A General In A Cornfield

A personal essay by Joseph Fisher

When I looked at my grandfather, I didn't see a farmer. I saw a commander, a strategist--a general in a cornfield.

Some of my earliest memories are of picking tomatoes in my grandfather’s garden. Ten-year-old me didn’t even like tomatoes, but the memories are vivid nonetheless: steaming humidity from wet earth under the hot July sun, pungent and ripening red fruit, and thick, moist air that was hard to breathe and made you sweat and itch intolerably as you worked.

This is only the first stage of what my grandfather dubbed “the tomato project.” By the end of the day we will have produced 400 quarts of juice after picking, washing, stemming, pulverizing, straining, bottling, and boiling hundreds upon hundreds of tomatoes. It isn’t my grandfather’s only “project,” either. A month later will be the “corn project.” In October is the “apple project”—three pickup truckloads of apples turned into 400 gallons of fresh apple juice in the dizzying span of a few hours. Everything is done on a titanic scale, and my grandfather is at the center of all of it.

The General  

As I’ve reflected on those memories, an odd comparison comes to mind—my grandfather reminds me of a military general. His grandchildren are enlisted soldiers and his sons and daughters are the commissioned officers. We run the apple press like a gunnery crew—lay tray, lay cloth, pulverize apples, repeat, press, repeat. We swarm over the garden to harvest produce as Genghis Khan’s army must have swarmed and looted cities. My grandfather the general…it captures something of the sweeping scope, the adventure, the aplomb that mark all his projects in my mind.

My grandfather had an early start at these kinds of home agricultural products. He grew up on a family farm in Salt Lake raising turkeys, cows, and other livestock and crops. In his adult life he was a trial attorney and gardening was only a hobby—but Von Clausewitz reminds us that war is only the extension of diplomacy, so perhaps war is only the hobby of nations. When his children were young he raised twenty acres of sweet corn with them, sold it every summer, and paid for their college. As adults his captain-children wage their own wars through life, but always returned when summoned to serve in his campaigns like Napoleon’s Grande Armée (but my grandfather knows not to conduct lengthy operations in winter).

I’ve wondered why the metaphor of generalship seems so fitting to me. There is visible incongruity. The fruitful garden could not contrast more with the bloodied battlefield, and wars that bring death does not appear to have much in common with the soil that gives life. The sword and the shovel are opposed; the ancient horns of war are set against the ancient horn of plenty. What lesson are we to learn here? 

Sacrifice and Harvest

As I ponder, two quotes come to mind. In the movie Gettysburg, General Robert E. Lee is in considering whether to commit troops in a military action. He says this: “To be a good general, you must love your army. And to be a good general, you must be willing to destroy what you love.” The second quote is from Napoleon, who once boasted to an Austrian statesman, “You cannot stop me—I can spend 30,000 men a month.” Callous, perhaps, but profound. Both these generals understood the value of strategic sacrifice.

Corn is only one of many agricultural examples of this principle. Each autumn, corn is harvested to sustain life in the winter. In the spring when food is scarce and hunger threatens, the farmer lets precious kernels of corn fall to the ground and die that they may bring forth much fruit in the autumn. Sacrifice is not optional. It is the inexorable price of life. Every farmer passes under the shadow of death when he plants a seed.

Sacrifice is the lesson not only of the seed, but of each moment of life. Time passes relentlessly. Seconds tick by; years fly. Each moment perishes. Every instant a new world is born from the old. Days and years compose themselves. The old is sacrificed to make way for the new, which itself builds on the foundation of what has come before. Strategic sacrifice—commitment of will—voluntary, conscious action—these are the building blocks of the world that we live in across time. They compose the character of a leader; a commander; a general on a battlefield.

I don’t garden as much as he did, and sometimes I feel guilty about that. I’m involved in lots of other projects—my own conscious sacrifices to forge my life. But I do garden a little: last June I put Blue Hopi corn seeds into the ground, and by September purple ears swelled on waving stalks. He passed away the January previous, so I can’t tell him about my own “corn project”. But I think he would be proud.