Summer’s officially over and a long dreary winter looms. Happily, spring always follows winter, so here are a few Lazy Farmer ruminations about a wet spring long ago. This was from the May I graduated high school, but I have no recollection of the weather.
The author of the “The Lazy Farmer,” whom I’ve never succeeded in identifying, didn’t write in lines of verse as most poets do, but in more of a rhyming prose style. Consequently, it sometimes takes a little searching to find the rhyme and the rhythm of each verse, but once that’s done, each one flows nicely.
I recall these little tidbits of humor and philosophy as found in the farm papers of my youth when they were always enjoyable reading – especially as I was a lazy farm kid.
The following three examples appeared in April and May of 1950, in the American Agriculturist, a weekly paper published in New York by the Orange Judd Company.
From the April 1st issue:
My neighbor’s nervous as can be, he acts as jumpy as a flea, ’cause at this time in ev’ry year he’s overcome with dread and fear that luck’s run out and ev’rything is bound to go all wrong this spring. He’s sure that either snow or rain will mean he cannot plant his grain and when it’s harvest time next fall he won’t have any crop at all. He gets up at the crack of dawn and never even stops to yawn before he’s over to my place, with worried looks upon his face, to say, “It looks like snow some more, spring’s never been this late before.”
           Then he starts pacin’ up and down his brow all furrowed in a frown, and when I try to make him set and talk ’bout something to forget, he shakes his head and wonders why the overcast and threat’ning sky don’t get me all excited too, and asks, “Whatever will we do?” I say that question’s sillier than askin’ which came earlier, the chicken or the egg, you see, ’cause we can’t change a thing, by gee!
Then, this one from April 15th, extolling the virtues of April showers.
If April showers make you blue, I’ve naught but sympathy for you, because I’m sure that worrying will never change a single thing; and it proves you don’t understand that nature’s plan is really grand. The very folks who cry with pain at ev’ry little springtime rain, would also prob’ly be the first to moan if ground and plants should thirst; and if spring flowers didn’t bloom, they’d plunge the deepest into gloom; they’d holler loudest ’bout the dust and say it absolutely must cloud up and rain to beat the band or we can’t even plow our land.
           But farming problems are not my main worry ’bout a spring that’s dry; there’s other things that upset me more when rain don’t splash or thunder roar. For one thing, I can sleep more sound whenever I hear raindrops pound upon the roof and window pane, ’cause there’s no lullaby like the rain. And when the day is overcast, there ain’t no jobs to be done fast; there’s time to spend upon the porch without the fear that Mirandy will scorch me ’cause the field work isn’t done; there isn’t anything more fun than list’ning to the raindrops say, “You do not have to work today.”
           The very next month, on May 10th, when the farmer’s field work would have been really pressing, our Lazy Farmer again philosophized about the rain.
Mirandy’s all upset today because the rain won’t stay away; she’ washed the clothes and piled ’em high, but can not hang them out to dry. My neighbor, too, is in a sweat, he’s sure that he will never get his work caught up unless the sun comes out and stays until he’s done. The youngsters in the neighborhood are feeling anything but good; they say they can’t be happy when their ball game’s been rained out again. The birds are sad, so is the cat, our pooch looks like a half-drowned rat, and all because they can not play out in the warm sunshine today.
           Now all this goes to indicate how folks can get upset by fate; there’s no excuse to be annoyed by something that you can’t avoid ’cause obviously there ain’t a thing that you can do to ease the sting. And so might as well relax and let it rain or pay your tax; those things will never change a bit just ’cause you up and throw a fit. Today, for instance, I agree it would be nice if we could see sun beating down on neighbor’s land and drying clothes to beat the band; but fate decreed it otherwise, so I’ll just sit and close my eyes; I know the rain is bound to quit, so why should I be mad at it?
The lazy farmer was right of course. There’s no use to shake your fist at a cloudy sky and cuss it roundly for raining on that newly mown field of alfalfa, but it’s somehow satisfying to do just that.
Sam Moore
