Life is a Journey For All

My neighbors grieved for the large Beech tree that fell across the road. It had been a land mark for years. It fell because it had ended its cycle of life. As it aged, it rotted from the inside out, as many trees do. Foresters tell me that many trees would be better served to be harvested in their prime.

Animals have a similar cycle. Part of the responsibility that comes with keeping animals is knowing when to let them go. They can't tell you that they hurt or can't see or have lost their status in the group, but a good keeper learns to see the signs.

While not all farmers name their animals, it shouldn't take a tag or a chip to know one's animals.

Farms have life cycles, too. Many have been run down through modern agriculture's excess use of petrochemical products. But nature has a way of over-coming our abuse. Every week I am reading stories of small farms that are regenerating through proper cycling of plants and animals, using sustainable methods and one-hundred year old wisdom.

 

Wendell Berry Gets It

Kentucky farmer and noted poet Wendell Berry understands the circle of life that good farms demand.

In his book, "Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community" he notes, "In our relation to the land we are ruled by a number of terms and limits set not by anyone's preferences, but by nature and by human nature.

I. Land that is used will be ruined unless it is properly cared for.

II. Land cannot be properly cared for by people who do NOT know it intimately.

III. People cannot be adequately motivated to care for land by general principles..

IV. People are motivated to care for land to the extent that their interest in it is direct, dependable and permanent.

V. They will be motivated to care for the land if they can reasonably expect that their children and grandchildren will live on it.

VI. ... There is a limit to how much land can be owned before an owner is unable to take proper care of it.

VII. A nation will destroy its land and therefore itself if it does not foster in every possible way the sort of thrifty, prosperous, permanent rural households and communities that have the desire, the skills and the means to care properly for the land they are using."

This is book is worth your time. It is even worth stealing some time from work, church or hobby to get to read it.