What is “Forty Acres and a Prayer” about?
"Forty Acres and a Prayer" is a farmer's stand against foreclosure. A letter from a bank in Louisville gives him ninety days, the corn came in short and the tractor needs a transmission he can't afford, but this is land his grandfather cleared with a mule and his father's initials are still carved in the fence posts. Even when his wife urges him to let go, he calls it the hill he'll die on. Track seven is the longest song on The Last Porch Light, at almost six minutes.
Forty Acres and a Prayer lyrics
The letter came on a Tuesday from the bank in Louisville
Said we got ninety days to make it right or lose the hill
Daddy's daddy cleared this land with a mule and a broken back
And I'll be damned if some man in a suit takes that
The corn came short this summer and the diesel ain't got cheaper
The tractor needs a transmission I can't afford to fix
But every morning I walk out and put my boots in this dirt
And I swear to God this ground still knows my name
Forty acres and a prayer
That's all I got and all I need
Forty acres and a prayer
And the stubbornness my grandma planted in me like a seed
They can send their letters, they can send their lawyers
They can put a dollar sign on every inch of ground
But forty acres and a prayer
Is the hill I'm gonna die on if it comes to that
My wife says Jesse, maybe it's time to let it go
Move to town, get a job, let somebody else fight the weather
But she don't understand this isn't just a piece of land
It's where my daddy taught me how to be a man
The fence posts still got his initials carved in the cedar
The barn still smells like his tobacco and his sweat
There's a hundred years of our family in this topsoil
And some things a man don't get to just forget
Forty acres and a prayer
That's all I got and all I need
Forty acres and a prayer
And the stubbornness my grandma planted in me like a seed
They can send their letters, they can send their lawyers
They can put a dollar sign on every inch of ground
But forty acres and a prayer
Is the hill I'm gonna die on if it comes to that
You know, they talk about the American dream
Like it's something you buy at a store
But it used to mean something simpler
It used to mean land under your feet
And the right to work it till you can't work anymore
And then hand it to your kids
And pray they love it half as much as you did
Forty acres and a prayer
That's all I got and all I need
Forty acres and a prayer
And every ghost that ever worked this land standing next to me
They can take the house, they can take the tractor
They can auction off every single thing I own
But this dirt is mine, this dirt is my family
And I ain't leaving, I ain't leaving home
I ain't leaving home