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Farm Life Quotes

Browse 46 quotes about Farm Life.

Farm Life Quotes

“She was a battered woman now, not a lovely girl; but she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one's breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things. She had only to stand in the orchard, to put her hand on a little crab tree and look up at the apples, to make you feel the goodness of planting and tending and harvesting at last. All the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions.”

StrengthPersonalityServiceFarm Life
Book:My Antonia
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“She walks the same paths where her father walked, and her grandfather, and her great-grandfather before her. She passes by familiar trees, the towering silent witnesses to over two centuries of history. Many of these majestic woodland giants, like faithful old friends, proudly bear the telltale tap-marks, remnants of a multi-generational maple harvest.”

Family HistoryCountry LifeFarm LifeMaple SyrupMaple TreesMaple Harvest
Book:Lanark County Kitchen: A Maple Legacy from Tree to Table
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“We stepped a little quicker, laughed a little louder and chatted over the fences a little longer. We gathered bouquets of wildflowers, dined on fresh strawberries and began to ride our bikes up and down the Third Line again. We ran up grassy hills and rolled back down through the young clover, feeling light and giddy, free from our heavy boots and coats. There were trilliums to pick for Mother and tadpoles to catch and keep in a jar. Spring had come at last to Bathurst Township and was she ever worth the wait!”

SpringGood Old DaysFarm Life
Book:Lanark County Calendar
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“Today, it is the scent of honeysuckle that takes me back in time and lays me down near a barn. I pick a honeysuckle blossom, touch the trumpet to my nose and inhale. With sticky filthy fingers, I pinch the base of its delicate well then lick the drop of nectar. The sweet liquid makes me thirst for more, and I reach for another and another, the same hands that reach again and again for tobacco as I string. I separate honeysuckle blossoms and taste.”

FarmingTobaccoSouthern FictionFarm LifeSouthern WomenStringing Tobacco
Author:Brenda Sutton Rose
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“On harsh, frigid January days, when the winds are relentless and the snow piles up around us, I often think of our small feathered friends back on the Third Line. I wonder if the old feeder is still standing in the orchard and if anyone thinks to put out a few crumbs and some bacon drippings for our beautiful, hungry, winter birds. In the stark, white landscape they provided a welcome splash of colour and their songs gave us hope through the long, silent winter.”

WinterBirdsGood Old DaysFarm Life
Book:Lanark County Calendar
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“Mark came home late one frozen Sunday carrying a bag of small, silver fish. They were smelts, locally known as icefish. He’d brought them at the store in the next town south, across from which a little village had sprung up on the ice of the lake, a collection of shacks with holes drilled in and around them. I’d seen the men going from the shore to the shacks on snowmobiles, six-packs of beer strapped on behind them like a half dozen miniature passengers. “Sit and rest,” Mark said. “I’m cooking.” He sautéed minced onion in our homemade butter, added a little handful of crushed, dried sage, and when the onion was translucent, he sprinkled n flour to make a roux, which he loosened with beer, in honor of the fishermen. He added cubed carrot, celery root, potato, and some stock, and then the fish, cut into pieces, and when they were all cooked through he poured in a whole morning milking’s worth of Delia’s yellow cream. Icefish chowder, rich and warm, eaten while sitting in Mark’s lap, my feet so close to the woodstove that steam came off my damp socks.”

FoodCookingFarmFarm Life
Book:The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love
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“I told one of the writers that our fields were so nearly vertical that we planted our corn with a shotgun and had to breed a race of mules with legs shorter on one side than the other for plowing. And when he asked how we transported the corn down off the mountain, I said, in a jug. He appeared to believe me, so I was encouraged to go on and tell him that every church in that corner of the state, except our Indian congregation, either conducted services speaking entirely in tongues or else took up serpents as recommended by Jesus. Both the writer and I had taken a few rounds of Scotch at the time. The story appeared as fact in a well-known national periodical, along with the obligatory descriptions of the beauty and ruggedness and unmatched remoteness and mystery of our mountains.”

Historical FictionFarm LifeTragicomedySouthern GothicSardonic HumorLocals And Tourism
Book:Thirteen Moons
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“The maids - by which I mean the long succession of magdalens and half-wits that did the heavy work about the house - lived in one of the back (attic) rooms. Of course it was not considered necessary to give a kitchen wench a decent room - she wasn't accustomed to it and wouldn't have known what to do with it. A creaky bed, a cracked mirror, and a rickety table were all she deserved and all she usually got... a hole into which she could creep at night and which she could emerge at half-past four, eager for another day's work. Now my grandmother was not of that school of thought, but she was not a revolutionary either and, though the maid's room had some amenities such as a wardrobe and a chest of drawers, it was by no means a Paradise in which a lonely girl might be soothed to sweet slumbers. It was long and narrow with a skylight opening on the north. The walls were distempered a cold blue. There the domestics spent their dreary nights diversified with spasms of bucolic love at the week-ends.”

Farm LifeNortheast Scotland
Book:Farmer's Boy
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“The etiquette of the bothy and stable was equalled in rigidity only by that of the court of Louis IV. Each man had his place and was taught to keep it. For the second horseman to have gone into supper before the first horseman would have created as much indignation as an infringement of precedence at Versailles. The foreman was always the first to wash his face in the bothy at night; it was he who wound the alarm clock and set it for the morning, and so on and so on. The order of seniority was as strictly observed between the second horseman and the third, while the halflin always got the tarry end of the stick... But the foreman had pride of place in everything. He slept at the front end of the first bed - that is, nearest the fire; he sat at the top of the table in the kitchen; he worked the best pair of horses; and he had the right to make the first pass at the kitchen maid.”

Farm LifeNortheast Scotland
Book:Farmer's Boy
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“The Wilders, of course, paid no attention to her exuberance, continuing to live a frugal existence among their pigs and hens, entertained by a self-re-newing circle of farm cats and their preternaturally gifted Airedale terrier, Nero, who would sit politely at the dinner table like a member of the family, eating off his own plate.”

Simple LifeDogs And HumansFarm LifeLittle House On The PrairieFarm AnimalsLaura Ingalls Wilder
Book:Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder
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“The orchard where they stood was on higher ground than the farmhouse, which nestled like a white dove beneath hemlocks and the tall protecting elms. The fields, checkered by stone walls, undulated gently toward the sapphire strip of the distant Sound. A late October haze, faintly lavender, filtered the clear air, and intensified the perfume of burning leaves. Maples on the Cat Rock Hills blazed red and gold, colors repeated even more strongly by a riot of sumach and goldenrod against the gray wall of the little burying ground. Buttercup's bell tinkled rhythmically, as Seth guided her toward the barn and the evening milking.”

Natures BeautyFarm LifeColors Of NatureRustic Charm
Book:Dragonwyck
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“She turned his face to hers. The stubble at his jawline scuffed against her hand. Their eyes met, and a shared joy was strung between them, like a gossamer thread of spider silk. Edward lowered his lips to hers as the sun flamed pink behind them. “Promise me something?” she softly pleaded. He wrapped his arms fully around her. “What?” “Promise we’ll be happy.”

HappinessNewlywedsFarm LifeRomantic Scene
Book:In a Grove of Maples
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“Farmers are not looking for special favors. They ask only an even chance as compared with other workers. But people don't understand. Perhaps the many books on pioneer life with the usual successful and happy outcome have helped to give a wrong impression and perpetuate the idea that country people live on wild game and fish and fruits and in general on the free bounty of heaven. Many people have no idea of the cash expense of operating a farm to-day, or the work and planning required to keep the wheels going round, to say nothing of a decent living or suitable education for the children.”

Farm Life
Book:Letters from the Dust Bowl
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“Carolina Flores took a sip of her sandía agua fresca on her porch and looked out across the scenic landscape of her lush farm, mesmerized by the clear blue sky overhead, the rows of colorful Swiss chard lined up like little soldiers, and the fields of red onions, ripe for picking. It wasn't strawberry season yet, her favorite, but she loved the calm of the winter months. A cool coastal breeze wafted the fragrant scent of garlic through the air, and Carolina marveled at the contrast between the snowcapped Santa Ynez Mountains in the distance and the food growing on the land. Mi tierra.”

Farm LifeFresh ProduceCoastal Life
Book:Kiss Me, Mi Amor
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“The last footfall dies into silence. The stillness tingles with the aftermath of noise. All around stand the new cornstacks, unfamiliar shadows, ramparts thrown up suddenly round the yard. An owl detaches itself silently from the darkness of a beam, swoops down into the moonlight and away, now white against a shadow, now black against the moon. A mouse scuttles somewhere in the straw. The gaunt shape of a binder stands in the corner, angular as a skeleton under its cloth. Its work is over until next year.”

HarvestOwlFarm Life
Book:Corduroy
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“As we walked homeward across the fields, the sun dropped and lay like a great golden globe in the low west. While it hung there, the moon rose in the east, as big as a cart-wheel, pale silver and streaked with rose color, thin as a bubble or a ghost-moon. For five, perhaps ten minutes, the two luminaries confronted each other across the level land, resting on opposite edges of the world. In that singular light every little tree and shock of wheat, every sunflower stalk and clump of snow-on-the-mountain, drew itself up high and pointed; the very clods and furrows in the fields seemed to stand up sharply. I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes out of those fields at nightfall. I wished I could be a little boy again, and that my way could end there.”

HeavenChildhood MemoriesBeauty In NatureFarm Life
Book:My Ántonia
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