![]() In New England, men continue to plant and tend corn and beans just as the Indians taught them centuries ago. Men generally are only as brave as their fathers have been. ![]() However, several summers have gone by and the seeds which he compares to the seeds of virtues did not come up. Another summer, he says he will not plant beans and corn with so much industry but instead will see if these seeds of sincerity, truth, simplicit, faith, and innocene will grow with even less work in the same soil. All in all, he spent $14.72 _ on supplies and made $23.44 selling his crops, leaving him with a profit of $8.71 _.Īs a result of his experience, Thoreau advises planting the white bush bean about June 1 in rows 3' X 18" apart, watching out for worms, filling vacancies with new seeds, watching out for woodchucks which will eat the leaves, and above all, harvest as early as possible to avoid frost. Though he didn't give them manure and didn't hoe them all at once, he was ultimately rewarded for his work. While some of his peers spend their summer days to fine arts, contemplation, or trade in distant locales, Thoreau was engaged in husbandry, which he found "a rare amusement," though it might have bored him if it had continued much longer. He hoed them from 5 AM till noon and became well acquainted with different species of weeds in his war against them. Though this was supposedly a "great" day, the sky looked the same to Thoreau.įrom planting, hoeing, harvesting, threshing, picking over, selling, and eating them, Thoreau attempted to know beans. The whole village sounds like "a vast bellows" when there are several bands playing, but sometimes a "noble and inspiring strain" reaches Thoreau inspire him to think about Palestine and marching crusaders. The hum of the people sounds to Thoreau like bees and he is relieve when they finally quiet down and return to "the Middlesex hive," now able to continue his hoeing in confidence that the liberties of Massachusetts are in safekeeping. ![]() The guns which the town shoots off on "gala days" sound like a burst puff-ball to Thoreau. He notices the "kindredship of Nature" in the birds which fly above a night-hawk which is the "aerial brother of the wave," hen-hawks soaring and descending like the embodiment of his thoughts, and a spotted salamander, a contemporary trace of Egypt. While he plants seeds, Thoreau listens to a brown thrasher sing "Drop it, drop it,-cover it up, cover it up,-pull it up, pull it up, pull it up." As he hoes, he digs up not just beans but the soil of ancient civilizations stones burned in Indian fires and pottery and glass from more recent farmers. Thoreau sees his as "the connecting link between wild and cultivated fields" and his beans "returning to their wild and primitive state." Sometimes, travelers would drive by and see him constantly at work, and he might hear their gossip about him, planting beans and peas much later than most people, or be questioned by farmers about his lack of manure in the furrows. Even though farmers say not to, Thoreau would get up early, while the dew was still on the leaves, and begin to weed and hoe his crops, working barefoot in the morning before the sun was too hot for his feet.īecause he didn't hire any people or animals to help him, he took longer than most people in his labor and thus got to know his crop better. But during his hoeing, he dug up arrow heads and realized that Indians had grown corn and beans there once and had somewhat exhausted the soil. He dug up some stumps but didn't use any fertilizer. Thoreau has planted two and a half acres of beans in some land that was cleared fifteen years ago. But the bean, corn, and potatoes now growing there are the result of his influence. The pine trees are still older than him and the johnswort which he saw then still grows. On one night, as he plays his flute, he recalls visiting Walden at age four, when his family lived in Boston. His enemies are worms, cool days, and woodchucks, which have nibbled a quarter of an acre. ![]() They attach him to the earth and growing them is his days work. The length of all of Thoreau's beans added together was seven miles and had to be hoed frequently. ![]()
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