Little Pleasures and Hard Work

You will understand that I am bragging when I say that my children are farmers...Last summer my granddaughter, Virginia, who was eleven, put in some long days on the [tractor]. She was good at it, and all of us are pleased with her. She told her mother: "What is good about hard work is that it teaches you about little pleasures." She said that when the weather was hot and a little breeze came, it made her happy and she was grateful. I think this is something very important to know. I hope that, when the time comes, this knowledge of little pleasures will preserve her from the common assumption that pleasures have to be big, expensive, and dangerous. I am thankful that she could learn this in the same way that her parents and grandparents learned it. I am thankful that we have continued so far. (Wendell Berry, "Citizenship Papers," 2004, Counterpoint Press)