Robert Browning Quotes

Farming teaches a brutal work ethic that serves society well when farm kids move to the city.

The entire tenant system operated by coercion and dependence. Landowners did not want their tenants to improve, because then they would have less control over them. A hungry worker was the best worker, or so many southern cotton growers believed. No one—neither tenants nor their landlords—had any problem making children and women work in the fields.

I was a hard-workin' little boy. Oh, I worked. Pullin' cotton, shockin' grain, cuttin' wheat, loadin' wheat, choppin' cotton, cleanin' chicken houses, milkin' cows, plowin'.

A Song of the good green grass! A song no more of the city streets; A song of farms - a song of the soil of fields. A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers handle the pitch-fork; A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husk'd maize.

Three days a week and I'm home at the ranch in Fallbrook with my avocados.

We ought to thank God for that. Yes, the man who tills the land is more worthy of respect than any.

I remember as a little girl going down to the beet fields in the Dakotas and in Nebraska and Wyoming as migrant workers when I was very, very small, like, I was, like, 5 years old, I believe. And I remember going out there, you know, traveling to these states and living in these little tarpaper shacks that they had in Wyoming.

We were sharecroppers - we were a little bit of everything. We farmed and tried to make something.

The Lord said 'let there be wheat' and Saskatchewan was born.

My father was raised in the mountains of New Mexico, and he picked cotton for a dollar a day. He was working for the family from the time he was 7.

My family was a poor farming family, and we lived under absolute segregation.

I was trying to perform as best as possible. I was a boy at the time, but worked well with the sickle.

Oh, I started out young. They handed me a cotton sack when I was about 8 years old. Give me a little small one, tell me to fill it up. I never did like the farm but I was out there with my grandmother, didn't want to get away from around her too far.

Time, Look and Life don’t give a damn about dairy prices. They don’t know the difference between a corn cob and a ukulele.

Corne, which is the staffe of life

People are wanted on the farms to raise corn and grow stock for the markets; but they are wanted there far more for the training of manhood and womanhood in moral worth, in religious sensibility, in all the traits of a strong, upright personality. In the future as never heretofore, our cities with their multiplying wealth and lavish luxury are likely to need the country for that steady renewal of their better life which shall keep them from relaxing into sensuality and sinking into decay.

In Uzbekistan, up to two million children under 15 are put to work harvesting cotton each year — just as the mills of St. Petersburg, Manchester and Alsace once heavily depended on child labor from poorhouses and orphanages.

I feel closest to God with a pitchfork full of crap in my hands. I'm serious!

I was a regular hand when I was 7. I picked cotton. I drove tractors. Children grew up not thinking that this is what they must do. We thought this was the thing to do to help your family.

On one occasion, I accompanied my father to Pinares de Mayari. I was eight or nine years old. How he enjoyed talking when he left the house in Biran! There he was the proprietor of the land where sugar cane, pasture, and other agricultural crops were planted.

I'm really glad I had those years working on the orchard alongside my husband.

My California sunrise, there's a real mist in the air. I think of the mountains. You can smell the farm fields. You can smell the dirt and the lights and the whole sun.

I grew up watching my parents work in the fields. That's where I get my work ethic from, because I saw them work hard my whole life.

I don't spend my time on farms. I don't like the smell, to be honest.

I never got to play as a child. All my spare time was spent working on my family's smallholding.