Viruses Cultivated in Brain Tissue.
This is why I need access to The O.E.D.
The entirely too puny dictionary.com’s feeble offerings paired with the estimable Synonym Finder does not yield me enough meat with which to make a clever start to this post. I wanted to compare your ability, oft used, to enhance the bounds of your mind with my recent acts of clearing the corn fields of weeds by working the ground.
Etymology is a terrific beast, yielding much knowledge. The word cultivate comes from the past participle of the Latin word to till. Or at least, so says the American Heritage Dictionary, which is a pile of poop. It’s probably right, yes, but still.
English is a terrible language. But it is also awesome. It’s abeautiful kinda pretty if you look at her from the right angle thing to be able to twist ‘the act of clearing croplands to produce a better yield’ to mean to better your mental discrimination. That’s a solid leap of language logic.
To sum up. You improved yourself in some way. I did but drag some metal through the dirt. Yet we were both cultivating.
My corn crops require many passes of my tractor to allow the corn to grow without too much competition from everything else that would be growing there. Once with the plow, twice with the harrow, and hopefully multiple times with both the spider-hoe and cultivator. Most farmers nowadays prefer the no-till variety of row crop growth. Which cuts out most all of that [effort, labor, work, machinery] and replaces much of the weed destruction with chemical applications. But being organic and no-till is almost unheard of. Once again we do it theold tried and tested way.
A couple weeks after planting is the time for the spider-hoe. This machine sits on the back of the largest tractor and numerous groupings of metal wheels ride on the very top of the soil in-between the corn rows. If turning at a fast enough rate, the wheels rip up all the tiny plant roots and strew them across the surface where the sun dehydrates them to death before nightfall. The tractor is put into road-speed gear and I fly across the field at 25 mph trying my damndest to keep the wheels from hitting the corn. It’s a white-knuckle ride on a rickety wooden roller-coaster that only lacks up and downs and turns. Because the corn is hardly visible when I’m doing this, I look like a crazy hell-bent for speed hick joy riding his tractor back and forth across the fields.
Cultivating is similar in that I’m driving a tractor with a machine behind it trying desperately to keep from killing the corn. But this is done at the silly-slowest speeds imaginable because the tolerance between hitting corn and not is about two inches in either direction. And I’m digging up far more established plants with tiny little plows.
After cultivating you have improved your judgment and end up with superior taste and motives. The post-cultivating me has a field that look brown in-between the green.
The entirely too puny dictionary.com’s feeble offerings paired with the estimable Synonym Finder does not yield me enough meat with which to make a clever start to this post. I wanted to compare your ability, oft used, to enhance the bounds of your mind with my recent acts of clearing the corn fields of weeds by working the ground.
Etymology is a terrific beast, yielding much knowledge. The word cultivate comes from the past participle of the Latin word to till. Or at least, so says the American Heritage Dictionary, which is a pile of poop. It’s probably right, yes, but still.
English is a terrible language. But it is also awesome. It’s a
To sum up. You improved yourself in some way. I did but drag some metal through the dirt. Yet we were both cultivating.
My corn crops require many passes of my tractor to allow the corn to grow without too much competition from everything else that would be growing there. Once with the plow, twice with the harrow, and hopefully multiple times with both the spider-hoe and cultivator. Most farmers nowadays prefer the no-till variety of row crop growth. Which cuts out most all of that [effort, labor, work, machinery] and replaces much of the weed destruction with chemical applications. But being organic and no-till is almost unheard of. Once again we do it the
A couple weeks after planting is the time for the spider-hoe. This machine sits on the back of the largest tractor and numerous groupings of metal wheels ride on the very top of the soil in-between the corn rows. If turning at a fast enough rate, the wheels rip up all the tiny plant roots and strew them across the surface where the sun dehydrates them to death before nightfall. The tractor is put into road-speed gear and I fly across the field at 25 mph trying my damndest to keep the wheels from hitting the corn. It’s a white-knuckle ride on a rickety wooden roller-coaster that only lacks up and downs and turns. Because the corn is hardly visible when I’m doing this, I look like a crazy hell-bent for speed hick joy riding his tractor back and forth across the fields.
Cultivating is similar in that I’m driving a tractor with a machine behind it trying desperately to keep from killing the corn. But this is done at the silly-slowest speeds imaginable because the tolerance between hitting corn and not is about two inches in either direction. And I’m digging up far more established plants with tiny little plows.
After cultivating you have improved your judgment and end up with superior taste and motives. The post-cultivating me has a field that look brown in-between the green.
posted by Lord of the Barnyard at 7:58 PM
6 Comments:
I think you skipped a step, going from 'till' as an action in the field, to 'cultivate'.
I think of 'till' as 'increase the tilth' of the field -- increase production, fertility (of crops), improve the soil. And 'cultivate' as the whole strategy of raising crops, from planning what to plant to field prep to harvest (and prep for the next crop).
Calling a particular machine a 'cultivator' is a marketing legacy, not an appropriate use of language. A 'cultivator' with shovels, turning over dirt to cover weeds and cut weed (mostly!) roots, performs a tilling action, and performs only one tilling step in the cultivation of the field.
I have heard the USDA complain about those not doing 'no till' farming, that 'every pass over the fields reduces the carbon in the field.' But then, the spray chemical companies make much higher markup than equipment dealers for family-farm sized equipment (usually purchased used). And money talks around Washington.
I have heard no-till operators explain that after 6 or 7 years the fields do tend to achieve a sustainable level of aeration, root penetration, and moisture retention. Crop roots repeatedly penetrate the top layers of soil and die over the seasons, moving dirt a bit, creating moisture wicks, and then collapse to continue decay and again providing micro-movement. I imagine the mechanics are related to wild prairies, since prairies tend to attract (harvesting) grazers. Except, of course, the chemical companies don't make money on the prairies.
Lotb:
I have no idea what Brad K. is talking about - I just wanted to comment on a great post, and great piece of writing. I admire your talent - both literary and agricultural.
wow, see, this is the stuff you don't learn farming by yourself for 6 months.
i shall for a long while be entirely suspicious of no-till in general. even though, if worded correctly, it sounds good.
so if to cultivate is the entire process, does the same hold true of the use of the term to cultivate in non-farming areas?
thanks viscountess.
and what exactly is a viscountess, a female priest of funk or the cleric of funk's wife?
Lotb:
A viscountess is a wife or widow of an earl, sheriff, or nobleman. So a viscountess of funk must be a really funky wife/widow of the same. I am a wife of an engineer. A very noble engineer, though.
it is interesting that cultivate and culture share the same latin root. In latin accola (neighbour, agricola (farmer), caelicola (divine being), cultura (cultivation) and incolo (inhabit) all have the same root -colo meaning to cherish or cultivate. Cool eh?
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