PLOWING THE FIELD

"You'll never plow a field by turning it over in your mind" My dad never said that, he lived it. In fact the saying is an old Irish proverb. When I was growing up my dad had a field. At least I called it a field. It wasn't a large field. In fact it was a very small field. I cannot remember the actual size of it but in my mind it was about 60 feet by 60 feet. I might be exaggerating a little because I've noticed that as I grow older everything I remember from my earlier life gets bigger. But it was our field or more to the point, my dad's field, his garden. Every year in the early spring right after the snow melted he would plow and plant his field. When I was 5 or 6 he had a hand plow. It was the kind of plow the farmers used horse to pull. My dad's plow wasn't as big as those but it cut a pretty healthy swipe through the soil as my dad pushed it. He would let me walk in front of him and hold the plow and make me feel like I was a big boy because I was helping my dad. As I grew older the plow turned into a gas powered rota tiller and I had to stay back so I wouldn't get hurt. I remember watching my dad wrestle that big thing and wishing he still had the old plow. Unfortunately, as I grew into my early teens it became my turn to wrestle the dammed thing. I hated it. I wasn't cut out to be a farmer. I didn't like vegetables. I wasn't going to eat any of them any way. It was his garden, not mine. But it had became my job and it had to get done or we would have no vegetables for that year. I don't care whether you eat any of or not. You need to get it done so we can plant. So the plowing got done, the garden got planted and I got tired. Often I think about that field and how it always got plowed and how we always had a garden. No, my dad wasn't great with words. He would have never come up with words like that proverb. But if he heard or read those words he would have nodded his head in agreement and smiled He taught me to live my life like that. Just keep pushing the plow and eventually you will get it done. No he did not say that either. He lived it.