Bringing in the harvest has always taken the work of many
hands. Bringing electricity to the countryside does as well.
Swing the shining sickle,
Cut the ripening grain;
Gather in the harvest,
Fall is here again.
�Traditional
Come, ye thankful people, come;
Raise the song of Harvest-home;
All is safely gathered in,
ere the winter storms begin.
�
Henry Alford,
19th-century English theologian
Ah, October! A month both bitter and sweet, poignant and
exhilarating. There�s the invigorating uplift to body and soul from its
balmy, blue-sky days and crisp, starry nights. There�s also the aching
beauty that foreshadows decline: trees ablaze in a final curtain-call,
summer birds taking wing to far-off lands.
There�s the crunch of tart apples announcing another
growing season done. And there�s also the enveloping tang of wood smoke,
warming us while warning of winter on-the-way.
Humankind for millennia has moved in motion with nature�s
rhythms and heeded nature�s call, every autumn bringing in the harvest and
firming up the foundations ahead of the relentless approach of winter. It�s
not surprising that �the harvest� has been celebrated in song and story for
centuries, in part because it involves gathering the food that sustains us,
but also because this gathering inevitably involves the labor of many hands.
Many cooperative hands.
The example of the harvest embodies both how, and why,
cooperatives work: everyone shares in � and benefits from � the effort. So
it�s only natural that October for decades has been celebrated as
Cooperative Month.
Cooperatives are a strong but often silent presence in our
lives, meeting needs as diverse as banking and babysitting, food and
housing, commodities and communications, and, of course, electricity.
Your electric cooperative is one of over 900 spread across
47 American states, each one locally owned, locally controlled, and
dedicated to providing its member-consumers with the best possible service
at the lowest possible cost, every minute of every day.
As we�ve discussed in these pages many times over many
years, each cooperative is unique, and yet each is united with all the
others by a shared commitment to Seven Cooperative Principles. These seven
principles outline how the cooperative operates, with:
Like a farmer distilling sugar water into maple syrup,
this last principle boils the six before it down to the pure essence of a
cooperative: to work hard every day to improve the quality of life for its
members.
As this worldwide celebration of
cooperation takes place this month, we as Americans have much for which to
be grateful. We of course have freedoms unimaginable to most of the
residents of this world,
as we elect our leaders, speak out on issues,
pursue livelihoods we choose, and gather freely with family and friends.
We Americans also celebrate another blessing: a strong,
reliable electric network that powers much of our nation�s economy and,
despite the challenges of recent years, still makes our quality of life the
envy of the world. Your local electric cooperative, along with 12 others in
Virginia and hundreds more across the nation, are all integral parts of this
network.
The cooperative network was built by many hands in the
1930s and �40s, as farmers and ranchers, merchants and teachers � rural
people all � joined together in small towns and country crossroads
throughout the land to provide themselves with power, when the big electric
utilities of the time were unwilling to do so. The cooperative principle of
member ownership proved a perfect fit for this undertaking that was grand in
scale, broad-based in involvement. And the not-for-profit business structure
made a valuable service affordable to rural people during the dawn of
electric cooperatives in the 1930s, and still does so today.
The work of many hands � whether for harvesting the bounty
of the land or delivering power to its people � is something worth
celebrating.
As 19th-century theologian Henry Alford implored, �Come,
ye thankful people, come; raise the song of Harvest-home�!
