time to plant and a time to harvest…” Ecclesiastes 3:1-2.  The other week my mother shared a clipping from the obituary section of her local newspaper.  It was the final story of a former colleague’s life and I was saddened to read it.  But, I smiled as I finished the article and reflected on the words that described this man whose life was dedicated to farming and conserving the soil.  He had worked for the United States Department of Agriculture’s Soil Conservation Service for more than 30 years.  He retired and went back to farming, working the land that he loved for nearly two more decades.  Because of his life, thousands of acres of soil were conserved in five different Pennsylvania counties.

My former colleague’s conservation work has survived beyond his lifetime.  It portrays his life’s story in indelible patterns across the farm fields where he walked and worked.  His children can point proudly to this memorial that says far more than any grave stone message.  His life has ended, but his legacy lives on with every plant that grows in the soil he devoted his life to saving.

Across the Commonwealth’s countryside, soil conservation practices have been designed and implemented on thousands of farms since the days of the Midwest Dust Bowl in the 1930s.  That decade long erosion event taught farmers a valuable lesson about life and land.  Unless we value it, just like the top soil that was blown away by the wind, it vanishes all too quickly.

Thanks to the hard work of hundreds of soil conservationists since 1935 when USDA's Soil Conservation Service was created, our farms are a mosaic of soil saving practices.  When viewed from an airplane, our fields fold into abstract patterns of green, brown and gold.  Contour strips designed and staked out by men whose life’s work may have already ended, continue to conserve our crop fields’ most precious resource --- its fertile top soil.  The beauty in these patterns is breathtaking to see from high in the sky.  But they are even more beautiful to behold when tilling the land.

I suppose my age makes me more philosophical about the mark soil conservationists have made on the land since the mid-1900s.  I never gave it much thought thirty years ago, when I became the first woman hired by the USDA Soil Conservation Service.  I didn’t have time to ponder the fact that I was “writing” on the land.  Every time I walked across farm fields with brightly colored flags, marking contour lines for farmers to follow with tractor and plow, I was adding to my life’s story as a soil conservationist.

Today, while Soil Conservation Service's name has been changed to Natural Resources and Conservation Service, the mission remains the same.  Many new faces have added to the work done on fields across the country since my days with SCS.  Nevertheless, I am pleased whenever I drive by the fields where conservation practices I helped to design and create have survived three decades of modern agriculture.  They still serve their original purpose of preventing soil from washing away.  It surprises me at times that my work has outlasted the landowners I had helped with conservation plans.  Now a new generation is following the same furrows the farmers did back then.  They may be using larger and more powerful equipment, and may have retired the moldboard plow and replaced it with a no-till planter.  But the alternating strips of hay and grain, diversion terraces and waterways remain as testimonials to each farmer’s commitment to conserve soil and protect the land.

I am saddened, however, when I drive past farms where my “writing” has been erased.  Soil conservation practices have been covered with roof tops and pavement.  The only thing remaining to remind me that this was once a productive farm is the name of the housing development.  Words that only apply to the land’s past:  Meadow View, Orchard Hill, Pleasant Acres.  Today’s townhouses, ranch homes, and duplexes blot out any trace of what used to be meadows, orchards and pleasant acres.  The end has come for too many farms.

Are you writing an epitaph for your farm?  Will you sell out to land developers who, with no remorse, will bulldoze centuries of stewardship and erase fertile fields from the landscape in just a few days?  Or will you preserve the farm and its conservation practices for future generations of stewards who will respect the land and understand we are just borrowing it from our grandchildren’s children.  Will you treasure it as a work of fine art that long hours, sweat, and caring have created?  Will your farm be a perpetual, living testament for everyone who has tilled the land before you and a masterpiece to be enjoyed for those farmers yet to come?

What kind of mark will you be leaving on the landscape when your life's work and F-A-R-Ming ends? 

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