There is a story told of a certain very wealthy farmer, who as he lay dying, longed for nothing more than that his two sons would continue to run the farm on which he had toiled all his working life. So he called them to his bedside and said to them in a weak voice, “All I have I have bequeathed to you, my loving sons and so I make you joint heirs, my solicitor has done
all the legal work, but I ask of you just one thing in return. This farm has been my whole life, so do not sell it to anyone else, for all my treasure is buried in the ground within one foot of the surface.”

After his death and when all the legalities had been accomplished, they were surprised to find hardly any money in their father’s bank account, so what had he done with all the money? They weren’t to know that during his lifetime he had given nearly all his wealth away to various charities he supported.

The sons then recalled what their father had said on his deathbed about his treasure being buried in the ground, so they assumed that he had buried the money to avoid paying any income tax. So they then set about carefully digging over every inch of the farm. Working from dawn to dusk every day the brothers laboured as they had never worked for their father. After
several months of hard toil, all they had to show were well cultivated fields, but no hidden boxes of cash. Funds were now running low, so they now decided in order to earn a living they would have to follow their father’s example and plant crops in their newly cultivated fields.

Only then did they find the treasure their father had left them, not as they expected in hard cash, but in crops so plentiful as to provide a real and substantial income for them both for many years to come.