“Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous…” - Thomas Jefferson
I had no idea France is so farmy. I don’t know why I’m so surprised, but I am. Maybe because when one pops into various foreign cities on vacation, one doesn’t normally see much beyond the city borders. But when you take the grand tour by car, as Martha and I are doing, you see so much more. Mostly what we’ve seen is farmland.
There’s so much of it. Mile after mile of tilled January fields waiting to be planted. The fields abut each other like bathroom tiles, thin lines of trees the only grout separating them. Plus, lots of sheep, all of whom were wearing berets.
Every nation has to feed its people, of course, and the French take more pride than most countries in their gastronomie. Obviously they’re going to need a lot of farmland. Even so, I never really considered how much space it takes to grow all those grapes and feed all those cows for all that camembert. I just didn’t think about it. This, despite the fact that I’ve driven across the US many times and spent literal days staring out at endless fields of soybeans and wheat.
Out of curiosity, I asked Martha to look up how much of France is farmland and to then compare it to the US. About 50% for France, 39% for the US. We have five times as many people but seventeen times the land. No wonder we’re a big-boned folk; we grow so much food! Maybe the reason we overeat is because we have to dispose of all that corn before it goes bad? Thank God we can make corn syrup out of it and put that into everything else. That way, the only thing that goes bad is our mitochondria.
When one thinks about nations, one naturally thinks first of cities. And why not? Cities are any nation’s brains. They’re often its hearts. But they are never its stomachs. That honor belongs to a country’s fields and seas and forests.
Look, I don’t want to rhapsodize about farmers and farm work because I grew up in a farming community and some of those farmer kids were dumb pricks, but so were many of the kids whose parents couldn’t tell a pinecone from a pig snout. (I am including my own parents in this, by the way.) But I believe in the spirit of the Thomas Jefferson quote I used to start this piece, even if he was laying it more than a little bit thick.
Farmers may, in fact, be a nation’s most valuable citizens but spare me with the line about them being the most virtuous. Virtue is in short supply these days among all Americans, so I’m wary about saluting any single profession with too snap. We’ve seen good farmers and bad, good cops and bad, good Episcopal bishops and…
(And here I was going to make a joke about how comedians are the only true heroes but even before I could begin typing the words, my mind flashed to all the comics who have let us down and I thought better of even bothering. Sigh.)
Also, let’s be honest, Jefferson’s quote is more than a little self-serving. He owned 5,000 acres, on which he grew tobacco, wheat, grains, and livestock. And when I say “he” grew, I mean that the people he owned grew those things. I’m sure ol’ TJ wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty, but when he did so, it was by choice. The people who worked his lands would have loved to sit up in Monticello and write peans to liberty. They never had the chance.
Liberty is, of course, much on my mind these days.
As we were driving from Albi to Montpellier today, we passed a cherry red Ford F-150. American pick-up trucks are an unusual sight here. So too were the stickers affixed to his rear windshield. One featured an American flag in the process of being shredded by a bald eagle. The other, one of those creepy “Punisher” logos which have come to symbolize being pro-police brutality, I guess?
“What the fuck is this?” I said aloud.
The driver looked to be in his late 50’s or early 60’s, gray hair pulled into a ponytail. Goatee maybe. Martha said he must be American, but I said I didn’t think so. No American worth his salt would have displayed those stickers without also flying an oversized MAGA flag from his truck bed. In my estimation, this was some sort of French poseur. What he was trying to pose as is anybody’s guess.
It seemed like maybe he was one of those occasional Yankophiles who admire American culture from afar but might be appalled if they ever got too close to it. Sort of the way I am with truffles. What was it he found so appealing about America? Judging from his truck and stickers, I would guess he’s enamored with our “freedom,” although his take on freedom and my own seem to be at odds. His flavor looked to be the rootin-tootin-shootin’ variety, while mine is more of the live-and-let-live sort.
The land is any nation’s most precious resource. There’s a story about Nikita Khrushchev visiting the US during the Eisenhower administration. As part of his trip, he wanted to visit our heartland to compare agricultural methods. Khrushchev was a farmer boy himself, having grown up in Ukraine and being so passionate about Soviet agriculture that he was given the nickname “kukuruznik,” which translates to “corn fanatic.”
He visited the farm of Roswell Garst of Coon Rapids, Iowa, where Khrushchev reportedly bent down and ran the soil through his fingers. When he stood, he told Garst and his host, Iowa governor Herschel Loveless, that “[Americans] are an intelligent people… but God has helped you.” Khrushchev was apparently shaken by the quality of the American soil compared to what forty years of Soviet mismanagement had done to that of his homeland. Maybe soil needs freedom as much as people do. Without enough, things begin to rot.
My village is more than 85% farmland and you get a true appreciation what hard work it is once you live rurally. I have a neighbor who works his land at night because he has another job during the day. I don't know when/if he ever sleeps. Admittedly, as someone has mostly lived in NYC, I had no appreciation for how hard farmers work. Jefferson's quote here is spot on. [You will likely see more Americana as you get closer to Montpellier and if you go to Nîmes. They even have a few American style diners in those areas.]
I hope everyone else appreciates the quality of MIB’s text above the Subscribe buttons as much as I do