When I was young and growing up on the farm, one of my father’s standing rules was that whenever we encountered a rock while working in the field, we were to pick it up, place it on the tractor platform and deposit it along the fence row for later collection. I was twelve when I finally understood the relationship between rocks, costly equipment and seed displacement. You see, I was a young farm boy who was prone to daydreaming. Although I had my assigned tasks on the farm, I wasn’t very diligent in performing them because my mind was often wandering to places and events far beyond our acreage in north central Ohio.
During the spring of my seventh-grade year my father had to be hospitalized for an extended time. My mother and I were left to milk the cows, feed the hogs, gather the eggs and prepare the fields for planting. My siblings at 9 and 8 years of age were too young to materially assist us, so I missed a few days of school and we soldiered on. After we had the fields ready for planting, our neighbors and fellow church members arrived with their planting equipment and completed the job in one day. I learned about neighbors helping neighbors and the blessings of community that year. It was an eye-opening experience for my curious twelve-year old mind.
Back to the rocks… During my early years on the farm I could not fathom why rocks would appear in fields after we had picked them the previous years. One field was particularly obstinate. It consisted of 6 acres of “jackwax”… a black-blue soil that turned over in huge slabs when it was plowed with a moldboard. It was beautiful to see and extremely difficult to work as the reluctant slabs would fight every attempt by the disk, cultimulcher, cultipacker, springtooth and harrow to tame it into a seed-ready bed. That darn field was a kidney destroyer when I would drive the tractor across its massive slabs. Invariably, a few days after beating the black mass with our entire equipment inventory, my Dad would tell me to take the small tractor and a trailer and go “pick up the rocks in the jackwax field.” I was perplexed. I thought we had retrieved all the rocks the year before…and the one before that. What evil presence was pushing these rocks up to the surface just to annoy me?
That year that my father was in the hospital… the answer was revealed to me. The rocks were numerous and were lying in the rich soil quietly minding their own business when an all-day soaking rain or a 30-minute “gully-washer” would wash the soil away and expose their hiding places. The fertile black-blue soil camouflaged the rocks as they lay silently waiting to damage a disk blade or deflect some precious grains or kernels of seed. The cleansing rain washed away their cover and exposed them for what they were: impediments to our lives and prosperity. If the field were to have a good yield, the offending rocks had to be removed. Their hard-core interference had to be stopped so that our family farm might flourish.
More than a half-century later I was picking rocks from my own fields for the same purpose that my father and grandfather had. Even as I approach “golden-ager” status, my mind still wanders….and wonders. As I was driving my Gator while “rock scouting” and stopping to pick up the offending “back breakers,” I thought my exercise would provide a simple metaphor for where our nation is today. We are so blessed to live in a land of abundance and variety. We have a population that has brought the strengths of many cultures to our shores, but we are struggling…. and our yields are diminishing.
If the field represents our nation, the rich and potentially productive soil is symbolic of our natural resources and our citizens. Clearly the rocks are the faulty policies, the venal career politicians and the arrogant bureaucrats who damage our tools and suppress our yields. The Tea Party, liberty advocates and patriots are the rains. The steady downpours are the constant vigilance and insistence for accountability that our freedom warriors demand. The thunderous gully-washers represent the inflamed ire of our people when they have been “crossed,” sold-out or cheated. Freedom-loving people will expose the offending rocks and remove them….one by one until the field is cleared. We must never forget, however, the rocks will continue to appear, and we must always be vigilant rock pickers forever more. We cannot afford to be daydreamers like that young farm boy was more than a half-century ago. We must be alert. The heavy lifting never ends.
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Comment
Comment by Dennis King on April 12, 2012 at 10:31am Mr. Earl,
This is a parable from the Word of God (bible), The Parable of the Sower.
The difference is the bible uses the word tares or weeds among the wheat and the parable refers to hearing the word of God and whether or not you apply it. This includes the examples you have set forth in your statement. The tares or rocks as you put it are those who come in a sow the weeds or rocks among the people of God who are those who wish to destroy or impend the progress of people who tell others of Jesus the son of God and prevent anyone from doing good and real caring to others in this nation and around the world, Men like Obama are the Devils tools to destroy all that is decent and good in the Lord your God of which the United States was originally founded on even before the U.S. Constitution and The Bill of Rights was founded. America is and always shall be a nation based on the principles and values of the Word of God the bible. If we had continued to follow and obey the Word of God none of this that is happening today would have gotten a foot hold in the first place. You can argue this all day and night long but it still and always will hold true. Now we have to fight to get back what the devil has stolen from us through those like Obama. I would vote for West in a heartbeat for he is totally opposite of Obama and his evil henchmen. The DNC has become the enemy of God and they will not be in power for much longer. There is hope and revenge coming from the Father God himself.
Comment by Gregory PaulTwyman on April 11, 2012 at 8:51pm I like this parable!
Comment by Elizabeth Shea on April 11, 2012 at 4:29pm
Thank you, Charlie.
I loved reading this and I will share it with my family and friends.
Charlie, I didn't grow up on a farm but I can relate to the tedious, seemingly dumb, work that grownups could find for us kids to do! :)
By contrast to your pastoral existence driving farm equipment, somewhere floating around is an Agenda 21-inspired bid to make a law whereby you will need a CDL to drive farm equipment. One has to be 18 years old to get a commercial driver's license. Guess what that does to family farms? One could probably build a few miles of rock wall getting Agenda 21 pried out of our culture.
Comment by Cam Vallee on April 11, 2012 at 1:40pm Charlie, I am 69 and when I was a kid growing up in Northern Alberta, Canada I used to do the same thing!
Comment by James William Olmes Rogers on April 11, 2012 at 12:03pm Charlie, an excellent article and apt metaphor for today's politics, with one exception..... It's one thing to pick rocks from a level or gently-rolling field ~~ we are attempting to pick rocks from a political abyss, near-vertical walls! I think you and your Gator, all ALL of us, are being tested to the extreme as we "rock spot" in the abyss of the presidential and constitutional fraud being committed by the "establishments" of both Democrats and Republicans!
Comment by Guy Blanchard on April 11, 2012 at 11:46am obama is like a large rock,good for not too much but can block alot..Transparency right?
Comment by Debrajoe Smith-Beatty on April 11, 2012 at 10:24am Thank you for this wonderful blog.
Comment by John S Bacsenko IV on April 11, 2012 at 9:50am Charlie, you sure would make one heck of a preacher! Wonderful parable!
Comment by USARogue on April 11, 2012 at 9:37am Charlie,
Excellent post.
I'm busy picking up the rocks all over the floors of our government. I'm told they keep originating from certain cranial vaults of our leadership.
In my case the point of origin is more of a concern than the need for repetitive collection.
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