The year 2020

What a long strange trip it’s been !

As we turn toward the holiday season and reflect on what has been a year of growth, uncertainty, frustration, and triumph... the long shadow of the pandemic remains. The writer Nicholas Christakis stated that “even when the world returns to ‘normal,’ the legacy of Covid-19 will transform everything from wages and healthcare to political attitudes and global supply chains. For some time after we reach herd immunity or have a widely distributed vaccine, people will still be recovering from overall clinical, psychological, social and economic shock of the pandemic and the adjustments it required, likely through 2024.”

Again, the members of TNLA are resilient and innovative and if we continue to keep our wits about us, then we can continue to embrace the many changes in ways of doing business that have been implemented this past year. We are blessed as an industry to live and work outside in nature and by the very definition ESSENTIAL!

The industry is alive and well because of the attitude and the guts to work with Mother Nature on a daily basis and that is called intestinal fortitude. Makes me proud to be part of this unique group of dirt farmers that make up the green industry in Tennessee... it is a horti-CULT!

Kind souls, I leave you with one of the most enduring poems ever written. In times of strife, in times of victory, and in times of fear, Rudyard Kipling summons that which we need to be reminded of, and the message is clear: we all have it within us to know and understand that one must, first of all, endure. I beseech thee to read this poem and please read it slowly. Go back and read it again and again... chew on each word, read it out loud to yourself and listen to the words. Let them sink in and marinate in your heart and soul, for that is truly where the power and the energy reside to “force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone, and so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold On!’”

James Bert Driver

TNLA President

If

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream — and not make dreams your master; If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim,

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same.

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings, And never breathe a word about your loss: If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings — nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And which is more: you’ll be a Man, my son!

– Rudyard Kipling, 1895