“Stay on the Farm” by Alice Dugger Grimes, published in the January, 1935, issue of Carolina Co-Operator
To every boy and girl, to every woman and man on every farm in North Carolina, I wish a “Happy New Year.”
I am using the word “happy” for it lies within the power of practically every county dweller to make happiness, and I am refraining from the usual greeting “Prosperous New Year,” for the making of prosperity does not lie so directly in the country dweller’s hands.
Happiness—that is what we must stress every day of the 365 days of the year 1935. And nowhere can this be attained to a greater degree than out among the fields and the woods—among the birds and the trees. So many of us think of happiness only in terms of money and what money buys—happiness as gaiety—as frivolity, while happiness is so largely just a state of mind.
Little money, perhaps, finds its way into our pockets, but how rich we may be if we develop what is around us in the country. Put a money value on that for which we would have to pay heavily were we living in town and see how the figures run up. Who thinks of water and wood in the country, of the shrubs and trees and vines to be had for the digging, of the milk and vegetables? The cost of living on a farm is up to the dweller of that farm.
Planting on the average North Carolina farm has been confined almost entirely to the so-called money crops—cotton and tobacco. The garden, the cow, chickens seem to have been beneath the personal supervision of the head of the house. In consequence just a very ordinary garden, a small, spasmodically tended, mongrel flock of chickens, sometimes a cow, sometimes no cow, but somehow pigs are always given consideration. I have noticed, and haven’t you too, that the average countryman seems to get more pleasure from his pigs, their growth and their multiplication, than from any other animal on the farm. I wonder why this is.
But now more than ever before, every member of the family must use his brains, must plan, must look ahead, must execute cheerfully—gladly; for necessary work, enthusiastically done, is happiness.
The desire of the present day, especially among the young folk, seems to be to get away from work, real work that brings out the sweat upon the brow; but this sweat-from-the-brow work is what God gave us to take the place of the lost Paradise. Not over-work, just work under the broad expanse of clouds, with the plow coaxing the good-germed earth to co-operate with seed and fertilizer, with rain and dew, with sun and heat to bring forth the harvest promised by God.
“Work,” says the country dweller, “is what we have always heard and still are hearing, but what about play?”
I’ll answer that question by saying that one of the most widely-known and most fascinating women who has ever dominated the “Four Hundred”—that exclusive coterie of New York’s socially elect—Mrs. Pembroke Jones, was born Sarah Wharton Green, daughter of Col. Wharton J. Green of Warren county, was reared on a Warren County Plantation, “Esmerelda,” and on a Cumberland County vineyard, “Tokay.” Her beautiful country estate, “Airlee-on-the-Sound” near Wrightsville is the springtime show place of North Carolina with its thousands and thousands of blooming azaleas.
Mrs. George Vanderbilt, though neither born nor reared in the country, loved her country estate, “Biltmore,” near Asheville, better than any of her estates or any of her city homes. She says that the greatest compliment that can be paid to her is to call her a country woman.
In the early days of America, especially in the South, practically every leading man in his native state was a farmer, living upon his own land and superintending his estate. There was then very little absentee landlordism. George Washington loved his life as a farmer at Mt. Vernon far more than he did his life as President of the United States in Washington City. Many of North Carolina’s early governors were large land-owners and farmers, but of recent years I can bring to mind only one farmer who became governor and that was Governor Elias Carr of Edgecombe County. Mrs. Carr was from the plantation also, one of the lovely daughters of William K. Kearney of Warren County. Governor Morrison, on his beautiful estate near Charlotte, can certainly qualify now as a genuine farmer, and our own beloved governor, J.C.B. Ehringhaus, has a potato farm!
One of the outstanding farmers and breeders of blooded cattle in North Carolina is young George Watts Hill, grandson of George Watts, the noted millionaire philanthropist. “Quail Roose” is in Durham County near Durham and though George Watts Hill is not governor, there is mighty good prospects of his being the son of a governor should his father, Mr. John Sprunt Hill, so desire.
Paul Green, the playwright, of whom North Carolina is so proud, was born and reared on a Harnett County farm. He gives to us in his incisive plays the life struggles, the hopes, the superstitions, the loves of the country dweller, with all of which he is so familiar.
The outstanding figure, receiving almost an ovation at the last annual meeting of the North Carolina Literary and Historical Societies, was James Larkin Pearson of Wilkes County, who plows his own fields, tends his own stock, and gathers his own harvest. “A poor man, a small farmer,” he calls himself, yet a poet, a poet of distinction, called North Carolina’s Robert Burns. I know no more touching, no more appealing poem than his “Fifty Acres,” teeming with imagination and resignation as he pictures is 50 acres in this poem. I would that each country dweller might picture his farm, small or large, and thereby realize how much more he possesses than does the average town dweller with his daily grind, the desolate fear of a lost job, and the pitiful attempt at the pretense of prosperity.
So here goes another New Year’s greeting to every country dweller in the Old North State—a Happy and Healthful New Year.
Smile
Somebody told a homely child
That she was pretty when she smiled,
And something in her bosom stirred
Responsive to the friendly word.
The little girl was very quick
To learn that little smiling trick,
And all the ugly took its flight
Before her beaming new delight.
Next day the neighbors saw her pass
And said, “Who is that lovely lass?
And where’s that homely little Jane
That used to amble down the lane?”
James Larkin Pearson*
*For more information on James Larkin Pearson of Wilkes County, Poet Laureate of North Carolina from Aug. 4, 1953, until his death on Aug. 27, 1981, go to http://www.wilkescc.edu/default2.aspx?id=590.
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