There is a kind of idealism that seems to be native to farming.  Farmers begin every year with a vision of perfection. And every year, in the course of the seasons and the work, this vision is relentlessly whittled down to a real result-by human frailty and fallibility, by the mortality of creatures, by pests and diseases, by the weather. The crop year is a long struggle, ended invariably not by the desired perfection but by the need to accept something less than perfection as the best that could be done.   

Wendell Berry
Excerpt reprinted with permission from “Tobacco Harvest: An Elegy”