An Addendum

I just wanted to share a quote that I read from one of my favorite literary agrarians, Wendell Berry. This is from The Unsettling of America on pg. 87 and it sums up what I was trying to say in my post entitled "A Rumination on 'Days Off' ". It is as follows:

Most farms, even most fields, are made up of different kinds of soil patterns or soil sense. Good farmers have always known this and have used the land accordingly; they have been careful students of the natural vegetation, soil depth and structure, slope and drainage. They are not appliers of generalizations, theoretical or methodological or mechanical. Nor are they active agents of their own economic will, working their way upon an inert and passive mass. They are responsive partners in an intimate and mutual relationship.

Because the soil is alive, various, intricate, and because its processes yield more readily to imitation than to analysis, more readily to care than to coercion, agriculture can never be an exact science. There is an inescapable kinship between farming and art, for farming depends as much on character, devotion, imagination, and the sense of structure, as on knowledge. It is a practical art.

Amen, Wendell, Amen. If only all of our agriculture in this country could aspire to this careful artestry.