It’s a tricky business when one writes a blog post about Wendell Berry. From all accounts, the man is opposed to such technological nonsense.
All the same, Berry’s philosophy calls to many of us here in the cyberworld. He argued for sustainable agriculture long before the local food movement and organic gardening became buzz words. He walks the walk, maintaining his large farm with manually-operated tools and gentle practices.
Wendell Berry has seen the world, even participated in it. He lived in Italy and France courtesy of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship grant. He taught at New York University, among other schools, before returning to his family home in Kentucky around 1965. He’s proven himself as a writer, with over 40 books to his credit.
All along, he has listened to the land. He has tried to share what the land tells him, and it’s not a feel-good story at this point.
In his essay Farming and the Global Economy, Berry sums up the ridiculous method of food production currently in practice: “One thing at least should be obvious to us all: the whole human population of the world cannot live on imported food. Some people somewhere are going to have to grow the food.”
Wendell Berry is a writer of poems, essays, short stories, and novels. His words come from the land that is in him and speak a language of honesty, integrity, and prophecy about the future of our species.
Ironically, Mr. Berry’s work can be found all over the internet, promoted by those of us who understand his message and appreciate his unflagging efforts to preserve not just a piece of land but the culture that depends upon it. “To farm well,” he writes in Renewing Husbandry, “requires an elaborate courtesy toward all creatures, animate and inanimate. It is sympathy that most appropriately enlarges the context of human work.”
Connection to the place and all its roots and branches makes for a good farmer. It’s also that connection that makes for a good writer. In order to turn our words into poems or stories that move the reader and make a lasting impact, we have to know where we began and why it matters. We have to be connected to that place where our own stories grow.
We have to nurture the soil of the earth and of our imaginations so that our stories can grow and sustain us. Creativity doesn’t come from out there, any more than nourishing food comes from across the country. It’s here, in this place where we are right now. If we don’t tend to it with kindness and courtesy, more than the garden will wither and die.
