farming 65
Mill, Hayek, and Our Midas Plight
Call it Factory Planet: a world in which natural processes are treated as parts of a vast world-machine operated to produce a maximum amount of wealth for humans.
Fifty Dollar Tomato
Hillsdale, MI. When I first thought about writing this it was the “Ten Dollar Tomato.” But historians are more or less required to tell the truth, and it now costs…
False Economics and Malignant Growth
Patrick Deneen's excellent post this morning on populism, directly invoking Kansas, gives me the occassion to repost a short essay I wrote last year for my on again off again (more off…
The Reluctant Southerner: Reflections on Home and History
Moorpark, CA. In October of 1997 I attended the Southern Historical Association’s convention in Atlanta because I wanted to hear Paul Conkin’s presidential address, “Hot, Humid, and Sad.” What I…
Tocqueville on the Shores of Titicaca
Amid Alexis de Tocqueville’s writings on revolution in France, there is a passage that rings true for those of us who have spent time in the countryside. He observed that…
“On the Grid”: When Electricity (and Other Things) Came to the Countryside
“Come in and look,” Quintín urged me, as he disappeared with a shuffle through the low doorway in his adobe house. I got up from the wooden bench on which…
Will Wendell Be Jailed?
Claremont, CA. Wendell Berry, writer and farmer and hero to the people, might move from the farmhouse to the big house. Speaking at one of the USDA's National Identification System…
Brave New World Reconsidered: A Tale of Two Gnosticisms
Many who are alarmed at the prospect of the “abolition of man” have found in Huxley’s Brave New World a dark and salutary warning – an imaginative rendering of our…
The Big (Organic) Apple
Claremont, CA. The Big Apple dreams of the organic apple. Everywhere you look in The New York Times these days, somebody is talking about organic farming. A few examples -…
Every Jar a Victory
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, Kansas We feared that we'd missed out on fresh strawberries this year, both because there was an early April freeze and snowstorm that killed…
Farm Stories: The Flag of Rough Branch
Drilling with the Pitchfork (photo by AMS) JEFFERSON COUNTY, KANSAS. The call came from the neighbor yesterday at about four in the afternoon. Your cows are out. Damn! I was…
The Wise Old Œconomist
Mt. Airy, Philadelphia. Before it became a science of supply and demand and the circulation of commodities, economics was originally understood as the wisdom of household management. The Greek word…
An Elegy for Tobacco
Henry County, Kentucky. What holds a community together? Or rather, what holds my community together, as I'll have to leave you to worry about yours? I think about it some because…
The Populist Farmer, Revisited
Via John Schwenkler, I see that Norman Borlaug has just celebrated his 95th birthday. Borlaug, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, is one of the primary architects of modern…
The Rediscovery of Agriculture?
RINGOES, NJ. Recently, a friend and I visited Polyface Farm outside Staunton, Virginia. Polyface is owned and operated by Joel Salatin, whose parents started farming these verdant five-hundred acres in…
Farm Stories: Hog Killing
Let this day begin again the change of hogs into people, not the other way around, for today we celebrate again our lives' wedding with the world -- Wendell Berry,…
Death of a Farmer
He traveled the three miles to the mill 63 times during the 87th harvest of his life, his old International pulling the wagon my uncle filled with beans or corn.…
