Why ultimately did I decide to start this blog about sustainable agriculure? There probably are lots of reasons, but I think what lies at the bottom is a bit of past and a bit of two potential futures.
In the past, I’ve had moments on my family farm, outside, with the wind ruffling the bermuda grass, working with my dad, or watching the river rush lazily by the marsh grass, when I’ve felt almost a complete and total connection to the land. It somehow felt right, like it all connected for a moment.
These beautiful moments in the past connect with visions for the future. In one reality, what’s happening now continues. Our farm is chopped into smaller and smaller pieces that are developed as expensive riverfront house lots. The people in these houses have lawns that they fertilize and shower with pesticides. They noisily clog up the river with jet skiis. In the wider world, we keep eating crap grown by a miniscule percentage of the population. The rest of us sit at computers, writing or perhaps checking Facebook or blogging. Almost none of us produces anything that betters ourselves or humanity.
In the competing vision, we turn ourselves around. More and more sections of the world begin to look like my family farm. Even strip-mall parking lots are covered with roofs with edible gardens. We have a burgeoning market culture and walk to the end of our street to buy vegetables. More of us become farmers, and this is respected. We don’t separate nature from civilization, pitting them against each other in a zero sum game. We accept that civilization, if it is to survive, will need to love and invite nature in. We even see that we can be catalysts for natural and needed processes. Food tastes good again.
Which future do I think will prevail? I mused to my wife Shadi the other day. If we are continually depleting the soil, when will we hit a wall and what happens then? Her answer was that we won’t hit that wall. We’ll change the way we live first. Will we? I don’t know.
Reading Wendell Berry, I found some verses, intended or not, that perfectly captured my mental mianderings.
“Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.”
I am indeed trying to be joyful and optimistic though I am considering all of the facts. Wendell Berry helped me get to something else, though. There’s almost an aching and at once prideful feeling. It’s the feeling that almost everyone is commiting slow suicide and that I’m one of the only ones who realizes it.
“To be sane in a mad time
is bad for the brain, worse
for the heart. The world
is a holy vision, had we clarity
to see it–a clarity that men
depend on men to make.”
I believe it is this “holy vision” that I felt I grasped during those moments on the farm. It feels just out of reach that this will be our future. But where do I fall in the final analysis?
“And I declare myself free
from ignorant love. You easy lovers
and forgivers of mankind, stand back!
I will love you at a distance,
and not because you deserve it.
My love must be discriminate
or fail to bear its weight.”
I do love the “holy vision” that I know we are capable of. In the meantime, I’ll stay realistic, consider all of the facts, try and remain joyful and love us discriminately for where we are and where we could be.
The two poems I cited here are “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” and “The Mad Farmer Manifesto: The First Amendment,” both by Wendell Berry.
