Growth

Amid all the new technology, it was amazing that nature could yet produce beauty man could not replicate.

Darrel was tired, but happy.  As daylight faded, he wiped the dried salt from his brow with hands caked in grit.  The machines did almost everything, but he still liked to get his hands dirty.  Now, as the rains came, he paused to enjoy a spectacle of color in the fading light; a well-earned reward for a hard day’s work.

There weren’t many of them left.  Farmers.  Growing food was a job for robotics and precise computers, but they were still out there, nursing a battered Earth back to health.  For generations his family had worked the land; his father, before the war, his grandfather before that.  Now, the task fell to him.  The farmhouse was gone, but the fields remained.

His modest trailer wasn’t much to look at; his cabin on Braun 4 had been nearly as spacious.  But now, standing on firm ground, breathing fresh air, there was nowhere he’d rather be.

Written for the FFfAW Challenge – Week of January 16, 2018.  Word count: 175.  Read other stories based on this prompt at InLinkz.com.