Discounting all the recalls of food products in recent times, America suffers no shortage of available products to put food on the table. With the growing food imports from other nations, it’s impossible to imagine any American starving in the 21st century.

It was not so almost 370 years ago when the Pilgrims set foot on what would later become the greatest nation of liberty and freedom on Earth. When they kneeled down in thanksgiving to God for bringing them safely to their new home, they did not know what lay ahead for them.

Arriving in December 1620, numbering 102-105 (depending on who you read), they were not prepared for the building of shelter from the approaching perilous winter. Their food supplies were already dangerously low.

By March 1621, half their number, men, women and children had literally starved to death complicated by the sicknesses that overtook them. There were only 55 people left to brave this new world. Despite the devastation and grief of losing so many loved ones, their faith in God sustained them through all these trials and tribulations.

So it was that God, through a series of events stemming back to 1604, brought them a remarkable Indian, Squanto, who adopted the Pilgrims and lived among them for three years. He taught them over that first spring and summer how to fish, hunt for meat, and plant, tend, irrigate and reap a food harvest. The first Thanksgiving, second winter, was one of celebration.

Before the 1950s, people still knew how to grow their own food, relying on the land for their substance. Today, those skills and knowledge are fast disappearing as our nation’s modern technology and progressiveness have driven hundreds of thousands of small family farms out of business, replaced by gigantic co-op farms and dairies.

The hard work and struggle to produce food for increasing populations never ends. I am reminded of God’s curse on all of His creation:

“Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Gen. 3:17-18)

When I read those verses, I recall my 160-acre farmer-Dad:

It was a hot day and beads of sweat dripped from my Dad’s sun-leathered face. He kneeled at the edge of the field looking out over the acres of young cotton plants. I somehow became entranced with the movement of his deeply tanned hand reaching down and grasping a fistful of sandy soil, lifting it up and letting it slowly sift through his fingers back to the earth. An unconscious act on his part, but it was then I understood how much he depended upon the earth. It was as if he were wedded to the earth, both as friend and adversary.

Only a farmer, one who plants seed and carefully tends it to maturity and ripeness for the picking, understands such a patient dependence on the soil, the timing, the weather, the insects, the water and even talking to God. It’s one thing to prepare for planting and harvest, but there are always surprises, not always good, that come with the territory.

One summer, Dad came in from the fields and called the crop duster. A horde of Army Worms were advancing on his cotton and alfalfa fields. He took my sister and I, along with a two empty coffee cans, out to the edge of the field. He told us to start picking those worms off the plants.

You can imagine that picking worms, ugly green with bright yellow chevrons on their backs, was not something two little girls wanted to do. But we did...until there were more worms than either of us could count or keep up with...they just kept coming. Saved from fighting a losing battle by the arrival of the crop duster, we quickly vacated the area.

God’s Curse continues and farmers, small and large, keep struggling against the odds to provide a variety of foods for our tables. This Thanksgiving as we enjoy a feast fit for kings and the variety of foods offered for our palates, we might give thought to how the abundance of food ended up on our tables.

THANKS BE TO GOD! for the Farmers.

© 2007 Bonnie Alba