As summer flies along towards the glorious days of fall, digest articles begin to digress from the actual work of farming. You see, late summer is much like mid-summer, which is not dis-similar from early summer. Things are of course happening on the farm (we are planting brassicas), but it is not so interesting as to fill an article. So, I will leave aside the news and jump right into the opinion.
Why I farm.
I used to think of meaning as something that one had recourse to – a touchstone or a base. Now it seems to me that unless an act or occupation is suffused with meaning, constantly and indivisibly meaningful, it is meaningless. It is not possible to work at meaningless work, and then go home or to a church or to a museum and experience meaning, as one would recharge a battery. - Wendell Berry
Growing up I did not worry terribly much about meaning. As a youth the opportunities were narrowly circumscribed. Church, family, school, chores, and sports filled the time; and if meaning was not always apparent in any of them, it did not really matter as participation was not really optional (with the exception of sports). Once I graduated from high school and had to choose a college major, the quest for meaning began. I had a brother-in-law making fabulous money as a computer programmer, it was the late 90’s before the tech bust, and I had gained admittance to a good science and engineering university; so the obvious choice was computer science. Once I arrived at school I realized that I would have to find an all consuming fascination with computers and technology in order to compete in that environment. I did not have that fascination and it was going to take much more that visions of sports cars to tether me to a computer. So, I thought “hey, I like to build things, I’ll be a mechanical engineer.” Sadly, mechanical engineering was substantially similar to computer science (sitting in front of a computer, incredibly difficult multi-variable calculus). Which led me to graduate with a degree in literature. Hey, I enjoyed reading and I only had to be in front of a computer to write the papers.
Now as you may know from your own experience (or the useful messages from the Partnership of English Majors on A Prairie Home Companion) a literature degree does not exactly point towards a particular vocation. So I tried a number of them: mover, baker, arborist assistant, cemetery landscaper, youth minister, substitute teacher (I was considering teaching, and was disabused of the notion), and finally three years as a land use planner. The conclusion after seven years in the work force was that in order to make money I would have to sit in front of a computer, but that I was happiest involved in physical labor outside. As I have a very understanding wife who is gainfully employed, the choice was easy.
Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food… - Genesis 3:17b-19a
Such a description of my working life necessarily elides many influences, experiences, and thoughts. Perhaps the greatest of these influences was the writings of Wendell Berry. Here was practical philosopher grounded in the Judeo-Christian background that I came from, but whose philosophy was radically different from the prohibitive morality (Thou Shall Not…) I was familiar with. His essays had a particular ability to brilliantly illuminate what for me were only vague notions of unease with the world as I experienced it.
While I was at that work the world gained with every move I made, and I harmed nothing. – Wendell Berry
A true land ethic as described by Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Almanac has the ability to heal much of what we have done to our lands and seas, and sustainable farming is a big part of that. Prior to becoming a farmer I was a gardener. My wife and I bought the mortgage on our house (if you think you bought the house, try not paying the mortgage) primarily because of the large, blank backyard. Now to look at the yard as it was then was not to see a little bit of
To work, we must work in a place … their work will have a precise and practical influence, first on the place where it is being done, and then on every place where its products are used, on every place where its attitude towards its products is felt, on every place to which its by-products are carried. – Wendell Berry
That is not to say that absolutely nothing is harmed in the process of life. Tillage kills worms and microbes, the eating of meat requires the taking of life (and I am not a vegetarian), and farming requires taking measures to control pests. Even the encouragement of predatory insects could easily be understood as harm by aphids or cabbage loopers, were they consumed with such thoughts. However, the proper handling of land is healing to the place. To simply leave degraded land alone (and almost all land is now in that state) is to abandon it to a weedy purgatory. In contrast, careful cultivation can at times be similar to the physical therapist who works to restore function to that which is broken or torn in our own bodies. It is this process of finding ways of allowing plants and animals to express their natural functions while accomplishing agricultural goals that is most fascinating. A good farmer is not just blessed with the proverbial “green thumb”, but has integrated parts of the knowledge of the biologist, botanist, veterinarian, psychologist, chemist, builder, mechanic, weatherman, and there is scarcely one that isn’t a philosopher as well. In a society that encourages us to know more and more about less and less until we know absolutely everything about nothing (the event horizon for PhD’s) farmers are our Renaissance men and women. A truly sustainable agriculture will only come about by having dedicated and bright farmers who have committed themselves to solving the riddles of particular pieces of land. The food and fiber of that land will strengthen the minds and bodies of the farmers and neighbors who consume the food, and who are no longer sickened by the by process, products, and by-products of industrial agriculture as they currently are.
The land that I love is the land that I’m workin’ / But its hard to love it all the time when your back is a-hurtin’ – Old Crow Medicine Show [Take’em Away]
Before you all quit your jobs and rush out to farm (or encourage your kids or grandkids to do so) – let me quickly add that it is hard physical work. I have never worked so hard, or for such a prolonged period of time on a daily basis. You really do start with the dawn, and on occasion end at or after dusk. The work is never complete, and the monetary compensation does not begin to approach what can be made outside of agriculture. That being said, the pursuit of a sustainable agriculture is the central issue of our time. Unsustainable does not mean that it is bad, it means that it will someday fail to achieve what it has promised; and the failure of agriculture would quickly remind us that no civilization has long outlived the failure of the agriculture base on which it depends.
