Farmers' Checks

This is the season of the year when the farmers start to pay for having their seed cleaned.
And this is what I find intriguing: the mailers and the deliverers.

We have only half a dozen farmers we clean for so I don’t have a big pool to observe. Some farmers in their uniform jeans and billed caps show up at the door to deliver their checks, taking a few minutes to chat. And the other checks come in the mail, with an "H-C Farms, Inc." logo or a neat "James Smucker" in the corner of the envelope. I wonder if the latter value efficiency more and the former value the human connection more. I don't know. I do know that we depend on them for our bread and butter; they depend on us to fill a very important step in the farming process. There’s a tacit acknowledgement of this in the little exchange about weather and orchardgrass prices at the front door.

We are very blessed to deal with farmers who are honest and considerate and who, with only one exception, value excellence. That would be the one I think of as Paul’s charity case, a struggling farmer who is always the last to harvest his seed and has the poorest crops. There are some verses in Proverbs that apply to him, like the one about a son who sleeps in harvest. But in the end he always pays what he owes, and I am thankful for that.

Quote of the Day:
"These benches are very orange!"
--Phebe, at church cleaning the other Saturday, after we spent a few hours cleaning the pews. I vacuumed them off, and she scootched around on her back all over the sanctuary floor, washing the legs and undersides. And we both were ready to not look at orange church pews for a good while.