Regard for the Soil

by Peter Maurin

1. Andrew Nelson Lytle says:
The escape from industrialism
is not in socialism
or in sovietism.
2. The answer lies
in a return to a society
where agriculture is practised
by most of the people.
3. It is in fact impossible
for any culture
to be sound and healthy
without a proper regard
for the soil,
no matter
how many urban dwellers
think that their food
comes from groceries
and delicatessens
or their milk from tin cans.
4. This ignorance
does not release them
from a final dependence
upon the farm.

Words from Dorothy: Manual Labor (Fall 2007)

(From "On Pilgrimage," by Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker , May 1946, p 2.)

How peaceful a work is gardening and how restful for a tired mind. This last month there was a great deal of planting done on the farm at Easton. Fields of potatoes were put in. John Filliger was busy behind the plough all the month. We have a new team of white horses which we bought from a good neighbor for $125, practically a present. We have Dolly, our brown, half-blind horse, whom we all love, and who served us so faithfully during the winter, hauling down wood from the hillside. Long rows of onions, carrots, cabbages, have been planted and there is a field of turnips going in next week. We need a freezer and we need a root cellar. The latter we will dig, but we must pray for the former.
I put a flower garden in myself this last week, all around the little cabin where I work when I am at Maryfarm. And I’m going to paint and scour the place when I next go down, so that my year-old granddaughter Rebecca will not get so black when she comes to see me and goes crawling and mopping up the porch in her little seersucker overalls. The factories in Easton, two miles away, send up their soot and smoke to our hillside, and the sheepswool is well blackened with it. We have all the reminder of the city right below us as we sit on our peaceful hillside. Rebecca had tea with me last week, applesauce and a soft-boiled egg, and when my herb garden gets going I shall serve mint teas to guests on occasion, tasting and seeing that the Lord is sweet.

(source: http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/daytext.cfm?TextID=424)