Under the Wire

What’s in a name? Well, for some a lot more than was intended. Among the hundred or so emails my office computer attracts each day came a prime example of perhaps too much or too little thought going into some names.

This message came from a group that advocates livestock grazing. How could I find fault with that? Their monthly message usually includes new ideas for rotational grazing, mixed species grazing and other ides to make livestock and the folks who own them, happier. What caught my attention was their announcement of a new program dubbed, “Soil to Table.” I’ll be honest, I read no farther than that. My mind locked up with one thought, “Who ever came up with that name never ate at my house growing up.”

In my “formative years” on my parents eastern Colorado ranch, soil and table were two things destined to never meet. In fact, if my sister and I, along with visiting cousins and friends did bring soil to the table, my mother had her own program known as “pain to the kid with dirt on their hands.”

We might have just taken a break from branding calves or climbed out from under a broken manure spreader but son or daughter, you had better leave the dirt in the wash basin. Hands and faces, sun tanned or not, had better be covered with glistening clean skin. Take it from me, a dirty hand reaching for a dinner roll would be met with a spoon or dull table knife across the back of it, welded by my mother who seemed old to us but had the reflexes of a cat. Carry a welt shaped like a table spoon on the back of your hand for a week and see who never wanted that to happen again.

Soil to the table? No way!

The erring child was not the only one at the table to get educated. The rest sat with wide eyes, afraid to look at each other or at our mother. Thinking back now about the experience, the hand holding the pen writing this is beginning to sting a bit. Some lessons just seem to stay with you. Even my father seemed acutely aware of the rule. Perhaps before kids came along he had tried “soil to the table” himself. Even my little sister usually beat me to the sink on the back porch to scrub her hands lily white. I don’t remember her working much. Her job seemed to be to annoy me. Somewhere, however, she had learned the “Soil to the Table” program was not for her.

I hope the folks who worked long and hard to come up with the title for what is probably a very good idea, will go back to the drawing board on this one. Work at it folks. Let’s get something that doesn’t remind us of poor table manners and painful lessons. How about “Soil Stays in the Sun, Clean Hands to the Table?”