The oldest commandment is found in Genesis 1:28 – “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it;: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

I could be wrong but, for the most part, it would seem that the American farmer as we know him today, has fallen a bit short of meeting or obeying this commandment. Perhaps we can find an obedient steward in the way of some of the Old Order Amish who still tend to be a bit closer to the earth than the new-order farmers who plant, cultivate and harvest according to the experts who sell them specific seeds and with that, contracts that they will not [even] get to plant from their own seeds of their harvested grain.

It is obvious this writer is not a farmer and some real farmers may find room for argument in this essay but that is OK; come to think of it I doubt if I have ever written an essay that went uncontested by someone a notch or two higher with wisdom or intelligence than I. However, I still notice with a bit of awe, the Old Order Amish farmer who does his work while cooperating with the birds and other creatures – at least like David Kline, “…who practices diversified sustainable farming on 120 acres of land in the Amish community of Fredericks burg, Ohio.” (Description of David from the back cover of his book, Great Possessions, , specifically on page 101 of his chapter titled “Hayland Birds”.)

David permits us to look over his shoulder as he “was making the backcut along the edge of the hayfield with the mower when the female bobolink flew out from in front of the cutter bar. Quickly stopping the team, I soon located the nest with its five newly hatched young. Using the cut hay, I built a flimsy canopy over the nest with hopes of saving it. The adult bobolinks accepted the makeshift cover and continued feeding the brood. But as I feared, my efforts to spare the nest also made it conspicuous to predators. Several days later the young bird disappeared.”

Not even this non-farmer essayist is naïve enough to know the big commercial farmer would have the time or inclination to “stop his team” (his $100,000+ tractor with thousands more dollars being pulled behind it) to search out a nest made by a horned lark, eastern and western meadowlark, red-winged blackbird, or grasshopper sparrow that might have been flushed by the equipment coming into their territory. The world, as we know it, is far too dependent and involved in a “larger picture” than the Amish farmer leisurely being drawn along by a faithful team. Both the Amish farmer and the modern professional farmer still have time to THINK as they do their job but the team of horses seems a bit easier and less involved than shutting down the tractor and making all the adjustments needed to take a minute to check out a nest of hayfield birds. “Whoa” is a bit less involved.

But as we continue to think about man and the oldest commandment, there are a lot of ways we have “run ahead of God” – Adam and Eve got us started in that track. Technology, as great and beneficial as it is, honestly sometimes generates new ways of doing things and unfortunately further shelves previous or old-fashioned ways of doing the same jobs. The examples of a simple knowledge of birding habitats and the utter destruction of nesting areas merge as a dichotomy where the “new ways” are outshined by the “old ways”. There is an article in the magazine, "Country Living", published by the Ohio Rural Electric Cooperatives, Inc., which uniquely parallels and illustrates this point. The January 2008 issue has an article on Page 10 written by Karen Kirsch that gives a convincing argument that our society might be better off sometimes to consider “low-tech work in a high-tech world”. With those words as her title, Miss Kirsch’s revealing article tells about a late autumn windstorm creating a havoc only nature could produce. Huge healthy trees fell like paper straws, uprooting other trees transforming a sylvan refuge into acres of a wreckage of forest groves.

Karen Kirsch weaves words of genuine excitement telling about a team of Belgian horses (George and Joe) worked by Ralph Rice, of Jefferson, Ohio. What looked like a disaster was turned into a managed forest and as such became a healthy forest. Instead of bringing huge machines such as rubber-tired skidders weighing 10,000 pounds, a team of Belgian horses (each tipping the scales at 1,700 pounds) were used; and the horses did not pollute the environment—their “exhaust” fertilized the soil rather than depleting the ozone level and the jingle of their double harness certainly was low on the scale of noise pollution.

These few examples -- The Old Order Amish ways, and a modern use of an old art of working with a Belgian team of horses is a mini list of how we might improve our ways of “having dominion over the…earth…” True, it might be a bit slower in getting the job done but think of the benefits. Mechanical ways are certainly manifestly useful in many ways today but sometimes it might be a viable option to consider using “a lighter touch upon the earth” as Karen Kirsch has eloquently challenged her readers. Great steps have always required the first step.

THE WORDWRIGHT

If you live in OHIO, you might contact the nearest cooperative of Ohio Rural Electric Cooperatives, Inc. to get a copy of the January 2008 issue of this fine magazine. Use the following link to begin that search: www.buckeyepower.com (Subscribers and users of this provider have already received their magazine at the time of this writing.) The 24 co-ops combined serve more than 380,000 homes and businesses in 77 of Ohio's 88 counties.