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Meanwhile ether, was seven miles already planted, were irown considerably before the latest were in the ground; indeed they were not easily to be put off What was the , this small Herculean labor, I knew not I cah so many ot strength like Antaeus But why should I raise them? Only Heaven knows This was my curious labor all summer -- to make this portion of the earth&039;s surface, which had yielded only cinquefoil, blackberries, johnswort, and the like, before, sild fruits and pleasant flowers, produce instead this pulse What shall I learn of beans or beans of me? I cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I have an eye to them; and this is my day&039;s work It is a fine broad leaf to look on My auxiliaries are the dews and rains which water this dry soil, and what fertility is in the soil itself, which for the most part is lean and effete My enemies are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks The last have nibbled for ht had I to oust johnswort and the rest, and break up their ancient herb garden? Soon, however, the reo forward to meet new foes

When I was four years old, as I well reht froh these very woods and this field, to the pond It is one of the oldest scenes staht my flute has waked the echoes over that very water The pines still stand here older than I; or, if some have fallen, I have cookedall around, preparing another aspect for new infant eyes Als from the sath helped to clothe that fabulous landscape of my infant dreams, and one of the results of my presence and influence is seen in these bean leaves, corn blades, and potato vines

I planted about two acres and a half of upland; and as it was only about fifteen years since the land was cleared, and I ive it any manure; but in the course of the su, that an extinct nation had anciently dwelt here and planted corn and beans ere white men came to clear the land, and so, to some extent, had exhausted the soil for this very crop

Before yet any woodchuck or squirrel had run across the road, or the sun had got above the shrub oaks, while all the deas on, though the farainst it -- I would advise you to do all your work if possible while the dew is on -- I began to level the ranks of haughty weeds in my bean-field and throw dust upon their heads Early in thelike a plastic artist in the dewy and cru sand, but later in the day the sun blisteredslowly backward and forward over that yellow gravelly upland, between the long green rows, fifteen rods, the one end ter in a shrub oak copse where I could rest in the shade, the other in a blackberry field where the green berries deepened their tints by the ti fresh soil about the bean ste the yellow soil express its suht in bean leaves and blosso the earth say beans instead of grass -- this was my daily work As I had little aid from horses or cattle, or hired men or boys, or improved implements of husbandry, I was much slower, and became much more intimate with my beans than usual But labor of the hands, even when pursued to the verge of drudgery, is perhaps never the worst form of idleness It has a constant and imperishable moral, and to the scholar it yields a classic result A very agricola laboriosus was I to travellers bound ard through Lincoln and Wayland to nobody knohere; they sitting at their ease in gigs, with elbows on knees, and reins loosely hanging in festoons; I the ho, laborious native of the soil But soon ht It was the only open and cultivated field for a great distance on either side of the road, so they made the most of it; and soossip and comment than was meant for his ear: "Beans so late! peas so late!" -- for I continued to plant when others had begun to hoe -- the ministerial husbandman had not suspected it "Corn, my boy, for fodder; corn for fodder" "Does he live there?" asks the black bonnet of the gray coat; and the hard-featured far where he sees no manure in the furrow, and recommends a little chip dirt, or any little waste stuff, or it may be ashes or plaster But here were two acres and a half of furrows, and only a hoe for cart and two hands to draw it -- there being an aversion to other carts and horses -- and chip dirt far away Fellow-travellers as they rattled by compared it aloud with the fields which they had passed, so that I caricultural world This was one field not in Mr Coleman&039;s report And, by the ho estimates the value of the crop which nature yields in the still wilder fields unihed, the moisture calculated, the silicates and the potash; but in all dells and pond-holes in the woods and pastures and swarows a rich and various crop only unreaped bylink betild and cultivated fields; as some states are civilized, and others half-civilized, and others savage or barbarous, so h not in a bad sense, a half-cultivated field They were beans cheerfully returning to their wild and primitive state that I cultivated, and my hoe played the Rans des Vaches for them

Near at hand, upon the tops the brown thrasher -- or red lad of your society, that would find out another farmer&039;s field if yours 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 fro or on twenty, have to do with your planting, and yet prefer it to leached ashes or plaster It was a cheap sort of top dressing in which I had entire faith

As I drew a still fresher soil about the roith my hoe, I disturbed the ashes of unchronicled nations who in primeval years lived under these heavens, and their sht of this led with other natural stones, so been burned by Indian fires, and soht hither by the recent cultivators of the soil When ainst the stones, that music echoed to the woods and the sky, and was an accompaniment to my labor which yielded an instant and ier beans that I hoed, nor I that hoed beans; and I remembered with as much pity as pride, if I reone to the city to attend the oratorios The nighthawk circled overhead in the sunny afternoons -- for I sometimes made a day of it -- like afrom time to time with a swoop and a sound as if the heavens were rent, torn at last to very rags and tatters, and yet a seamless cope res on the ground on bare sand or rocks on the tops of hills, where few have found theht up from the pond, as leaves are raised by the wind to float in the heavens; such kindredship is in nature The hawk is aerial brother of the hich he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the eleed pinions of the sea Or soh in the sky, alternately soaring and descending, approaching, and leaving one another, as if they were the ee of wild pigeons fro sound and carrier haste; or froish portentous and outlandish spotted salaypt and the Nile, yet our contehts I heard and sahere in the row, a part of the inexhaustible entertainala days the town fires its great guns, which echo like popguns to these woods, and some waifs of martial music occasionally penetrate thus far To me, away there in uns sounded as if a puffball had burst; and when there was a norant, I have so and disease in the horizon, as if some eruption would break out there soon, either scarlatina or canker-rash, until at length so haste over the fields and up the Wayland road, brought me information of the "trainers" It seemed by the distant huhbors, according to Virgil&039;s advice, by a faint tintinnabulum upon theto call theain And when the sound died quite away, and the hum had ceased, and the ot the last drone of them all safely into the Middlesex hive, and that now their minds were bent on the honey hich it was smeared

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

When there were several bands of e was a vast bellows and all the buildings expanded and collapsed alternately with a din But so strain that reached these woods, and the trus of faood relish -- for why should ays stand for trifles? -- and looked round for a woodchuck or a skunk to exercise my chivalry upon These martial strains seemed as far away as Palestine, and reht tantivy and tree This was one of the great days; though the sky had froreat look that it wears daily, and I saw no difference in it

It was a singular experience that long acquaintance which I cultivated with beans, ith planting, and hoeing, and harvesting, and threshing, and picking over and selling the, for I did taste I was deter, I used to hoe fro till noon, and commonly spent the rest of the day about other affairs Consider the intimate and curious acquaintance one makes with various kinds of weeds -- it will bear some iteration in the account, for there was no little iteration in the labor -- disturbing their delicate organizations so ruthlessly, andwhole ranks of one species, and sedulously cultivating another That&039;s Roweed -- that&039;s sorrel -- that&039;s piper-grass -- have at him, chop him up, turn his roots upward to the sun, don&039;t let him have a fibre in the shade, if you do he&039;ll turn hireen as a leek in two days A long war, not with cranes, but eeds, those Trojans who had sun and rain and dews on their side Daily the beans saw me come to their rescue ar up the trenches eedy dead Many a lusty crest -- waving Hector, that towered a whole foot above his crowding comrades, fell before my weapon and rolled in the dust

Those summer days which some of my contemporaries devoted to the fine arts in Boston or Rome, and others to contemplation in India, and others to trade in London or New York, I thus, with the other farland, devoted to husbandry Not that I wanted beans to eat, for I aorean, so far as beans are concerned, whether they ed them for rice; but, perchance, as some must work in fields if only for the sake of tropes and expression, to serve a parable-maker one day It was on the whole a rare aht have becoave them no manure, and did not hoe them all once, I hoed them unusualy well as far as I went, and was paid for it in the end, "there being in truth," as Evelyn says, "no compost or laetation whatsoever co of the mould with the spade" "The earth," he adds elsewhere, "especially if fresh, has a certain netism in it, by which it attracts the salt, power, or virtue (call it either) which gives it life, and is the logic of all the labor and stir we keep about it, to sustain us; all dungings and other sordid te but the vicars succedaneous to this i one of those "worn-out and exhausted lay fields which enjoy their sabbath," had perchance, as Sir Kenelby 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 Coleentleoes were,--

For a hoe054

Plowing, harrowing, and furrowing750 Too much

Beans for seed312+

Potatoes for seed133

Peas for seed040

Turnip seed006

White line for crow fence002

Horse cultivator and boy three hours100

Horse and cart to get crop075