LittleField Notes

by Ryan Foxley of Arlington, WA

Note to Mr. Berry

“Wendell Berry’s Advice for a Cataclysmic Age” is the title of a nice piece by Dorothy Wickenden which appears in a recent New Yorker Magazine about America’s foremost agrarian writer, who is now 87 years old. She traveled to Port Royal, Kentucky, to visit Mr. Berry at his farm. With broad strokes the article outlines and contextualizes his life and work. After reading the article, I reflected on the not insignificant impact his books have had on my life, without which, I may not ever have ventured into agriculture, would not be living in the Northwest, and by extension, would not be writing this column. It would be difficult to overstate the degree to which his philosophy, and particular world view – that is to say, his consistent championing of human scaled rural endeavors – has influenced my own work and philosophy – my philosophy of work. I have long thought to write to him, to say a simple thank you; reading the article nudged me into action. I realize I am surely not the only reader of this magazine to have been influenced by his writings. And so I hope I am not too bold in scribbling out this note of thanks, and placing it in this public forum as a way to give his work recognition in a broader, more public sense. Wendell Berry has for decades been our harbinger of hope, our purveyor of good sense, our herald of rationality, our keen observer of the decline of rural America, our champion of craftsmanship over industrialization, our troubadour of beauty over ugliness. In short, he reaffirms, as small farmers, our raison d’ être.

Dear Mr. Berry,

I hope this letter finds you well, and that you will forgive the tardiness of my correspondence, for in fairness I should have written years ago. I was startled out of my complacency by the recent New Yorker article about you and your life’s work. It is customary that a gift of great importance be acknowledged, sometimes by a plaque, or honorary title, but always by gratitude. Yet, gratitude is meaningless if not expressed – so, however belated it may be – I want to say quite simply, thank you. Thank you for your life’s work, for your unrivaled gift of matching beautiful ideas with beautiful words. And I think it’s not unreasonable to suggest that, with this simple note, I speak for countless others, many of whom read this magazine, and have also been inspired by your work to take up an agrarian life. You have also touched the lives of many urban dwellers by expanding their awareness of rural issues. By reminding them that “eating is an agricultural act,” farmers markets and CSA’s are thriving, as cities and countrysides increasingly recognize their mutual need, one for the other.

I remember well the first day I learned of your writing. I was a school teacher nurturing a smoldering passion for farming and living with my young family in a high mountain valley in the inter-mountain west. We had recently purchased a house on an acre and a quarter with a fine little outbuilding and a pleasant stream that bisected two tiny “fields.” It was late April, the snow had only just melted, and I was putting the finishing touches on a wood framed greenhouse when a friend stopped by. We fell to talking about gardening and farming and I spoke of my interest in someday trying my hand at doing some actual field work with a team (I already had a number of years experience driving horses on dude outfits, but nothing in the way of farming). My friend Don said, “well you know there’s a guy, a writer from Tennessee who farms with horses and writes books about it. You should check him out.” Turns out you were from Kentucky, not Tennessee, as I was soon to learn after rounding up a copy of The Gift of Good Land, which I greedily read in just a couple of days. My life was changed forever.

It’s not that I was a budding industrialist climbing the corporate ladder, no indeed. Since I was a boy I had always been attracted to places of natural beauty and peace. I distinctly remember fearing that by the time I grew up, the mountains surrounding our valley would be all filled up, with no wild places left, nowhere not covered over with houses, cars, and chain-stores. I loved to spend time with my grandpa tending to his few steers, gathering the eggs from his small flock of chickens, and riding around with him on his old blue Ford 8N. And I have a fond memory of the enormous (or at least that’s how I remember it) vegetable garden that my parents grew in the back yard of a large town lot. The early Mormon settlers ingeniously brought irrigation right into town, and when our water turn came up, we would open the head gate at the corner of the block and direct the flow of water to our backyard. With hoe in hand I would create little ditches and dams to send water down each row in turn. How I loved watching the water wend its way along the rows, soaking deep into the rich soil.

From these early experiences I was certainly primed from a young age to develop an interest in a life on the land; but growing up as I did in the 1970’s and 80’s, I was told it was too late. If you weren’t born to it, farming wasn’t an option, and in the arid west, if you didn’t own a thousand acres, you had better seek a different career path. And who would want to farm anyway? Farming was nothing more than a life of drudgery, hard work, long hours, sketchy pay; and besides, isn’t that what progress is all about, the ability for more and more people to escape the servitude and shackles of a life tied to the land?

Two competing notions battled in my head: first, an almost instinctual yearning for an agrarian life and the notion that farming could offer a peaceful, independent, and meaningful way of life; and second, the message I received from the modern world, that farming is backbreaking peasant work which will send you to an early grave, that silly romantic ideas should be set aside and one should be grateful that its generation has escaped the drudgery of its ancestors.

Against this background, imagine how your words shone off the page, like rays of sunlight breaking through dark clouds. Contrary to most 20th century conventional thought, you quietly assured me with a voice of unequalled clarity and elegance, that my suspicions were correct, that it was ok to dream about farming, that agriculture is, and in fact must be, the bedrock upon which communities and nations are built, that farming can be so much more than drudgery. You gave me reason to follow the dream; gave me, in a manner of speaking, permission. I have never looked back.

Over the years I have read a great number of your books. It’s impossible to name a favorite, but here are a few touchstones:

If my spirit needs a lift, I’ll read a few poems from A Timbered Choir.

As a recommendation: Because I still love its variety, both practical and philosophical, and because it is where I started, for a first read, I usually recommend The Gift of Good Land.

For affirming my own contrarian notions about computers and other technologies, I’ll reread Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer.

For those curious about the monumental changes in agriculture since the Second World War, I’ll recommend The Unsettling of America.

Because I am naturally skeptical of the reductionistic nature of modern scientific thought, and because I believe that life is a miracle, Life is a Miracle will always be one of my favorites.

And of the fiction: What a pleasure it is to lose oneself in the world of Port William, of Andy, Mat, Hannah, Burley, Jayber, Nathan, Old Jack and all the rest, characters who are so real that one feels their losses and gains, joys and sorrows as one’s own. Your novels and stories, like all great fiction, transcend the duality of real versus imaginary life, and in so doing become bigger than both: though the stories may not be factual, they are true.

It is a curiously unbalanced relationship, that of readers and writers, with readers knowing, sometimes intimately, the hearts and minds of authors through their work and words, while the author often knows next to nothing of his readers. And though I must admit it is somewhat daunting to scratch out words to such a gifted wordsmith as you, I feel it is important from time to time to reach out from the other side, from the side of the reader, to let an author know that they are appreciated, that their efforts have indeed been meaningful. And so, Mr. Berry, please know that myself and countless others are deeply grateful for the inspiration and courage you have given us: to think big and farm small. We celebrate your work, past and future.

We wish you all the best.

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Duly Noted

1) While walking through the wet spring pasture grass yesterday an unusual flower caught my attention. It was odd, like nothing I had seen before, all brown with a yellow center. Stopping, I leaned over for a closer look, and soon realized with a certain involuntary revulsion, that it was not a new flower at all. It was instead, a large brown slug wrapped around a dandelion flower — eating it I presume.

2) This morning while walking from the house to the barn to turn the horses out for their morning graze, I heard the distinctive rattle of a metal corral gate. I looked up just in time to see what appeared to be Luna standing at the gate. She nuzzled around, unhooked the chain, and opened the gate as if she had hands to do so. The whole herd proceeded to follow her calmly into the barnyard. I could almost hear the other horses telling her, “Hey, nice job, how’d you learn to do that?” I headed straight to the shop for tools and a length of chain. Much to the horses chagrin, I bypassed the bent tab meant to secure the flimsy stock chain, and replaced it with a solid one that wraps all the way around the post.

3) Sometimes it feels like the wild west around here. Recently as I stood washing dishes at the kitchen sink, my attention was suddenly drawn to the front yard by a scuffling, swarming, swirling mass of brown and white visible through the kitchen window. When I was finally able to make sense of the situation, I realized a bald eagle was in the process of attacking the two ducks that had been, only moments before, tranquilly searching out slugs in the damp lawn. Now they were being subject to an aerial assault. I raced out the kitchen door hollering and waving my arms and just managed to thwart the attack. The eagle flew off over the fields and perched in a big cottonwood down by the river. I could see him staring back at the house, thinking of missed opportunities.

4) There is a mostly unremarkable corner lot I frequently drive by on my way to our local feed store. It is maybe two or three acres surrounding a double-wide trailer house and a ramshackle old farm shed. From time to time over the years the field has been mowed for hay. I was taken aback recently when I drove by the place and saw that the field had been completely transformed. What had only days before been a lovely, diverse little mixed grass and legume hayfield, had turned into a lifeless, yellow-brown carpet — except that young trees were being stuck into the dead ground in long rows. So it was going to be another nursery, already the biggest agricultural sector in our county. The culprit of the dead ground, I’m sure, was Roundup, aka glyphosate. The field had clearly been saturated in the stuff. I was a bit surprised by the visceral emotional reaction I had upon seeing it. The scene had a certain air of violence, like a war zone, a scorched earth, take no prisoners field of devastation. Clearly the grasses, insects, slugs, and grubs on the surface were all killed, but I thought too of less obvious impacts, to the life of the soil below, to the worms, mycelia, and moles; to the well that supplies water to the double-wide, and the people who will drink it (presumably the owners of the field, but not necessarily); to the hired man who sprayed the field, and the cancers that may invade his body in years to come. For all this and more did I feel a certain sadness as I drove by. I wish our new nurseryman well with his new venture.

5) Not long after the eagle attack, Thompson, our handsome Rouen male, eloped with a wild mallard. It started out innocently enough, as such affairs often do. He apparently wasn’t thrilled with the new bride that I’d arranged for him, a big, beautiful white Pekin. He took very little notice of her, and nearly every afternoon he would disappear for long stretches of time, during which I was certain the eagle had carried him off. Yet mysteriously he would return each evening. That is until one morning, while walking across the lawn on my way to the barn, I startled him, and he flew off, impressively for a domestic duck. He flew over the lane, across the blackberry thicket (you don’t want to accidentally land in there) and down into the barnyard where I lost sight of him. Later that afternoon I spotted him in the swampy bottoms of the lower field marching around in the company of a wild female mallard. She was a pretty thing and I could easily see why he fancied her. I saw him a few times after that, always following her around adoringly. There came a day however, when I no longer saw him. I shudder to think of what likely happened when the eagle came roaring upon them. His new love and her wild compatriots would have flown off up over the woods and down to the river, their wings whistling as they gained speed. And although I’m sure he tried his best, and despite the fact that he was the best flying farm duck I’ve ever known, he could not possibly have flown fast enough, far enough, or high enough to escape the talons of the hungry eagle.

6) I had just finished lunch after a morning of transplanting tomatoes and was making for the couch to take my habitual noontime siesta before returning to my work. I had just settled in, when I was dive-bombed by a very large and very loud fly. I knew immediately that if I was to have any peace at all, the fly would have to go. I picked up a magazine off the coffee table (not SFJ!) and proceeded to chase him fruitlessly around the room. At one point he cruised easily over to the corner of the living room by the front door, and since he was foiling me at every turn, I decided to open wide the door and try to shoo him out. To my delight he flew immediately outside and off into the wide world. I had just shut the door, and was walking back to the couch, when I heard a flapping and banging on glass. I quickly turned and saw that, although I had successfully chased the fly outside, somehow in that very instant a bird had flown in. It was a swallow trying to find her way out through the glass of the living room window to the world she could see so clearly on the other side. While I stood trying to formulate a plan, she fell awkwardly down into the corner and lay dazed on the floor with her wings spread out. I quickly, but gently layed the magazine, which I still clutched in my hand, over top of her, reached my hand carefully under, scooped her up ever so carefully, and put her out the front door. All the wildlife taken care of, I finally laid down in a patch of sunlight and had a delightful little cat nap.

7) This spring has been cold and colder, wet and wetter, more like an extension of winter really. Today is May 1st, my traditional day for planting summer crops like beans, squash, and corn. Not this year. The soil, like the air, is still saturated, and achingly cold. Being powerless against the weather, I will wait.

A hush is over everything,
Silent as women wait for love;
The world is waiting for the spring.
– Sara Teasdale