Resources - Leaving things better than we found it

Excepts taken from "Just Thoughts of a Plain Country Woman"  by Lucile Ellingwood Morrow   January 8, 1948

 

 'The Man With The Hoe' Is The Hope of The World" is the title of a cartoon

showing a father leaning against his tractor, pointing out across a landscape of hills and valleys, and saying to his small son upon the tractor seat: "Son, these fields and forests my father gave me to care for and protect. Some day they will be yours. For those to come, we must leave it all better than we found it."

Note:  This cartoon must have been taken from "The Man With the Hoe" by French painter Millet.  I could not find the cartoon, but the painting and resulting poem by Edwin Markham are well known.  They both graphically illustrate the difficult life of a farmer.  Having a tractor would certainly have lighten "the man's" burden. 

My Birthday - "Little Sister Snow"

Excerpts taken from "Just Thoughts of a Plain Country Woman" by Lucile Ellingwood Morrow, Feburary 7th, 1946

Lucile Ellingwood Morrow was born on February 18, 1891, in Rocky Ford, Colorado.

"February has an unusual number of days of peculiar interest, most of them birthdays; Lincoln, Washington, Dickens. and the poets Lowell and Longfellow were born in February;  then there is St. Valentine's Day, though not a birthday, it was named for a Catholic saint and is given over to that kind of sentiment that we all enjoy but which must not be taken all too seriously.

I, too, am happy to find my birthday falls within such illustrious company of notables; My Mother used to call me "Little Sister Snow" because I was born in a blizzard." 


Note:   From Lucile's book, "Father was .snowbound in a sheep camp in the mountains of Colorado shortly after I was born, when he came across a magazine article about the opening of the University of Chicago, its creed of freedom from 'barriers of race, religion or sex, founded upon the theory that scholarship should be based not upon "Who are you?" but rather "What can you do?"  And he vowed that every child he had should attend that school." 
The story goes that Lucile's father had taken extra seasonal work as a sheepherder in the spring after his teaching job was comptlete.  The men were stranded in the mountains of Colorado with the sheep and spent days in a camp waiting for the blizzard to pass.  The mountain camp walls were lined/papered with all kinds of paper - magazines, newspapers, etc.   Mr. Ellingwood, not being one to sit idle, read every "wall" or "newspaper" in the camphouse. 
During that time, he read an article about a new university founded by John D. Rockefeller that promised to provide an equal education for "all." 
Only two of his children survived to adulthood, but both Ellingwood children were enrolled at The University of Chicago and Lucile graduated from the famous institution in 1917 - a class made up of three men and three women - true equality in those days.







 

Use your resources and be resourceful - "Well done faithful servant. . . "

Except taken from "Just Thoughts of a Plain Country Woman"  May 20, 1948

" . . . Professor Roberts of Cornell University says:

"Great fortunes that are made from farming are the exceptions to the general rule, and any young man

who chooses farming as his vocation should be prepared to be content with medium financial returns from his labors, but if independence, a comfortable and adequate livelihood, and an assurance against want in old age are the things desired, farming pays.

In the broadest and most satisfying way,  the successful farmer must be a man of resources, and he must be possesed of a fair amount of executive ability. The advice I would give to such a man is, take to the farm and stick to it; the farm will afford him a comfortable home, keep him and his family well fed and well clothed, enable him to educate his children, and to reap the blessings that come at the

close of a long fruitful life to a man who expects to hear his Master say:

 

'Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful in a few things; I will make thee ruler over many."

 

Note:  Although Mrs. Morrow and Professor Roberts spoke of farming as a profession, these words speak to any young person beginning a life, i.e.,  plan, be organized, stick to your plan --- perseverance -- along with patience and dedication to your values, your goals and to yourself make you a rich man or woman.

 

New Times. . . New Things. . . What Next?

Excerpts taken from "Just Thoughts of a Plain County Woman", January 20, 1946

Now I can believe that anything is possible!

 

Since the giant atom-smashing machines have shown us the way to release untold powers, we wait

for super-planes and cars that streak their way through the stratosphere and along the highways.

Pilotless, radio-controlled planes and tanks have paved the way for the farm boy merely to step from these wonders to a farm tractor tower where he will regulate his radio-controlled tractors and other machines by merely pushing buttons. Thus farming promises to become as different in the coming age as it now differs from methods (used)  a hundred years ago.

 

The walkie-talkie will permit him to talk from the home to the field or from field to field, and a farm wife will not have to fly a dish cloth from the upstairs window to announce dinner to a farmer plowing in the North 40; a helicopter will rise from his very doorstep to carry him to town or to a neighbor's. This will be a horse of a different color, and one from which most of us will shy away.

As for crops, they, too, will be different;  many will be the weeds about us which we are fast learning

are valuable for unheard of uses.  Already soy beans are being used for paints and varnishes, clothes and plastics.   Cottage cheese is being turned into "woolen" clothes; even the leaves from the orchard and yard in the fall can be so treated that they will take your car to town at 200 miles an hour; peaches without fuzz, onions that do not make you cry; homes with "electric eyes" and electric servants will give us more time to enjoy the good things ahead.

Maybe I would have time to assemble my scrapbooks!"