- English translation
Sometimes a crop turns out well for you by sheer luck, even when you gave it little care.
- Literal wording
The crop chances upon you; you do not chance upon it.
- Meaning and lesson
The saying describes a crop that does well almost by accident. The good result arrives on its own, even though the grower paid it little attention, so the success feels like something that found the farmer rather than something the farmer went out and earned.
Its point is narrow: it remarks on a particular pleasant surprise, a lightly tended planting that still thrived. It does not claim that care and labor are useless or that every harvest depends on luck; it simply notes that a good yield sometimes comes without much tending.
- When it is used
Use it when a field, plot, or planting yields well despite having been largely left alone, such as a neglected patch producing a better crop than expected. Its recorded application is to crops; using it for other strokes of good fortune is not established.
- Register
- Colloquial
Cite or copy proverb
How this record reached us: Editorially sourced.
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