The Onion Field Lesson
As far back as I can remember, since the 1940’s, the farmers in this area have rotated their crops from cotton to corn to milo, then to onions.
When it was harvest time for the onions, the farmers would plow them up to let them season before harvesting them to be shipped off to market in 50 pound bags.
We all learned which ones to put in which bags. We did the grading as we picked them up. Some were damaged, too small or disfigured and would be left in the field.
After the harvest the farmers would let anyone that wanted the culls have them since they were good food and no one wanted to see anything wasted back in those days.
Well, one year at the onion shed the big buyers mandated that no farmer could allow that practice anymore because it affected onion prices and sales.
I mean, give me a break, everyone got a bag here in town and they might last a month? These onions were shipped north somewhere. Way out of this area.
This practice continued on for a couple of seasons, except for one farmer that told everyone through several churches to come at night to get what they wanted. It was much cooler in the evening. We kids loved it. We got to stay up late and run around in the dark playing.
Well, one Sunday morning the pastor said that this farmer and his family weren't in church that day because there was a hurricane out in the Gulf, and they were desperately working day and night trying to get their cotton picked before it hit and ruined the crop, as they would lose their farm if they didn't get the crop in.
He started his sermon, something about the beggars, widows and orphans around the walls and the gates to this ancient city where Jesus lived, or something like that.
The people started to get up and leave while he was preaching. I could hear them quietly whispering as they left. Pretty soon the preacher stopped and asked what was going on.
“We're going to pick cotton pastor”, one old man limping with a cane said.
We went quickly home, got our field clothes on and rushed out to their farm. The farmer, his wife and three little girls were stumbling along trying to pick cotton, but were just too exhausted from
no rest, as well as the heat. There were also about a dozen of the men from church who were already picking. As we got busy more people showed up until there were dozens of men as well as wives and children all picking as fast as they could.
Pretty soon some other women showed up with pickup trucks full of kegs of ice tea and lemonade. There were sandwiches, hams, pickles, potato salad, you name it; for the workers to eat when they were hungry or needed to cool off.
Some of the women took the farm family to their homes, to help them get cleaned up and to rest. I saw the women doing laundry and drying clothes on the lines as others got the livestock in, then fed and secured them in the barn.
We picked on into the night, and that field was clean by the next morning. The trucks and trailers full of cotton took off inland to escape the approaching storm as we all went home to take shelter after helping take care of this family in crisis.
Those church members worked in the grueling heat of maybe a hundred degrees, and late into the night to help him. That policy of leaving the cull onions in the fields to rot was never adhered to after that by any of the farmers.
©1998 Mark Crider