In 1965, most career-driven young men aspired to live and raise families in Manhattan. Wendell Berry and his wife, instead, moved away from NYC and his rising career to rural Kentucky, back to his roots. I met Wendell Berry briefly when I was attending Spalding University’s MFA Writing Program. He was a visiting lecturer. I had read the Unsettling of America, but I wasn’t expecting such a vibrant, gentle and kind face. In this book, he wrote about how “small-scale agriculture is essential to the preservation of the land and the culture.” At that time, he was considered a radical by most people.
Now, as I re-read his book, Think Little, his former writings and life choices have so much more meaning for me in this period of isolation, when I find more time for self-reflection. Thinking of my values. What’s important? Down the road, when we return to a life without the dominance of Coronavirus, what do we want to go back to? Or not? Changes in our environment?
San Francisco, NYC, and other large municipalities show photos of how much clearer the air is without the deadly pollution of cars and industry. Water, too, has improved in quality. Isn’t this what we want? A friend recently said to me I think we should do this isolation once a year. Could this save our planet?
As Wendell says, “The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.”
Also, in Think Little, Wendell speaks of growing our food. “Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better for of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world.”
I haven’t had a vegetable garden for years. But, now, the urge has become an obsession. Like Berry, I grew up on a farm in rural Appalachia, a self-sustaining farm in a time of little, the final years and months of the Depression. I was raised by my grandparents, in poverty by most standards, but there wasn’t a time when we didn’t have healthy food on the table. Tilled land was respected. Farm animals a necessity. My chores were to plant, weed and harvest from our garden and the fruit trees. Gather eggs from the hen house. Shell the walnuts. Milk the cows. Can our food for winter. Store root vegetables in cellars. These chores not only gave us bountiful food but connected me to the earth.
As a child, I had no thoughts that there would ever be a time when our earth would be at risk. Now here we are, trying to save our planet from human destruction. Yet, one might say, just one little family garden isn’t saving the environment.
Wendell Berry’s vision back in 1965 was prescient. I can’t feed or save the world with a garden, but I can feed my soul, while still supporting our local farmers.
A bit of history: After a couple first years living in Maine, my former husband, Bill, and I bought our second house on Mill Street in West Rockport, Maine. It was a charming old cape with about 35 acres. It didn’t take me long to fill the back field with sheep, a donkey, dogs and cats. On one side of the house was a sloped hill, perfectly situated in full sun. I hired a young man to rototill a large area. Then, the thrill and excitement of getting some seedlings and planting some seeds. The usual collection for healthy family eating. But then I started to get into the challenge of Maine’s limited growing season. Melons, celery, garlic, lots of different eggplants, many different lettuces and greens. And peanuts.
“Whacha’ plantin,’ Marilyn?” my neighbor Milton said as I sat on the ground making the little mounds.
“Peanuts,” I said, looking up at him. He smiled and rolled his eyes.
“Come on, Ralph, let’s go home,” he said to his dog. I took my first bag of harvested peanuts to Milton.
I did cheat a little with most of the plantings by using little tent cloches that Bill made for me out of a Dupont growing plastic and fiberglass poles that Bill had used in experimental shelter projects. With these, I could plant seedlings earlier and take the season longer. Digging and sitting in the soil gave me a rich and rewarding experience. Why had I drifted away from this over the last years?
The time has come for raised beds so my eighty-year old back can plant, weed and harvest. In this time of isolation, I am returning to the land. Thank you, Wendell Berry.