How There May Come a Time in Life to "Let Go, and Let God," by Eben
that year by year gave less in yield.
"My best hybrid seed," he thought, is lost,
unless it produce more than it cost.
"Then there's my labor of long days over weeks--
it's like a gas can that badly leaks.
"You're robbing me!" he told that ground
as he passed by a buffalo mound.
"You get an extra shot of nitrogen,
and yet this corn is low and thin.
"I'd sell you off and cut my loss,
but no one wants your weeds and moss.
"My, in the spring how green you look,
but that's soon gone, like a snow-fed brook!"
He kicked the dirt, it hurt his toe--
it's clay when dried that breaks a hoe.
"I've had as much as I can take!"--
and that's a thought a heart can break.
Tim loved his land and the farm life--
it's perfect for his kids and wife.
True, times were tough, and his expenses had climbed;
he had to watch how he was nickel-and-dimed.
"It's a paid vacation I can't afford,
though washtub cabbages from this soil once poured!"
Old family albums told quite a tale--
"Now it sounds like 'Jonah and the Whale'!
"No fertilizer used back then,
it was the Garden of Eden again!"
"What's that?" He went to see
and found a thistle the size of a pine tree.
"Years later, all this I see
Grandpa and Grandma, then my dad, passed to me.
"But they had gold, ten foot deep topsoil poured,
and now what's left is tin, plastic, and cardboard!"
Tim sighed and returned to his truck;
he felt like Dirty Thirties farmers down on their luck.
He climbed in the cab to sit a while,
and thumbed the old-fashioned radio dial--
and then he noticed he was parked on a fire ant pile!
He spun balled tires getting out of there,
and tore up some corn--he did not care.
His dad's International, it still could go,
though it lost its green paint and third gear long ago.
"Lord, what'll I do, pull out? Yes or No?"
Tim scratched his head, and God answered "Fallow."
"Fallow"? What's that?
It sounded so strange, like singing round the piano "Home, Home on the Range!"
He grabbed an old almanac when he got home,
and found "fallow" had to do with worn-out loam:
"All land needs rest for a year or more,
unless you want to grow gradually poor."
So Tim took advice and let God be God,
and lightning and storms struck spent ground like a rod.
Grasses grew and deep went their roots,
and then come the fall a fire left rich soots.
A lot of things changed that only God knows--
but there came a day no clay stubbed Tim's toes.
And how the corn grew!
Neighbors and 4H classes all came to view.
Each acre surpassed the best yields ever known,
all because God had his way with Tim's fields unsown.
