Gentleman farmers...

As William Byrd reflected back in 1733,

Surely there is no place in the world where the inhabitants live with less labour than in North Carolina. It approaches nearer to the description of Lubberland than any other, by the great felicity of the climate, the easiness of raising provisions, and the slothfulness of the people...When the weather is mild, they stand leaning with both their arms upon the corn-field fence, and gravely consider whether they had best go and take a small heat at the hoe: but generally find reasons to put it off till another time. Thus they loiter away their lives, like Solomon's sluggard, with their arms across, and at the winding up of the year scarcely have bread to eat. To speak the truth, it is a thorough aversion to labor that makes people file off to North Carolina, where plenty and a warm sun confirm them in their disposition to laziness for their whole lives...

Now, you must know that Byrd was a Virginian, a member of a notoriously hoity-toity bunch. Moreover, being one of the largest landowners (re: slaveowners) in the whole colony, he probably shouldn't have been casting too many stones about living in Lubberland, since I imagine his own personal heats at the hoe were few and far between. Being a native North Carolinian, I have to caution you to take Byrd with a large shakerful of salt.

That said, he wasn't too far off the mark, as least as far as our family goes. Last week, we FINALLY got our garden in. It's not much of a garden. (My husband calls it downright embarassing.) However, compared to the mattress-sized patch we used to have at our house in Raleigh, it's a definite step up. We might not actually be gentleman farmers, but we're heading that way. It's my personal ambition to stand with my arms hanging across the corn-field fence, loitering the day away, in manner of lubberly colonist. Only a few things (e.g., mortgage, lack of actual gardening skills) stand in our way....

I guess the idealization of a pastoral lifestyle is something that goes hand in hand with a critique of contemporary values; the more decadent the values of the current generation, the more its critics look back to the previous age with yearning and nostalgia. But as Adam's late grandfather (once a subsistence farmer in the VA mountains before becoming a plant manager for Broyhill furniture) always maintained--life is so much easier now than it used to be. It took a lot of work to covert an acre of land into something that could be eaten or sold. Whether it's good for the soul for life to be so easy is another question, I suppose. But given the choice, I suspect that most of us would choose to live with degraded souls than to give up the opportunity to buy cilantro from the Piggly Wiggly.