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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] VII. The Bean-Field
  • Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009 21:45:04 -0600


from Ed


» Henry David Thoreau » Walden Pond › now reading, VII. The Bean-Field
http://www.americanliterature.com/Thoreau/WaldenPond/7.html

VII. The Bean-Field

MEANWHILE MY beans, the length of whose rows, added together, wasseven miles
already planted, were impatient to be hoed, for theearliest had grown
considerably before the latest were in theground; indeed they were not easily
to be put off. What was themeaning of this so steady and self-respecting,
this small Herculeanlabor, I knew not. I came to love my rows, my beans,
though so manymore than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I
gotstrength like Antaeus. But why should I raise them? Only Heaven knows.This
was my curious labor all summer- to make this portion of theearth's surface,
which had yielded only cinquefoil, blackberries,johnswort, and the like,
before, sweet wild fruits and pleasantflowers, produce instead this pulse.
What shall I learn of beans orbeans of me? I cherish them, I hoe them, early
and late I have aneye to them; and this is my day's work. It is a fine broad
leaf tolook on. My auxiliaries are the dews and rains which water this
drysoil, and what fertility is in the soil itself, which for the mostpart is
lean and effete. My enemies are worms, cool days, and mostof all woodchucks.
The last have nibbled for me a quarter of an acreclean. But what right had I
to oust johnswort and the rest, andbreak up their ancient herb garden? Soon,
however, the remaining beanswill be too tough for them, and go forward to
meet new foes.

When I was four years old, as I well remember, I was brought fromBoston to
this my native town, through these very woods and thisfield, to the pond. It
is one of the oldest seenes stamped on mymemory. And now tonight my flute has
waked the echoes over that verywater. The pines still stand here older than
I; or, if some havefallen, I have cooked my supper with their stumps, and a
new growth isrising all around, preparing another aspect for new infant
eyes.Almost the same johnswort springs from the same perennial root in
thispasture, and even I have at length helped to clothe that
fabulouslandscape of my infant dreams, and one of the results of my
presenceand influence is seen in these bean leaves, corn blades, and
potatovines.

I planted about two acres and a half of upland; and as it was onlyabout
fifteen years since the land was cleared, and I myself had gotout two or
three cords of stumps, I did not give it any manure; but inthe course of the
summer it appeared by the arrowheads which Iturned up in hoeing, that an
extinct nation had anciently dwelt hereand planted corn and beans ere white
men came to clear the land, andso, to some extent, had exhausted the soil for
this very crop.

Before yet any woodchuck or squirrel had run across the road, or thesun had
got above the shrub oaks, while all the dew was on, though thefarmers warned
me against it- I would advise you to do all your workif possible while the
dew is on- I began to level the ranks of haughtyweeds in my bean-field and
throw dust upon their heads. Early in themorning I worked barefooted,
dabbling like a plastic artist in thedewy and crumbling sand, but later in
the day the sun blistered myfeet. There the sun lighted me to hoe beans,
pacing slowly backwardand forward over that yellow gravelly upland, between
the long greenrows, fifteen rods, the one end terminating in a shrub oak
copse whereI could rest in the shade, the other in a blackberry field where
thegreen berries deepened their tints by the time I had made anotherbout.
Removing the weeds, putting fresh soil about the bean stems, andencouraging
this weed which I had sown, making the yellow soil expressits summer thought
in bean leaves and blossoms rather than in wormwoodand piper and millet
grass, making the earth say beans instead ofgrass- this was my daily work. As
I had little aid from horses orcattle, or hired men or boys, or improved
implements of husbandry, Iwas much slower, and became much more intimate with
my beans thanusual. But labor of the hands, even when pursued to the verge
ofdrudgery, is perhaps never the worst form of idleness. It has aconstant and
imperishable moral, and to the scholar it yields aclassic result. A very
agricola laboriosus was I to travellers boundwestward through Lincoln and
Wayland to nobody knows where; theysitting at their ease in gigs, with elbows
on knees, and reins looselyhanging in festoons; I the home-staying, laborious
native of the soil.But soon my homestead was out of their sight and thought.
It was theonly open and cultivated field for a great distance on either
sideof the road, so they made the most of it; and sometimes the man in
thefield heard more of travellers' gossip and comment than was meantfor his
ear: "Beans so late! peas so late!"- for I continued toplant when others had
begun to hoe- the ministerial husbandman had notsuspected it. "Corn, my boy,
for fodder; corn for fodder." "Does helive there?" asks the black bonnet of
the gray coat; and thehard-featured farmer reins up his grateful dobbin to
inquire whatyou are doing where he sees no manure in the furrow, and
recommendsa little chip dirt, or any little waste stuff, or it may be ashes
orplaster. But here were two acres and a half of furrows, and only a hoefor
cart and two hands to draw it- there being an aversion to othercarts and
horses- and chip dirt far away. Fellow-travellers as theyrattled by compared
it aloud with the fields which they had passed, sothat I came to know how I
stood in the agricultural world. This wasone field not in Mr. Colman's
report. And, by the way, who estimatesthe value of the crop which nature
yields in the still wilder fieldsunimproved by man? The crop of English hay
is carefully weighed, themoisture calculated, the silicates and the potash;
but in all dellsand pond-holes in the woods and pastures and swamps grows a
rich andvarious crop only unreaped by man. Mine was, as it were,
theconnecting link between wild and cultivated fields; as some states
arecivilized, and others half-civilized, and others savage orbarbarous, so my
field was, though not in a bad sense, ahalf-cultivated field. They were beans
cheerfully returning to theirwild and primitive state that I cultivated, and
my hoe played the Ranzdes Vaches for them.

Near at hand, upon the topmost spray of a birch, sings the brownthrasher- or
red mavis, as some love to call him- all the morning,glad of your society,
that would find out another farmer's field ifyours were not here. While you
are planting the seed, he cries-"Drop it, drop it- cover it up, cover it up-
pull it up, pull it up,pull it up." But this was not corn, and so it was safe
from suchenemies as he. You may wonder what his rigmarole, his amateur
Paganiniperformances on one string or on twenty, have to do with
yourplanting, and yet prefer it to leached ashes or plaster. It was acheap
sort of top dressing in which I had entire faith.

As I drew a still fresher soil about the rows with my hoe, Idisturbed the
ashes of unchronicled nations who in primeval yearslived under these heavens,
and their small implements of war andhunting were brought to the light of
this modern day. They lay mingledwith other natural stones, some of which
bore the marks of having beenburned by Indian fires, and some by the sun, and
also bits ofpottery and glass brought hither by the recent cultivators of
thesoil. When my hoe tinkled against the stones, that music echoed tothe
woods and the sky, and was an accompaniment to my labor whichyielded an
instant and immeasurable crop. It was no longer beansthat I hoed, nor I that
hoed beans; and I remembered with as much pityas pride, if I remembered at
all, my acquaintances who had gone to thecity to attend the oratorios. The
nighthawk circled overhead in thesunny afternoons- for I sometimes made a day
of it- like a mote in theeye, or in heaven's eye, falling from time to time
with a swoop anda sound as if the heavens were rent, torn at last to very
rags andtatters, and yet a seamless cope remained; small imps that fill
theair and lay their eggs on the ground on bare sand or rocks on the topsof
hills, where few have found them; graceful and slender like ripplescaught up
from the pond, as leaves are raised by the wind to floatin the heavens; such
kindredship is in nature. The hawk is aerialbrother of the wave which he
sails over and surveys, those his perfectair- inflated wings answering to the
elemental unfledged pinions ofthe sea. Or sometimes I watched a pair of hen-
hawks circling highin the sky, alternately soaring and descending,
approaching, andleaving one another, as if they were the embodiment of my
ownthoughts, Or I was attracted by the passage of wild pigeons fromthis wood
to that, with a slight quivering winnowing sound and carrierhaste; or from
under a rotten stump my hoe turned up a sluggishportentous and outlandish
spotted salamander, a trace of Egypt and theNile, yet our contemporary. When
I paused to lean on my hoe, thesesounds and sights I heard and saw anywhere
in the row, a part of theinexhaustible entertainment which the country offers.

On gala days the town fires its great guns, which echo likepopguns to these
woods, and some waifs of martial music occasionallypenetrate thus far. To me,
away there in my bean-field at the otherend of the town, the big guns sounded
as if a puffball had burst;and when there was a military turnout of which I
was ignorant, Ihave sometimes had a vague sense all the day of some sort of
itchingand disease in the horizon, as if some eruption would break outthere
soon, either scarlatina or canker-rash, until at length somemore favorable
puff of wind, making haste over the fields and up theWayland road, brought me
information of the "trainers." It seemed bythe distant hum as if somebody's
bees had swarmed, and that theneighbors, according to Virgil's advice, by a
faint tintinnabulum uponthe most sonorous of their domestic utensils, were
endeavoring to callthem down into the hive again. And when the sound died
quite away, andthe hum had ceased, and the most favorable breezes told no
tale, Iknew that they had got the last drone of them all safely into
theMiddlesex hive, and that now their minds were bent on the honey withwhich
it was smeared.

I felt proud to know that the liberties of Massachusetts and ofour fatherland
were in such safe keeping; and as I turned to my hoeingagain I was filled
with an inexpressible confidence, and pursued mylabor cheerfully with a calm
trust in the future.

When there were several bands of musicians, it sounded as if all thevillage
was a vast bellows and all the buildings expanded andcollapsed alternately
with a din. But sometimes it was a reallynoble and inspiring strain that
reached these woods, and the trumpetthat sings of fame, and I felt as if I
could spit a Mexican with agood relish- for why should we always stand for
trifles?- and lookedround for a woodchuck or a skunk to exercise my chivalry
upon. Thesemartial strains seemed as far away as Palestine, and reminded me
ofa march of crusaders in the horizon, with a slight tantivy andtremulous
motion of the elm tree tops which overhang the village. Thiswas one of the
great days; though the sky had from my clearing onlythe same everlastingly
great look that it wears daily, and I saw nodifference in it.

It was a singular experience that long acquaintance which Icultivated with
beans, what with planting, and hoeing, and harvesting,and threshing, and
picking over and selling them- the last was thehardest of all- I might add
eating, for I did taste. I wasdetermined to know beans. When they were
growing, I used to hoe fromfive o'clock in the morning till noon, and
commonly spent the restof the day about other affairs. Consider the intimate
and curiousacquaintance one makes with various kinds of weeds- it will
bearsome iteration in the account, for there was no little iteration inthe
labor- disturbing their delicate organizations so ruthlessly,and making such
invidious distinctions with his hoe, levelling wholeranks of one species, and
sedulously cultivating another. That's Romanwormwood- that's pigweed- that's
sorrel- that's piper-grass- have athim, chop him up, turn his roots upward to
the sun, don't let him havea fibre in the shade, if you do he'll turn himself
t'other side up andbe as green as a leek in two days. A long war, not with
cranes, butwith weeds, those Trojans who had sun and rain and dews on their
side.Daily the beans saw me come to their rescue armed with a hoe, and
thinthe ranks of their enemies, filling up the trenches with weedy dead.Many
a lusty crest- waving Hector, that towered a whole foot above hiscrowding
comrades, fell before my weapon and rolled in the dust.

Those summer days which some of my contemporaries devoted to thefine arts in
Boston or Rome, and others to contemplation in India, andothers to trade in
London or New York, I thus, with the otherfarmers of New England, devoted to
husbandry. Not that I wantedbeans to eat, for I am by nature a Pythagorean,
so far as beans areconcerned, whether they mean porridge or voting, and
exchanged themfor rice; but, perchance, as some must work in fields if only
forthe sake of tropes and expression, to serve a parable-maker one day.It was
on the whole a rare amusement, which, continued too long, mighthave become a
dissipation. Though I gave them no manure, and did nothoe them all once, I
hoed them unusualy well as far as I went, and waspaid for it in the end,
"there being in truth," as Evelyn says, "nocompost or laetation whatsoever
comparable to this continual motion,repastination, and turning of the mould
with the spade." "Theearth," he adds elsewhere, "especially if fresh, has a
certainmagnetism in it, by which it attracts the salt, power, or virtue
(callit either) which gives it life, and is the logic of all the laborand
stir we keep about it, to sustain us; all dungings and othersordid temperings
being but the vicars succedaneous to thisimprovement." Moreover, this being
one of those "worn- out andexhausted lay fields which enjoy their sabbath,"
had perchance, as SirKenelm Digby thinks likely, attracted "vital spirits"
from the air.I harvested twelve bushels of beans.

But to be more particular, for it is complained that Mr. Colmanhas reported
chiefly the expensive experiments of gentlemen farmers,my outgoes were,

For a hoe.....................................$ 0.54
Plowing, harrowing, and furrowing............. 7.50 (Too much.)
Beans for seed................................ 3.12
1/2 Potatoes for seed............................. 1.33
Peas for seed................................. 0.40
Turnip seed................................... 0.06
White line for crow fence..................... 0.02
Horse cultivator and boy three hours.......... 1.00
Horse and cart to get crop.................... 0.75
----- In all.......................................$ 14.72 1/2

My income was (patremfamilias vendacem, non emacem esse oportet),from

Nine bushels and twelve quarts of beans sold..$ 16.94
Five bushels large potatoes................... 2.50
Nine bushels small potatoes................... 2.25
Grass......................................... 1.00
Stalks........................................ 0.75
----- In all......................................$ 23.44

Leaving a pecuniary profit, as I have elsewhere said, of..............$ 8.71
1/2

This is the result of my experience in raising beans: Plant thecommon small
white bush bean about the first of June, in rows threefeet by eighteen inches
apart, being careful to select fresh round andunmixed seed. First look out
for worms, and supply vacancies byplanting anew. Then look out for
woodchucks, if it is an exposedplace, for they will nibble off the earliest
tender leaves almostclean as they go; and again, when the young tendrils make
theirappearance, they have notice of it, and will shear them off withboth
buds and young pods, sitting erect like a squirrel. But above allharvest as
early as possible, if you would escape frosts and have afair and salable
crop; you may save much loss by this means.

This further experience also I gained: I said to myself, I willnot plant
beans and corn with so much industry another summer, butsuch seeds, if the
seed is not lost, as sincerity, truth,simplicity, faith, innocence, and the
like, and see if they will notgrow in this soil, even with less toil and
manurance, and sustainme, for surely it has not been exhausted for these
crops. Alas! I saidthis to myself; but now another summer is gone, and
another, andanother, and I am obliged to say to you, Reader, that the
seedswhich I planted, if indeed they were the seeds of those virtues,were
wormeaten or had lost their vitality, and so did not come up.Commonly men
will only be brave as their fathers were brave, or timid.This generation is
very sure to plant corn and beans each new yearprecisely as the Indians did
centuries ago and taught the firstsettlers to do, as if there were a fate in
it. I saw an old man theother day, to my astonishment, making the holes with
a hoe for theseventieth time at least, and not for himself to lie down in!
Butwhy should not the New Englander try new adventures, and not lay somuch
stress on his grain, his potato and grass crop, and his orchards-raise other
crops than these? Why concern ourselves so much aboutour beans for seed, and
not be concerned at all about a new generationof men? We should really be fed
and cheered if when we met a man wewere sure to see that some of the
qualities which I have named,which we all prize more than those other
productions, but which arefor the most part broadcast and floating in the
air, had taken rootand grown in him. Here comes such a subtile and ineffable
quality, forinstance, as truth or justice, though the slightest amount or
newvariety of it, along the road. Our ambassadors should be instructed tosend
home such seeds as these, and Congress help to distribute themover all the
land. We should never stand upon ceremony with sincerity.We should never
cheat and insult and banish one another by ourmeanness, if there were present
the kernel of worth andfriendliness. We should not meet thus in haste. Most
men I do not meetat all, for they seem not to have time; they are busy about
theirbeans. We would not deal with a man thus plodding ever, leaning on ahoe
or a spade as a staff between his work, not as a mushroom, butpartially risen
out of the earth, something more than erect, likeswallows alighted and
walking on the ground:

"And as he spake, his mings would now and then Spread, as he meant to fly,
then close again-"

so that we should suspect that we might be conversing with an angel.Bread may
not always nourish us; but it always does us good, it eventakes stiffness out
of our joints, and makes us supple and buoyant,when we knew not what ailed
us, to recognize any generosity in manor Nature, to share any unmixed and
heroic joy.

Ancient poetry and mythology suggest, at least, that husbandry wasonce a
sacred art; but it is pursued with irreverent haste andheedlessness by us,
our object being to have large farms and largecrops merely. We have no
festival, nor procession, nor ceremony, notexcepting our cattle-shows and
so-called Thanksgivings, by which thefarmer expresses a sense of the
sacredness of his calling, or isreminded of its sacred origin. It is the
premium and the feast whichtempt him. He sacrifices not to Ceres and the
Terrestrial Jove, but tothe infernal Plutus rather. By avarice and
selfishness, and agrovelling habit, from which none of us is free, of
regarding the soilas property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly,
the landscapeis deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads
themeanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber. Cato says thatthe
profits of agriculture are particularly pious or just (maximequepius
quaestus), and according to Varro the old Romans "called the sameearth Mother
and Ceres, and thought that they who cultivated it leda pious and useful
life, and that they alone were left of the raceof King Saturn."

We are wont to forget that the sun looks on our cultivated fieldsand on the
prairies and forests without distinction. They allreflect and absorb his rays
alike, and the former make but a smallpart of the glorious picture which he
beholds in his daily course.In his view the earth is all equally cultivated
like a garden.Therefore we should receive the benefit of his light and beat
with acorresponding trust and magnanimity. What though I value the seed
ofthese beans, and harvest that in the fall of the year? This broadfield
which I have looked at so long looks not to me as theprincipal cultivator,
but away from me to influences more genial toit, which water and make it
green. These beans have results whichare not harvested by me. Do they not
grow for woodchucks partly? Theear of wheat (in Latin spica, obsoletely
speca, from spe, hope) shouldnot be the only hope of the husbandman; its
kernel or grain (granumfrom gerendo, bearing) is not all that it bears. How,
then, can ourharvest fail? Shall I not rejoice also at the abundance of the
weedswhose seeds are the granary of the birds? It matters littlecomparatively
whether the fields fill the farmer's barns. The truehusbandman will cease
from anxiety, as the squirrels manifest noconcern whether the woods will bear
chestnuts this year or not, andfinish his labor with every day, relinquishing
all claim to theproduce of his fields, and sacrificing in his mind not only
hisfirst but his last fruits also.





  • [Livingontheland] VII. The Bean-Field, Tradingpost, 09/30/2009

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