The Soil

How much would her Grandpa love it that she loves to dig right in to his soil with her bare hands?  He brought me this dirt for my first real garden, on shovel and wheelbarrow full at at time because he believes good dirt is important and that his soil is one if his best gifts to me.  She just wants to find the worms, smell it, get it all over, have me turn it with a shovel or just dig.  

And so it goes, we begin binding another generation to 'the land.'  It probably won't be the rigorous process of hours of tillage agriculture my siblings, and hours of farming and gardening that my siblings and I went through, or the life-long daily bond my father had.  It will be an appreciation of growing things and the richness of the earth.  A pride and happiness in knowing that she shares in a special farming heritage and her family's story of nearly 120 years on the same family farm in its all its changes.  She will, hopefully, get to have the joy of knowing a part of that small plot of earth is hers, carefully tended for five generations with the hope that she love it as much as they do.    I'm not sure the last is possible, but I at want her to at least know it.  It is the gift of the Blakley story and life to her.  It is the least I can do as my Dad would have done so much more to teach them if he could.  We will do the best we can.