Eco-Farm: An Acres U.S.A. Primer — Lesson 2: The Forgiveness of Nature, Part 1
This is an excerpt from Charles Walters’ Eco-Farm — An Acres U.S.A. Primer, available from the Acres U.S.A. bookstore at bookstore.acresusa.com. Read more excerpts from this book using the category “Eco-Farm” (https://members.acresusa.com/magazine-features/eco-farm/).
Grass is the forgiveness of nature, her constant benediction, wrote old time Kansas Senator John J. Ingalls in his famous paean to blue grass. “Sown by the wind, by the wandering birds, propagated by the subtle horticultural touch of the elements, which are its ministers and its servants, it softens the rude outline of the world. Its tenacious fibers hold the earth in its place and prevent its soluble components from washing into the sea. It invades the solitude of the desert, climbs the inaccessible slopes and forbidden pinnacles of mountains, modifies climates, and determines the history, character and destiny of nations. Unobtrusive and patient, it has immortal vigor and aggressiveness.”
Ingalls was more poet than scientist, yet he correctly saw grass as the most important plant to man. All our breadstuffs—corn, wheat, oats, rye, barley, plus rice and sugar cane—are grasses. So are bamboo shoots on that plate of delicacies in a Polynesian restaurant.
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