Spring! Thoughts on planting.

Agriculture is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals, and happiness.

-- Letter from Thomas Jefferson to George Washington (1787)


I had rather be on my farm than be emperor of the world.

-- George Washington, Response to newspaper criticisms of his presidency, as quoted in The Alumni Register of the University of Pennsylvania (1925), p.473


I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural.

--Thomas Jefferson


The first farmer was the first man. All historic nobility rests on the possession and use of land.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bands.

–-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Jay (Aug. 23, 1785)


Ye rigid Ploughman! bear in mind
Your labor is for future hours.
Advance! spare not! nor look behind!
Plough deep and straight with all your powers!

--Richard Hengist Horne, The Plow


Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest.

--Douglas Jerrold, A Land of Plenty


Adam, well may we labour, still to dress
This garden, still to tend plant, herb, and flower.

--John Milton, Paradise Lost, bk. IX, 1.20


[In the Millennial reign of Christ] …they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them.

They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat: for as the days of a tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands.

--Isa.65:21-22


Do not lose contact with the soil.

--Spencer W. Kimball, The True Way of Life and Salvation, Ensign, May 1978, 4