It's been a while since I've written a column, paralyzed by a bad case of writer's block for things like these pieces.

The news writing is always easy, a plug and play formula — get a press release and call the cops for additional information you hope they will give and write declined to comment if they don't.

I've got three or four columns in various stages of completion on the usual suspects — school merger, school boundary lines, all that kind of stuff.

Now I have dust and fresh dirt on my shoes, a few pieces of cotton lint on my sweater.

This is a good thing.

My roots to farming run deep — my grandfather farmed, my uncle did, my dad helped out when he was young.

My paternal grandmother was a farm wife and while I didn't have the best relationship with her husband, I respected her for the short time I knew her.

As I stood in a cotton field this morning, watching the combines pick up this year's crop on Ringwood Road, I felt those rush of memories come back to the Sundays when my dad would go visit his father at the old home place on Princeton Farm Road in Northampton County.

I would wander the farm paths while they talked, getting dust and dirt on whatever shoes I may have been wearing at the time, feeling the rush of breezes, cold or hot depending on the season, hit my face.

This was a good thing.

One of my prized possessions is the scrapbook my grandmother made for my dad when he went off to World War II.

In the photos she took for the scrapbook are the dirt and dust I still love — pictures of hog-killing time; a picture of a mule; pictures of farmhands, my uncle and some relatives I never met.

This scrapbook is a good thing — showing pictures from Saturdays and Sundays in nearby Severn, people my father knew.

However, the farm photos and the son in service banner hanging on the side of a farm house make it more the treasured memory than people going to town for weekend shopping.

I always believe I inherited some gift of creativity from her and always wish she lived longer to make more pouches for us so we could hunt arrowheads when the fields were turned. The dust and dirt from those adventures were a good thing.

Sometimes, after visiting my mom, I drive out to Princeton Farm Road and relive those memories, those many Sundays.

Much has changed.

The house my father grew up in is rented out to a hunting club. Two barns, a hog pen and an outhouse are gone. One silo remains where the largest barn once stood but those farm paths are still there and crops grow and I breathe in the fresh air and try to come to terms with the rift between my grandfather and me. It's an issue I don't feel like sharing because, unlike the dirt and dust on my shoes, it's not a good thing.

My maternal grandmother picked cotton by hand. As farming became more mechanized she always commented on how those fuel-powered mules had nothing on the hearty work of hand-picking. To her, this was not a good thing.

She, however, loathed the back-breaking work, did what she could to get off the farm, married an Albanian immigrant who barnstormed the country looking for work — Kentucky, even California, several places in North Carolina.

He settled in Norfolk and the rest of the family settled in Murfreesboro. Despite this odd arrangement, he provided for my mother and the rest of her siblings.

What my maternal grandmother took from the farm was a gift of cooking, a gift of baking. Although she shook the dust and dirt from her shoes there was still that connection.

Even now, as an adult, I still feel that connection, get excited in the spring and fall and take my camera out to remote locations in Halifax and Northampton counties to document the planting and the harvest, breathe in the smell of freshly harvested peanuts deep in my lungs, watch the lint and the dust fly behind the harvesters and think of my not-so far removed heritage.

As I stood in a Ringwood Road cotton field today, watching Matt Harris and his brothers harvest this year's crop, wrapping it in pink for a worthy cause, the memories which are never far from reach came back strong today.

I told someone several weeks ago even though I am far removed from this profession, it's still in the blood and getting some dust and dirt on my boots today was a good thing — Lance Martin