Saturday, July 11, 2009

Vegetables of Labor



About a medium time ago, in a land that could be quite close, there dwelt a tree-chopping, seed-sowing, hard-working and altogether resourceful farmer. He was knowing in the ways of growing, and his farm was exceedingly prosperous. Consequently, his wife and two sons lived in considerable comfort, and after paying the bills and buying the dairy cow that Mrs. Farmer really wanted, Mr. Farmer had heaps of cash left. So he bought a piano. He employed a pianist to teach his sons to play. Both sons were equipped with long, spindly, gifted pianist hands, and they were wondrously talented. They became famous quickly, and neither of them visited their parents on the farm. Time passed, and Mr. Farmer got a sickness of the lungs which came from chewing tobacco and smoking his corncob pipe. Now, when Mr. Farmer had a hunch that the end was near, he got to fretting and worrying about what would become of his wife and farm since it was apparent that his sons didn’t care. He began to reflect on what treasures they were when the solution to ensure their safety and well being smacked him upside the head. When he had worked through the details, he chuckled to himself and summoned his sons with the news that he was on his death bed. They arrived and presented themselves before him.
“My sons,” he croaked in an unpleasant wheezy voice, because it’s hard to have a pleasant voice when you’re dying of a lung disease, “Let me tell you something I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time; in my fields there’s a treasure, dig for it!”
With that spoken, he gasped and coughed a couple of times and then he died. Entranced, entrapped and enraptured by the gleaming prospect of treasure, the two sons donned straw hats and hefted heavy shovels out to the fields. One after the other and then the next, the fields were turned over and sifted through. Mrs. Farmer had been informed of her husband’s plan, and she sowed the fields at night. After multiple months of hard work, when every last field had been turned, the sons, weary and angry, marched home.
Errgh,” grumbled one.
Errgh-ow!” growled the other as he stubbed his toe. Looking down, he perceived a radish as big as a beet.
“Who put a radish there?” he snarled. Just then, their aged mother hobbled out.
“Did you find the treasure?” she asked mischievously.
“Nope,” they responded glumly.
“Look again!’ she snorted, “I think you stubbed your toe on it!”
Both sons looked down at the huge radish, and then out at the lush, green fields. That year, because of the excellent plowing, the land yielded an astoundingly abundant crop. The Farmer’s sons became farmers themselves, because they realized that the true treasures were the vegetables of their labor.

Hi everybody! Sorry I am foisting ancient writing assignments on you... but I've always liked this one.

2 COMMENTS:

Jare said...

I really like this Oph. Its either that or that I think that Farmers who are named Mr.Farmer are awesome! =)

-L

Anonymous said...

Great story. Did you write it? I liked reading it! :D