There is no time in modern agriculture for a farmer to write a poem or compose a song

One thing is all things. To resolve one matter, one must resolve all matters. Changing one thing changes all things. Once I made the decision to sow rice in the fall, I found that I could also stop transplanting, and plowing, and applying chemical fertilizers, and preparing compost, and spraying pesticides.

Speaking biologically, fruit in a slightly shriveled state is holding its respiration and energy consumption down to the lowest possible level. It is like a person in meditation: his metabolism, respiration, and calorie consumption reach an extremely low level. Even if he fasts, the energy within the body will be conserved. In the same way, when mandarin oranges grow wrinkled, when fruit shrivels, when vegetables wilt, they are in the state that will preserve their food value for the longest possible time.

If you do not try to make food delicious, you will find that nature has made it so.

Weeds play an important part in building soil fertility and in balancing the biological community . . .

There is no time in modern agriculture for a farmer to write a poem or compose a song

A farmer does not grow something in the sense that he or she creates it. That human is only a small part of the whole process by which nature expresses its being.