A collection of farming jokes and quotes sponsored by Edward M. Fielding’s collection of farming and country life photography and artwork.
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Agriculture is the earliest and most honorable of arts. (Rousseau)
The country life is to be preferred, for there we see the works of God; but in cities little else but the works of men. And the one makes a better subject for contemplation than the other. (William Penn)
Don’t shoot the I.R.S. man, just give him your ranch and in a few months he’ll shoot himself.
The glory of the farmer is that, in the division of labors, it is his part to create. All trade rests at last on his primitive activity. He stands close to Nature; he obtains from the earth the bread and the meat. The food which was not, he causes to be. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
He who marries a wife reared on the land marries strength and purity and compassion. (Beecher)
I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods. (Wendell Berry)
I wasn’t born on a farm, but I got here as fast as I could!
Ironically, rural America has become viewed by a growing number of Americans as having a higher quality of life not because of what it has, but rather because of what it does not have! (Don A. Dillman)
Man–despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments–owes his existence to a six inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.
Question on a Department of Agriculture survey:
“Which pest gives me the most trouble?”
“That’s an easy one to answer–the Department of Agriculture!”
Sun, soil and rain come together in Iowa as in no other state. Poet Robert Frost, who lived on New England’s rocky slopes, once looked at Iowa’s thick, black soil and said, “It looks good enough to eat without putting it through vegetables.”
There is always a different, more kindly look in the eyes of women who live on the land.
To life happily in the country one must have the soul of a poet, the mind of a philosopher, the simple needs of a hermit–and a good station wagon.
To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds, and watch the renewal of life–this is the commonest delight of the race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do. (Charles Dudley Warner)
Wife to farmer as they return home at sunset:
“Thanks for a wonderful vacation, I enjoyed the whole day.”