I am grateful for Minott

Wheat Field with Reaper and Sun, 1889 - Van Gogh

From Sept 28, 2014:

Reading Thoreau's journals for close to an hour this morning. Impressed by the image of Minott the farmer, taking pleasure in all his work, having a farm that's "just the right size," so there's no waste. He knows every nail and pin on his barn. This reminds me of my dad -- and of a real goal for life.  Also impressed with the idea of nature as the antidote to society.  Also, the idea of footpaths as superior to wheel tracks.

Here's the section from Thoreau's journal:

"Minott is, perhaps, the most poetical farmer - who most realizes to me the poetry of the farmer’s life - that it I know. He does nothing with haste and drudgery, but as if he loved it. He makes the most of his labor, and takes infinite satisfaction in every part of it. He is not looking forward to the sale of his crops or any pecuniary profit, but he is paid by the constant satisfaction which his labor yields him. He has not too much land to trouble him, - too much work to do, - no hired man nor boy, - but simply to amuse himself and live. He cares not so much to raise a large crop as to do his work well. He knows every pin and nail in his barn. If another linter is to be floored, he lets no hired man rob him of that amusement, but he goes slowly to the woods and, at his leisure, selects a pitch pine tree, cuts it, and hauls it or gets it hauled to the mill; and so he knows the history of his barn floor."

-From Thoreau's Journal; October 4, 1851

Here's a gloss from Facebook:  George Prescott Minott (1783-1861) was a lifelong Concord resident and one of Thoreau's favorite people, one of the simple, obscure "worthies" of Concord that he admired so much. 

In another Journal entry Thoreau would write, "I am not only grateful because Veias, and Homer, and Christ, and Shakespeare have lived, but I am grateful for Minott..."