The Farmer (edited version)

For the Farmer, it was an endless dilemma. For he and his family, the crops were essential, they were the lifeblood, and they were all the kept them alive. It was only natural then, said the Farmer, that he should protect his crops from the ravenous threat that would creep in, often unseen and undetected, but always there.

 

And so the Farmer stood vigil, and devoted himself to fighting this intrusion, keeping his crops safe and clean of pests and scavengers. Day after day, night after night, he watched over them.

But to the Farmer’s dismay, the crops still shrank, and they blackened, and withered. Despite all his efforts to keep them protected, all his efforts to fight, the Farmer could not keep his crops from failing. Resolutely, he kept guard, and resolutely, he lost crops.

His Wife came to him, one day, as he stood protecting his crops, and she saw the battle he was having, though she did not understand it, and she saw how still he lost crops. And so she watered them, as he stood guard, and she fed them, and tended to their broken stalks and their dropped seeds. And then for the first time in so long, the crops flourished, and grew, and multiplied. 

The Farmer went to his wife then, and at last he lowered his guard from those crops, and he asked her what had happened, how had she saved his crops when he could not. And she told him the simple honest truth that she had seen.