If my comments about planning to homestead sound romantic, I would say that I’ve forked enough horse manure, thrown and stacked enough hay bales, mended enough fences, and seen enough of a Holstein’s back end, to know that A) farm work is hard, and B) I love working on and being around farms.

Is farming compatible with intellectual life? Yes and no. I wouldn’t suggest that scholars/poets ought to be farmers; however, there are plenty of examples where the two vocations have been reconciled harmoniously. Wendell Berry, Louis Bromfield, John Graves are just a few examples of excellent literary men who are or were real farmers.

Christian monks, essential in cultivating and handing down our intellectual inheritance, combined a life of prayer with farm work and scholarship. I recall a passage in Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain that praises “active contemplation,” where one’s meditation and thinking is actually deepened through physical work. Chilton Williamson once wrote that it is through work, not mysticism—and he meant work directly connected with the natural world—that we are closest to full participation in God’s creation. I would suggest that some kind of physical work connected to creation—farming, ranching, gardening, logging, animal husbandry, there are others, I’m sure—is necessary for the good life.

But they aint enjoyed the unique satisfactions then neither.

This whole post, and particularly its mention of the good efforts of the head of the college’s dining services, interested me considerably not only because I routinely rejoice in learning about institutions doing the right thing in this way, but also because my daughter is seriously considering attending Augustana in the fall. She and I have visited campus three times, and yet we had not learned this good news about efforts towards sustainability in the dining services and support of local farmers in the Farm to Fork program. I was pleased to find out about all this on the college’s web site: http://www.augustana.edu/x10370.xml (*After* all those visits, upon reading this post. Yes, I should have investigated the issue before. This stuff matters, too, when considering colleges.)

(Note to dining services director: get Admissions to include more info about your sustainability programs in their materials for prospective students. They sure are on top of marketing every other aspect of Augustana; this aspect needs more publicity.)

So, three cheers to you, Prof. Peters, for this excellent gardening project, and to your colleagues and students who are contributing in their various ways. My daughter has yet to decide where she’s going in the fall, but if I were enrolling at Augustana, volunteering to work in this garden would be on my to-do list for freshman orientation days.

Mr. Nelson, it is indeed a Cottonwood–and a big one at that. And let me just say that it takes a man to drive a Kubota in John Deere country. The tractor belongs to farmer Jim, our local ally. He runs his diesels on converted cooking oil harvested from our kitchens. We also compost our table scraps at his farm.

I must admit that there are mornings when getting out of bed almost seems like a good idea.

The sixth picture shows an amazingly huge tree – is that a cottonwood? It looks like it’s been there for a HUNdert-n-FITty years.

Kubota tractors are an occasion for sin – that L3400 is bigger than my BX1850. Be careful, or you’ll soon be lusting after one yourself.

To Mr. Cooney, if you want eggs, you should look into Heritage Khaki Campbell ducks. Nineteen K.C. ducklings arrived at our house this morning, and we look forward to rebuilding our flock. Before being wiped out by a spree-killing weasel that squeezed right through the chicken wire, our flock of a dozen males and females gave us several mouthwatering eggs daily, with hardly a pause for Minnesota’s long freezing winter. Cold hardy, and as egg-yielding as the best chickens, the Khaki Campbell duck!

Yours Truly,
Peter Nelson

I agree completely that it is the transformation of private life which will express itself eventually in the transformation of public life. Change the world by starting with your world – and watch it spread.

Congratulations – great accomplishment.

People can graduate college today, even in the sciences, without a clear grasp of human basics like food cultivation and preparation. (Other neglected basics: marriage preparation, first aid, and child/elder care)

While these would have once been learned in the natural course of life, many otherwise very smart people need remedial instruction.

I’m counting down the days to the end of the semester, so I can begin cultivating a large garden on my grandparent’s old and overgrown farm. The 120 acre property sits in an ancient valley of New York State’s Southern Tier. The farmhouse, I am told, was built before the Civil War. The soil is poor, flat land is minimal amidst these foothills of the Alleghany Mountains. There are no more horses, cows or chickens. As a boy, I remember a sugar shack in on the hillside but I can no longer find its remains. A large red barn is still standing, intact and in good condition–too many old barns can be seen collapsed and rotting along the country roads of Cattaraugus County, NY. A small wooden milk house, painted white, is upright and sturdy as well. However, the turnout shed for the many horses my family kept is sagging and looks as if it could fall any day now. The last horse left the pasture 18 years ago.

Along with the vegetable garden, I hope to build a chicken coop and raise heritage breed chickens. Chanteclers seem like the logical choice, as I understand they were bred to survive and produce eggs even throughout the long, freezing winters of Quebec: raising Rabbits, heritage ducks and turkey’s are also a possibility. If I can add some berries and fruit trees, I should have the foundation of a, partly, self-reliant homestead.

I spent two months working on a bio-dynamic, organic family farm in Germany this past fall. It was unbelievable hard work. Between the old couple and myself we tended a dozen cows, thirty sheep, four goats, dozens of fruit trees, and a very large garden (tons of lettuces, tons of flowers that they sell at market, turnips, onions, beets, radishes, etc.) I worked 10-12 hours a day. They worked even longer.

It convinced me that (1) I am unwilling to become a full-time farmer and thus could not really be an agrarian because it would be quite hypocritical but (2) I want a hobby farm, and I want to grow some of my own food.