When you first meet Harold Hartzler and shake his large, strong hands there is a sense of connection to something good. Maybe it's the humble spirit. You know he has met hardship and difficulty in a real way, but there is no defeat in his clear eyes. There is certainty. He knows something important, if not invaluable. His strong words and sure movements confirm everything he communicates. It's easy to forget he is seventysomething.

Harold and his wife, Patricia, have been farming in Ohio's Wayne County since 1952. During their 40 plus years in marriage and agriculture they also raised six sons and two daughters. The land, the family and the life philosophy are all apparently interwoven here, as the Hartzler story unfolds for a guest.

"I farmed all my life," Harold begins. He pauses slightly before continuing, "But I guess it was 1954 or '55 that the sprays came along. I drove 50 miles to buy it and started putting it on my hay and corn fields. Well, I'll never forget the day we had a heavy rain come in right after I had put that stuff out. It ran over to a neighbor's hay field and actually killed it. Now that neighbor was an elderly gentleman and we tended his fields for him. He had never trusted the chemicals and asked me shortly thereafter not to use any of the chemicals on his fields again," he says.

Later Harold began to notice how hard his soil was becoming to plow and that his livestock was unhealthy. Most calves were barely living two weeks. Disturbing trends seemed to be developing beneath the earth, too. "My sister used to have a thing about earthworms. She would follow the plow furrow and have herself a jar full in a matter of just a few feet," Harold laughs. "One day I was in the middle of plowing a field and it was really hard. So I stopped the tractor and got down just to look around. I walked almost 500 feet and only found two worms. That bothered me," he says with concern.