Safety Net

What town?

We're an enclave. We're farmers. We till the soil like our forefathers, and our children's children's children will till it, till the end of time.

Sometimes a few of us gather at the post office for talk, and our womenfolk have quite a chatter session when they do their quilting days. We hear enough neighborly news just fine without all that politics getting in the way. People who have sit-down jobs, pushing pieces of paper around, instead of growing food? Can't feed your family with pieces of paper. That's what crops are for.

Trash? We spread it back on the fields, or we burn it.

Roads? We know how to maintain them. You had no problem driving them in that car of yours, right?

No, we don't use irrigation machines. If you farm right, you don't need to. And all of us dug a pond when our ancestors got here, just in case.

What drought?

Oh, really? No, not here. We're fine.

Oh. That again.

Small wonder you're here on the summer solstice then.

It always comes back to your idiotic ideas about blood sacrifice, and the idea of life coming from death. Yes, it's old, likely it goes all the way back to the start of farming. But, no, we have never sacrificed anyone!

Why do you think we keep moving? We're farmers! We're tied to the soil! We want to stay at one place forever, and salacious lies like this one keep us uprooted! We find a place, settle down, and just when we think we're safe, some city-bred idiot comes trooping through and pokes and prods, and now we have to leave again!

I'm sick of it! There's no place left to go, and I refuse to leave! I'm standing up to your stupid kind, and your thoughtless accusations!

Oh, really?

Tell me that folder in your hands isn't newspaper articles about all the children that have died on our farms in the last century or so.

Go on.

Hunh. Didn't think so.

No. That is not the way it works, and it never has.

Oh, now you want to listen? First, let's see how serious you are. Throw away those articles. Right now. You see I have a fireplace right over there, feed it. And while you're at it, throw away your disgusting accusations with them. It's all untrue.

Why? Because we know. We live it.

Look around, fool. We use the old style equipment, and horses, and old technology and techniques. It's utter nonsense that we live in harmonious balance with nature because we ensure the proper sacrifices. Nature's a bitch, in case you haven't noticed, and will not be propitiated or soothed. Look at those poor bog bodies they're still digging up in the old country. Does that culture still exist? No? Then it doesn't work. Period.

You city folk, you have cut yourself away from nature. That is both good and bad. Sure, no mosquitoes, but also no birds, no rising moon over the far mountains, no cycle of the seasons and your place in it. Birth leads to life leads to death, and yes rebirth, but the life that springs from our death is not the same. I don't come back as some fungus or insect when my corpse decays.

Things that are dead look lifeless. The trees in winter, the seeds we harvest. Then, come spring and sowing, that these things return. But not the same thing. So how could we kill our own? We know they won't return. And more children won't replace them, no matter how much we wish it were so.

And nature will eventually take us all, there is no escaping.

But you, with your city attitude, want to insulate us from harm. You cannot. There is inherent danger in living. I cannot wrap my children in your nasty bubble wrap to keep them from all harm, for to do that is to prevent them from experiencing life.

And that's your issue with us. You take it too far.

All your machines. And tools. Regulations. Restrictions. For “safety.”

From what?

Kids must experience the sun and moon, not be shut in air conditioned houses. They must hear the wind, and feel the shade, and play in rivers. How else will they understand nature at her most indifferent to their pain? You want them growing up, thinking milk and eggs and meat come from a store, with no thought to the processes behind it? If they eat it, they should know where it comes from. All of it.

Life is dangerous. Experiencing life is dangerous. Isolating them from those experiences will not prevent them from dying. But what life is it, to not take risks? No, we're not stupid, we protect them from grievous harm. They are children, after all, we teach them about things that can do them harm as they grow. But you try to protect them from everything. That, city person, is insane.

You've mechanized everything. Machines to till, plant, sow. Chemicals to kill plants you don't want, but that poison everything else. Safety, safety, safety. Layers and layers of smothering synthetics to make the dangerous tasks of farming “safer.” More chemicals to return nutrients that the plants remove, instead of the natural way of true organic fertilizers, like some small fish or manure. Or changing crops occasionally.

And still, we lose some to accidents.

It is a dangerous life. The neighbor up the street lost his grandfather to a bull that broke out of the pen. Over there, they lost their twins when they played in the river. Down there, their toddler kept running in front of a nervous horse, and the horse finally lost it and stomped what scared it. I lost one of mine who wouldn't stop hanging off the wagon trace as it was moving.

We don't need to sacrifice, idiot. Nature takes anyway, be it the arrogant or timid or the unaware. Our paltry attempt to regulate it won't stop the toll from being paid.

And trying to make it “safer” only raises the toll. Silos? Manure pits? That's what kills more today, along with tractor accidents and angry inbred cattle. Or pigs, those things are vicious. You see? Your attempts to make our lives reflect your city life, the more the very land itself will rebel, and take you out if it can.

Look there. We haven't cut down our mountains or their trees. We tuck our fields in between, contouring with the land. No erosion. We keep our structures away from roaring rivers, and we keep large trees near, but not too near, our homes.

For all of your “safety,” roaring around your fields in your air-conditioned tractor cab, dropping coated pellets with seeds tucked far inside, have you looked at the soil? The crops? Really looked? I walk my fields weekly, to see what's going on. And if there are too many grasshoppers one year, well, we eat grasshoppers. If leaves are yellowing, we find out why and work it out. Or we dip water out of the pond into a bucket with a small hole in it, and we trickle-drip water on drying crops at a steady rate.

Do you know what year the crops yielded best? The year the war came through, and these fields were drenched with soldier blood.

That doesn't mean we go seeking it out. It means that we use what falls into our hands.

Why would we have graves? Our dead go to our fields, so their nutrients nourish those left alive. We even grind up the bones; calcium is important to the soil. I know where my loved ones lie – within that field, right there, and the others, and within me when I eat the bread made from that grain.

We do not need to hasten the heat-death of the universe with useless sacrifice.

True sacrifice is found in the hard work of a well-lived life. My blood sacrifice is my own, drips at a time, with my sweat and tears. Decades of work, feeding my family with crop yields from the land I've tended with my own hands. A healthy land, one I can safely bequeath to my children to do the same.

So take your insinuations and shove them.

Because your methods are what is killing the soil, and the fate of the ground is our fate as well. There is no harmonious balance in your design, there is only “safety safety safety,” and all you do is make things more and more un-safe.

And nature will take its due anyway. Asthma, heat stroke, more and more violent storms? Sound familiar?

Look to your own house, city folk. Take my hard-won knowledge with you, and use it. Or ignore me, and spread your vicious lies. Which will make you famous, and which will keep you alive?

And we will be an oasis as long as we are able.