This short passage is from the chapter of Walden titled The Bean-Field in which Thoreau describes his late season efforts at cultivating a field of beans in the open land near his cabin at Walden Pond. Thoreau gains so much more than beans for his efforts, working barefooted at dawn, attending to the ministrations of birdsong, observing the ripening of the wild blackberries growing at one end of the field, and listening to the gossip of passerby on the road as they wonder at his frail and untimely efforts at husbandry.
