Fallow
By Gene Aronowitz
My father was a sommelier of soil. When I was a kid, I would watch him walk to different parts of our farm as he was about to start work, scoop up a handful of soil, place it in a collapsible cup of water, sniff deeply, sip a bit, swirl it around his mouth, and swallow. He always hoped for a chocolate flavor, signifying very fertile soil. I never understood why he did this, thinking that periodic sampling would have been much more efficient. However, I realized that this process was not analytic but partly a toast to honor the earth, wishing it good health and a bountiful future.
He rotated his crops to avoid eradicating the nutrients in the soil. He’d plant nitrogen-depleting corn one season and nitrogen-producing legumes the next. This method, he said, also helped to avoid an abundance of pests and weeds. He took special care of his field that contained milkweed to welcome the monarchs because they brought so much beauty to the farm, not only by their presence but also by their role in pollinating the wildflowers near our home.
My father had breakfast before daybreak, packed a sandwich for lunch, and stayed out until it was too dark to work. After he showered, he, my mother, three sisters, two brothers, and I finally sat down for a late dinner.
When my father died, I took over the farm. He had made it work by working hard, but I thought I could make it work by working smart. I thought that focusing on a single crop with just the right amount of fertilizer and pest control could increase output, and it did. Corn prices were high, and I decided to focus on that crop.
I used Roundup, a Glyphosate-based herbicide, to control the weeds and grasses. I disagreed with the alarmist news reports and commentaries about its cancer-producing characteristics, believing them partisan propaganda. The Monsanto salesman was persuasive about its effectiveness and how safe it was and convinced me that their GMO corn seeds would produce the yield I wanted. I applied Roundup from my large, elevated sprayer and showered when I finished work because of the drift. The money our corn crop brought in by the third growing season was substantial, although, during the fourth season, we noticed that weeds, apparently resistant to Roundup, were beginning to spread around the stalks. And I also began to find it harder to pull the corn out of the ground.
We thought we had accumulated enough money and we weren’t getting any younger, so we thought it was time to start our family. My wife threw away her diaphragm and her tube of spermicide, and we screwed a lot. I liked all that sex at first, but when three months passed, it became a task and, two months later, a burden. My wife decided to see an infertility specialist. I resisted the idea, but when the doctor told my wife she shouldn’t have any difficulty conceiving, I reluctantly agreed to be tested.
At the doctor’s office, a cute little nurse gave me a bottle and told me to go into the bathroom and masturbate. I was so embarrassed that I could hardly get it up, probably a usual occurrence because they had a supply of sleazy magazines on the table next to the toilet, and halfway through one of them, it happened.
About a week later, the nurse called me and said I should return to the office to provide another sample, as she called my semen, and avoid ejaculating in the meantime. When I arrived and saw the nurse, I felt a little turned on, probably because of the brief intimacy we had shared the week before and on the phone. I came immediately but then turned red when she asked me if I had managed to get all the semen into the bottle. I assured her I had and set up another appointment for the following week.
When I saw the doctor, he told me I had hardly any sperm, and most of them weren’t moving around that well. He asked me to get up on the examining table and checked for physical abnormalities. Finding none, he asked if I drank a lot. I told him I had a couple of beers, two or three nights a week. He asked if I smoked. I told him I had a couple of cigarettes each evening after finishing work. “What kind of work do you do?” he asked.
I’m a corn farmer.”
He paused, looked at me, shook his head, and asked, “Have you been using a lot of Roundup?”
A few days later, as we were considering our options, including adoption, my wife, holding my hand, pointed out that the Monarchs, who always liked to use our place to lay their eggs, seemed to have decided to go somewhere else and that, maybe, we should do the same.
