Homer Turnipking owns a farm on the edge of Calhoun County. The farm has been in the Turnipking family for many generations. In fact Homer cannot remember a time when it was not a farm in the family.

It is fall in Calhoun County, which means the crops are harvested and put away for the winter. It's a time when farmers can relax a little while and take a breather before they start doing their winter chores. You would think the field would be bare and stark, nothing left behind but the ground level stocks where the corn was harvested.

This is not the way it is in Homer's fields. His father and his father before him, as far back as Homer can recall, have always left a row of corn or beans in one of their fields after it was harvested.

Homer had asked about this when he was young, and his father had told him it was an old custom of the families to do so. This was the way that they gave back to the land for giving them such a good crop. The row of crop was left behind to feed the Deer and other animals that might wonder into the field so they would not go hungry during the winter. It was a small thing and in the scheme of things cast them little to do.

Because, maybe it was just the way it went, but both Homer and his father and his father and his father, had believed that leaving behind the one row of corn or beans was the reason that, even in the toughest times, there had not been a crop that had failed on there farm. Even back in the summer of ‘76 (You all remember that summer don't you? It was so hot that the hens were lying boiled eggs) the Turnipking farm had had a good crop even though those farms around them had to bring in water or watch their crops fail.

Homer has tried to get the other farmers in the area to do as he does but they feel that the one row they might leave behind would make or break them money-wise. Pound foolish and penny short, Homer would say. It makes no difference to me but I would rather be sure then to wonder.

Besides, on a cold winter morn, I can walk out on my front porch and look across the field and see the deer snacking on the corn I have left for them and every now and them I think one raises his head up and looks at me them winks his thanks to me.

If we cannot give back to that which has given to us, maybe we should be in another business, Homer thinks to himself as he looks at the big buck raise his head and eat the corn. Some things money just can't buy.

Thanksgiving is just around the corner in Calhoun County and as many others sit at their tables and give thanks, Homer and his family will be giving thanks to for the land for the love of family and most of all thanks for the crop.