Husbands, Wives, and Potatoes (1 of 3)

          What does it mean to be a husband? Well, if I can geek-out a bit, the etymology of the word is a combination of two Old Norse words. The first word Hūs, simply means house. The second word is bóndi; a really cool and complex word. A bóndi was a term identifying a man who farmed his own land. This is in contrast to a farmhand or sharecropper, who farms land owned by another. If you worked the fields of another man you were not consider a bóndi. 
     As I write this, I'm reminded of my grandfather–a man who farmed his own land all his life. Many years ago my grandfather gave me this piece of advise: "Son, love has got to be cultivated." And he was right. 

          Now, in my tenth year of marriage and two small boys, I'm learning the severity of my grandfather's words. 
          When my papaw used the word cultivate it had a different meaning than today's usage.   Cultivation for my grandfather's generation was something a farmer did continuously. It was a cycle of affection and respect for the land that God had blessed him with in stewardship. I'm not being dramatic. My grandfather dearly loved the land he lived on and he did live on the land not simply above it, like so many today. 
          He saw his efforts in partnership with the land. He cared for the land and the land responded to his care. In his day they talked about soil husbandry, not soil science. He was the husbandman of his land. This might sound trite to farmers who consider themselves agribusinessmen and view their land in terms of economics and industry. But, I digress.     

          When I was about 10 years of age, my grandfather gave me a row in his garden–a great honor indeed. I planted the mess of potatoes my father had given me. I enjoyed that single row of potatoes and liked the responsibility. 
          One day, I went to water my little plants and noticed something dreadful; potato bugs were eating the young shoots. I ran to my grandfather and told him what had happened. He said, "Well, go pull the bugs off". I didn't like this answer and asked him for "some chemical" to kill the bugs. He snapped at me and said I shouldn't use a chemical for a job that I needed to do myself. He was teaching me real cultivation, true husbandry. So, I went out and squashed the bugs. I'd go out twice a day and kill dozens of parasites. 

          I was defending my little potatoes from pests. This was my row and my grandfather made sure that I cultivated it from planting, to harvest, to preparing the soil for the next year. This was my responsibility. I shudder when I hear machines referred to as cultivators and chemicals used in place of available labor. Twenty years later and I still cultivate a garden in the backyard and in the home. I am the husband. I am the hūsbóndi. I can't leave the leadership of my family to a person, book, pastor, chemical, or machine and still call myself the husband. 

          Sadly, many men don't feel the same way. They reduce the responsibility of the husband to simply making money and paying others to influence their wives and raise their children. And even more tragically, some men are working fields that don't even belong to them. Men, we must cultivate the love of our wives, maintain our own homes in love, train our children with affection, and at times, defend them from the pests.