A Small Dose of E.B. White

"Mr. Highstone, being himself a practicing farmer, knows one important truth about country life: he knows that farming is about twenty per cent agriculture and eighty per cent mending something that has got busted. Farming is a sort of glorified repair job. This is a truth that takes some people years to discover, and many farmers go their whole lives without ever really grasping the idea. A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus. The repair aspect of farming looms so large that, on a place like my own, which is not really a farm at all but merely a private zoo, sometimes months go by when nothing but repair goes on. I can get so absorbed in the construction of a barn door that I can let the spring planting season go right by without ever opening the ground or sowing a seed. If I were engaged in making myself self-sustaining, I should perhaps be a little wider awake; but I know, from experience, that at any given moment of the year I would be found doing the wrong thing, and with a dull tool. I mention this because the weakness in Mr. Highstone’s book is not in his plan for subsistence but in the people who are going to carry it out. In spite of all his warnings, there will be plenty of them who will get sidetracked, probably along the line of some special hobby, hitherto unindulged. I have been fooling around this place for a couple of years, but nobody calls my activity agriculture. I simply like to play with animals. Nobody knows this better than I do — although my neighbors know it well enough and on the whole have been tolerant and sympathetic."

Before I even realized what the title of White's piece was, I had thralled upon the idea that it was an article on his experience in regards to farming. Something mentioned in class was that you could write a sentence on something completely tragic, yet it could have that small hint of hopefulness or happiness for that matter. "Farming is a sort of glorified repair job." Ironically, the sentence connotes a sort of positive feel to farming. Because the writing in general is very personal, it allows for its readers to better grasp the concept as a hobby rather than a task. A good writer always says what he thinks, and E.B. White definitely captivates this sense in his writing. In this small piece, he reflects on pure honesty: the honesty of what farming is for him, the honesty of what farming may be portrayed as to others. He mentions he gets easily distracted without even getting to the actual farming part, something most "How To" writers might not admit. As a reader, I think it's safe to say the writing has to be personal.