XVI. FARM LANDSCAPES 
“I do not own an inch of land— 
But all I see is mine— 
The orchard and the mowing-fields, 
The lawns and gardens fine. 
The winds my tax collectors are, 
They bring me tithes divine.” 
—Lucy Larcom (A Strip of Blue). 
Agriculture is the one great branch of human industry that 
does not necessarily spoil the face of nature. It does not 
leave the land covered with slash, or heaped with culm, or 
smeared with sludge, or buried in smoke. It alters and 
rearranges, but it keeps the world green and beautiful. It 
changes wild pastures into tame ones, and substitutes 
orchards for woodlands. Its crops and its herds are good to 
look upon. The beautiful plant or animal is the one that is 
well grown; and farm plants and animals must be well grown 
to be profitable; otherwise there is no good farming. Nature 
nourishes impartially wild and tame, and crowns them 
equally with her opulent graces of form and color. The 
farmer has at hand all the materials that nature uses to make 
on the earth an Eden. 
Fortunately, there are some features of the beauty of the 
country that may not be misused. The blue sky overhead, 
and the incomparable beauty of the clouds, are out of reach 
and cannot be marred. Hills and vales, also, and lakes and 
streams, and uplands and lowlands, have all been shaped by 
the titanic forces of nature, and are beyond man’s puny 
powertochange. These are the major features of the land- 
scape. It is only the minor features that are, to any appre- 
ciable extent, within our control: mainly, the living things 
that are the finishings and furnishings of one’s immediate 
environment. These, however, always fill the foreground, 
T2t 
