REGAL ROWS: 
THE FARMERS STORY
Written By: Yarden

The morning air was cool with small gusts of icy breeze paired with hot and humid summer air. In the distant horizon, the sun was appearing between the far off mountains and the occasional rooster could be heard as the herald of the dawn.

It was mid-season and the early hours were prime for the servants to make routine haste in the royal garden. As the sun drew further in the day, the heat was enough to make any man faint, but now while the shadows were long and the crickets could still be heard, quiet figures sat hunched in the lush foliage.
Like scarecrows working a quick morning shift, the gardeners were wearing woven grass hats and tattered clothes. Weaving hands between the leaves full of wet dew and removing the undesired growth from inside the soil.

So many servants had worked this area before them, countless hands had sifted the rows from rocks and roots that were not needed. Every line was precise in the way it was tilled.
Such experienced eyes had already scanned its purpose, and aged men grew strong overturning its stones and defeating its boulders. But now, there was a young boy sitting with the old men working the rows. He was a chimney sweep, but being a servant to the king his jobs extended well into the kingdom. However, he knew nothing about tilling with oxen and planting crop, he was a tender fawn hiding in the weeds among  glossy bull hooves.

He had followed the master chimney sweep down the castle to the royal garden and had lost him among the others working in the hundreds upon hundreds of acres the king owned. It was a library of herbage and root. Every berry and fruit lay in sprawl against the castle walls that extended in every direction. Each time he looked up the young lad saw the sun was inching higher and higher until it was finally noon, and the sun was directly above.
In the tall of the day, the dew had far been evaporated from the dry ground, and the powerful heat was beginning to work upon the boy like the fires of a kiln upon wet clay.

Picking up his tools and examining the distance of the rows, he saw a fair looking tree where many others were lounging in its shade. A small stream nearby was emerging from a rock near its base where a spring was constantly flowing and watering the garden.
Hiking and weaving across rows, the lad finally emerged upon the clearing where the tree was growing old and low near a trailhead cluttered with old wagons and worn out looking mules under some elderberry bushes.

The old jenny's lifted their ears as he approached and were gentle giants as he touched their loud sniffing noses. Looking toward the tree, he could hear the men laughing and talking in the shade, so quickly he went and felt the cool spring water on his dirty hands and rushed to the dark leafy cave under the old growth.
Under the low arms of the tree and its thick leaves, the shade was a full refuge from the sun and its warm persistence. The cool aroma of dirt and pipe smoke lingered like a barn against the sweet smell of hot air wafting from nearby tomatoes.

There against the base of the giant towering tree were several men laying, drinking water and talking while the remainder of the large group were up and about. Seeing the few by the trunk he decided to lay nearby and rest a while.
Placing his spade on the ground and his small rusty knife inside its scoop, the boy reclined on the ground with his head tilted up by the long of the shovel under the back of his neck, and pulled his hat over his eyes.
With the sound of the men talking like a lullaby and the small pinholes in his grass hat like skylights in a woven roof, he drifted off to sleep.

Dreams and thoughts swirled in his mind as the heat and occasional bug nipped at his legs, until finally he awoke into the fiery and familiar thick moisture in the air. The feeling of sweat on the arms and face, mixed with the swampy sauna on the breeze made it an oppressing environment.
Rising and wiping the sweat from his brow the young boy looked around and saw the crowd of servants had dispersed back into the fields and rows, and only a few remained near the rock where the spring emerged. The trail down from the tree-shade went directly across a small clearing then between a few post markers where it ended abruptly on a rocky outcrop.

The walk through the hot lush field was quick and direct as the boys eyes were locked on the glimmering pool of water, and the pack of light brown mules drinking like camels.
A few other boys were playing there in the water, and quickly he too was standing in the ice cold spring. Unbearable even just to the ankle, numbing the skin down to the bone like winter snow.
After reclining back in the shade on the large ledge where the spring water emanated, he was joined by the other boys as they readied the mules and wagons near the looming elderberry bushes. Their faces he could see clearly in the bright day and when he saw them laughing he saw the striking likeness of the other servant he grew up working with.

Nearing to them, he said in a joking manner.
"You each look like kin to one I know, the face where the son of man is from the King."

An old man who was with them preparing the wagons stepped around the mules and made himself visible. His hands were bandaged, and his fingernails were bruised and cracked from working the fields. The same face he had was like the son of man from the King, his eyes were tired and old, and his body was like a strong gate fastened to the hillside that saw all the days of work pass through.

"We are all the sons of the most high King."
Said the old man in a very quick gesture of his hand.

"But how are we remnants of a royal place? We are like the wildflowers and have no purpose, does the King even acknowledge us?"
Asked one of the young boys to the group.

The young boys quietly stood and looked across the ledge over the stream where the spring fed the river, then the river watered and irrigated miles of forest. Never had any of them conceived that they were princes of the palace working the fields and tilling its soil. Royalty would perhaps be somewhat closer to the castle or directly in the galleries and hallways wearing fine garments, not working its grounds and sweeping its steps.

"It is like the river there, that waters the garden and goes in every direction."
Said the old man finally.

"When each branch downstream breaks into its individual parts as the King arranged, it still contains the flow from the main creek here. It all gets its water from this large spring, every lamb and leaf of watercress down there gets its desirable growth from the source when they were created.

The most high King could have never revealed these places, or arranged these rows, and kept quite the peaceful resort in these hollers, but instead he gives his servants a properly placed kingdom. Because only a fool would think the regal rows were not yet numbered and the wildflowers in the courtyard had no great purpose."

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