On Caregiver Thursday, some thoughts and conversation about our national heritage of caregivers — those who plant, grow and harvest the land. Farmers know a thing or two about caregiving. Let’s hunker down and husk some sweet corn. I’ll bring the butter and salt.
Kathy: My name is Kathy. My Cadre handle is Speak Wonder. My passion is Harbor Pilots because I believe as we're sometimes out to sea, we've left the Safe harbor. We need others pulling alongside us to help us to know we're not alone.
I invite you to join me in thinking about the harvest. Harvest is the theme for this month, October. I wanted to pay homage to the people who farm in our area. A heritage of rolling hills and farmland is a rich legacy. Promises abound.
Bob Greene: Watch the field behind the plow turn to dark straight rows. He says farmers are a great metaphor for taking care of each other. Greene: Every human on the planet is in some caregiving capacity. Give.
All right, looks like we're live here. It is Thursday already. We've circled around to another Thursday. Feels like I just signed off from last week for you. My name is Kathy. My Cadre handle is Speak Wonder. And my theme or my passion is Harbor Pilots because I believe as we're sometimes out to sea, we've left the Safe harbor. We encounter waters that we didn't expect, storms that were not in the forecast. And when that happens, we need each other. We need people. Hi. Thank you for joining. Come on in.
We need others pulling alongside us in their boats to help us to know we're not alone. Harbor Pilots is, I think, a very appropriate way to describe Cadre because it's a mental health spiritual wellness app where we can gather and be in community together with the touch of a button and with a little conversation stream as part of our encounter and our interaction as we make our way into Safe harbor and find our dock, find our moorings, come in for a rest and respite, we have one another for company, for encouragement, for ideas, motivation, and mostly just to know we're not alone in this world, on this big old sea, out on the open water.
I invite you to join me in thinking about the harvest. Harvest is the theme for this month, October. And. And I gleaned. That's a good harvest word, isn't it? Gleaning. I gleaned a couple of things I wanted to share with you about farmers. I happen to live in farm country practically anywhere I go. Even in the city of Erie, if I go onto the outskirts or the suburbs, there will be farm farms, even silos, and those just seem to be a wave of the past lately, the way that grain is stored, I, I, it's, it's sad also for me to see a weathered barn that's no longer holding animals or hay or anything.
A lot of barns on the landscape that are just struggling to stay upright. Farming is not easy. I think that's understood when people go into it. And it takes tenacity, it takes perseverance, it takes the ability to pivot with the weather to make adjustments, and they hardly ever get a vacation. So I thought the first thing I might read to you today, and pardon me for reading, because I know it's probably more meaningful when the speaker just keeps looking into the camera at you. But I'll be looking down a little bit to read this magazine article.
I wrote this in 2022 for a magazine called Silver. Silver is marketed to senior citizens and it appears once a month in two local newspapers. And so I wanted to pay homage to the people who farm in our area. We have a rich heritage of it. So this is what I wrote. It's titled the Field behind the Plow. A heritage of rolling hills and farmland is a rich legacy. If you're blessed enough to have lived among salt of the earth people in rural places, then in fact you are blessed enough. In many regions across this great land, one can claim farmer identity without ever having tossed a single bale of hay.
We are farmers by proxy, identifying with the fields of dry corn stalks adorning our roadways. The smell of burning leaves is in our DNA. If you have thrown a bale into the loft, or if you have witnessed a sunset while atop a rumbling tractor seat, then you are stitched into the very fabric of rural life. Like the harvested fields, we are preparing for a season of rest and quiet. It's a hushed interval of waiting. I discovered recently the legacy of singer Stan Rogers. He's actually from Canada, a prominent voice in Canadian folk music, and he was noted for his rich baritone voice and traditional songs inspired by the daily lives of everyday working people, especially those from fishing villages and from farms.
Rogers wrote the lyrics to the song the Field behind the Plow in the words I dug out this beautiful gem. Watch the field behind the plough turned a straight dark rose. Put another season's promise in the as we hunker down and fortify our walls against the elements coming into the colder weather, I like to cast a different light on that line. Put another season's promise in the ground. Might also give a nod to a fresh blanket of snow covering fields that have recently lined our pantry shelves. Orchards and vineyards, soon cloaked in ice, have given us pies and applesauce juice and wine preserves and jams.
Another season's promise becomes a provision for the coming winter. We can, with abundance enjoy the taste of summer. In the darkness of December, while the earth freezes, we can still savor juicy delight of a garden tomato. We can. Where's my garden tomato? Keep looking at you down at my script. Yeah. Or we can enjoy Grandma's impossibly yummy watermelon rind pickles. Have you ever had those? They're pretty amazing. Watermelon rind pickles. They're sweet. They're yummy. This is what I love about farm country.
Promises abound. Whether it's planting time, growing season, or harvest. Promises even thrive in winter when the fields are at rest. If joy is measured by produce laden tables, may your pearls be pomegranates, May Your diamonds be sweet corn. Next time you see a resting field, consider the one who planted and worried when it didn't rain. The family, the working family who unloaded their pickup at the farm stand. Week in and week out in that field, deer may be bedding down at night. Turkeys will perform their comic dance across those brown fields.
Geese will stitch seams into the sky overhead. These two are promises of the seasons, things we can bank on no matter the economic downturns. Savor the moments. One of my favorite poets, Maya Angelou, famously wrote, buckle close friends to your soul. Buckle close friends to your soul. We really have summer memories in the coming winds of wintertime. Yeah. So I thought I would conclude today's reminiscing and anticipation of harvest with the full poem of the field behind the plow. The full song lyrics.
Watch the field behind the plow turn to straight dark rose. Feel the tickle in your clothes. Blow the dust cake from your nose. Hear the tractor's steady roar. Oh, you can't stop now. There's a quarter section more or less to go. And it figures that the rain keeps its own sweet time. You can watch it come for miles but you guess you've got a while. So ease the throttle out of here. Every rod's a gain and there's victory in every quarter mile. Poor old Kuzik down the road. The heartache, hail and hoppers brought him down.
He gave it up and went to town. And Emmett Pierce the other day took a heart attack and died at 42. You could see it coming on because he worked as hard as you. In an hour, maybe more, you'll be wet clear through. The air is cooler now. Pull your hat brim further down. And watch the field behind the plow turn to dark straight rows. Put another season's promise in the ground. And if the harvest's any good, the money just might cover all the loans you've mortgaged on your own. Buy the kids a winter coat.
Take your wife back east for Christmas if you can. All summer she hangs on when you're so tied to the land for the good times come and go. But at least there's rain so this won't be barren ground when September rolls around. So watch the field behind the plow turn to dark straight rows. Put another season's promise in the ground. Watch the field behind the plow turn to straight dark rows. And put another season's promise in the ground. Song lyrics from a song written by a Canadian guy. How does this figure into caregiver day?
I believe the people who work our land and yield crops and put them in our grocery stores are caregivers. We may never meet them. Next time I have a pomegranate, I won't know who harvested that, who picked it, how it was shipped over to the east coast, where I live in Erie, Pennsylvania, I don't know. But I feel a connection to whoever made that provision. And farmers are just a great metaphor for taking care of each other, for providing food for people will never mean we do that for each other.
We make provisions for each other by showing up in the world and making choices that are life giving and that encourage other people. I don't know what your caregiver story is if you're in the middle of it, if you've come to an end of a season, or if you're just at the beginning of one. Caregiving takes on so many, so many faces. I have a daughter who's giving extremely wonderful care to her two young kids, my grandchildren. She cares for her husband. She is a caregiver. We often think of caregiving in extremes, and sometimes it is, sometimes it is.
I'm a caregiver for my mom and this week has been a real challenge because it's been a lot of administrative chasing down papers, calling the bank, sending documents, signing documents. I am her power of attorney. She calls me her advocate. I take that very seriously. With the weight of wanting to do things right. And that's some heavy lifting, trying to get it right, trying to do right by her, trying to comply with all of the needs and demands of the nursing home, in the financial realm, it's not easy.
That's caregiving. Every bit as much as my giving her a hug is caregiving Every bit as much as my buying her new shoes, caregiving, bringing her flowers, speaking to her on the phone at night. Maybe you're caregiving in the realm of somebody in your family who's on the spectrum. And so you have special meetings at school, you have challenges, you have new seasons of new development, new growth. I do believe every human on the planet is in some caregiving capacity. Whether we live alone or surrounded by people, there are ways that are not even measurable in which we care.
Give. So I give you kudos. Keep planting, keep plowing, keep harvesting, and I'll end with this. If joy is measured by produce laden tables, May your pearls be pomegranates and may your diamonds be sweet corn. I'll bring the butter and the salt. Let's sit down and have a conversation whenever we can. That's caregiving. Take care. See you next week. It.
