Article by: Damagosha dasa

Today I was threshing a large pile of barley stalks mixed up with its grain today and was thinking-why am I doing this hard work when I can buy the same thing at the health food store for a lot less work?

This is hard, hot  and dusty work, lets be honest about it. First you have to prepare/till the earth, rake it out, get all the weeds out, sow the seed, water it for a few days until it germinates, then let the sun do the rest. After it is ripe, and dies back, then you cut it with a hand scythe, pile it up on some tarp or the ground and let it dry in the sun some more. Then I set up my adapted grain thresher machine pile all the stalks into the hopper for grinding, and get whats left as barley grain and a huge pile of ground up stalks and seed husks.
Now you have to winnow it-or separate that chaff from the grain. This is real messy work. Anyway, while I am doing this I am thinking why am I doing all this work just for a few pounds of barley grain?

 Then I started thinking about  a very funny record album Bill Cosby the comedian, made about 40 years ago about the Biblical character called Noah, the Lord, and the Ark. that He, God, wanted him to build for the coming flood. It is a great story the way Cosby tells it.
He relates on the album…All Noah’s neighbors are coming by and laughing at him for building this huge ark in his “front yard”, making all kinds of jokes to him about it. So as the story goes, Noah is supposed to fill this ark with all the animals of the earth, both male and female.  So Noah sets about doing this huge task demanded of him by God, and then  Noah starts to get frustrated about so many things and especially all the animal poop down in the bottom of the hull and asks the Lord-“Have you seen all that crap down there? Who’s going to clean all that up?  I’m not going to do it. If you want it cleaned up, you do it yourself !!
Just then lightening is seen and thunder is heard, and it starts raining very heavily,….and Noah looks around him, sees the rising water levels,… and says to the Lord–I’m with you Lord,I’m with you Lord,  just you and me, I knew all the time this was going to happen….. no problem, I will clean up all that do do down in the bottom of your Ark…

So anyway, I am thinking along these lines and wondering why I am doing all this hard work for only a small amount of grains that only I and my wife and a few others along the way will use for the coming year?

Immediately what comes to mind is the BG verse where the Lord tells us- All living entities subsist on food grains. And Srila Prabhupada tells us repeatedly, Krsna wants us to grow our own food, not nuts  bolts and tires thru technology. So I am getting the same kind of feeling Noah had about building his Ark for the Lord as I am now about growing grains for the Lord thru His representative Srila Prabhupada. I know many devotees  laugh at me for doing this kind of work and just think-“Yeah thats fine for you Damaghosa, but its not for us who live in the cities.. We can just go buy the same stuff at our stores and save ourselves a lot of hassle.” They probably even make jokes about me for doing all this hard work, while they get their workout for the day by pushing their cell phone buttons around.

 I have no idea what is going to happen in the future. The whole world may collapse-who knows? It has happened before during the 1930’s stock market crash and everybody was left with basically nothing-no food no clothes, no home,no money.. etc.
Even if the world goes on as it is, it doesn’t matter because as  devotees we are obliged to do what God wants us to do-regardless of what society thinks or does itself. Regardless of how much hard work it is or what meager result we get.  Bottom line is God is in charge of everything and if we obey Him, we will enjoy life and if we disobey Him, we will suffer-a lot.

Who knows why I am doing all this hard work? I can say well, I am doing what Srila Prabhupada told us all to do. Even if nobody follows this example, at least in the future, with a worse case scenario, I will know how to survive by doing this work now. And maybe there are even other devotees out there who are learning something from all this info I send out? Maybe some are even getting inspired to do the same thing?

People tell me this hard work is keeping me looking and feeling younger than most devotees and people in general. Most people when they meet me say I am somewhere in my  50’s, but actually I will be 69 in a month !  Not that that matters much to me because I know what age my body is. Its just that  everybody else looks older than they are because they don’t work hard, use machines for practically everything,  live in  the cities and are full of anxieties all the time. Therefore they look older than they should.

So the answer as to why I grow grain (and most of our food here) is this. Krsna wants us to do it.

Hare Krsna

damaghosa das

  

  

.. Everyone can grow food if he works for two months. Everyone can