By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber.
To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds and watch their renewal of life - this is the commonest delight of the race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do.
One of the happiest days of my life is when I made five or six hundred pesos from a crop of watermelons I raise all on my own.
http://www2.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/zapata.htm