The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural

Very interesting to the layperson (city type). Much to think about that was never considered. I have passed this around to several with similar comments. All found this very informative. There may not be anything "spectacular or noteworthy" to a farm type person, but was a real eye-opener to us. Highly recommended for those who know nothing about farming, just for general thoughts about what is done and should be done on a farm.

Writer and farmer Wendell Berry is known for his clarity and wisdom. This collection from 1982 is not a hiccough in that summation. However, this particular book may be slightly less accessible to general readers in that the emphasis is more on the "Agri" than the "Cultural." Though in his mind there is no such silly bifurcation. The first part contains essays about his visits to farms in Peru and the American Southwest, as well as an essay about the native grasses of his home state of Kentucky. From there the topics range from the pleasures and practicalities of using actual horsepower on farms to protesting against a nuclear reactor all the way to the essay from which the book draws its name. That essay alone (a theological study of land stewardship) is worth the price of the book. All in all, these are excellent essays, but as many of them were drawn from farming journals, may find less of an audience. However, that should not stop anyone, suburbanite nor city dweller, from reading this fine, fine collection. "To see and respect what is there is the first duty of stewardship." --from "The Native Grasses and What They Mean."

Entertaining and thought provoking essays on sustainable agriculture and living close to the land. The life that was so common in our country until after WWII. Very worthwhile read.

I love Wendell Berry. This is a book I have on my shelf and have purchased several as gifts for others.

Excellent book and service! It arrived before Christmas which was perfect! Thank you.

Published over 30 years ago, I have just read these collected essays for the first time and they are a revelation. I read a book of Wendell Berry’s poetry back in the ‘70’s or 80’s and was impressed by his tone of reverence for the mysteries of soil and the life which springs from it. But I had long since decided that a landed life was not for me so I moved on to other writers. When people spoke of “love of the land” or “sense of place” I didn’t know what they were talking about and I didn’t know enough to care. Other than the ground my house sits on, my own patch of land measures roughly the size of 2 banquet tables. I have enjoyed my landless life and have no intention of giving it up now. But—I’d be a dim bulb indeed not to see, in the stewards of soil presented here, that I have been missing something.The Gift of Good Land was written in tribute to the small-scale farmer because “small-scale agriculture is virtually synonymous with good agriculture”. Mr. Berry gives evidence of this principle by introducing us to about a dozen small farmers whose varied practices are intimately tied to the specific nature of their given piece of earth. The Peruvian who cultivates steep and rocky terrain on a mountainside high in the Andes uses a type of “hoe farming” that has sustained his family and their Inca forbears across centuries. The Amish continue to farm small holdings because their horse-drawn implements limit the acreage they are able to plant and harvest. And yet their farms remain abundant and profitable generation after generation. In their small agriculture, these men and women come to know the unique habits of their land in ways that industrial farmers with their massive “acre eaters” never can. In any particular region, Berry tells us, there is a limit beyond which a farm outgrows the attention and affection of a single owner. Keenly aware of the living interplay between their own topography and the many acts of nature which condition it, the small farmers’ sense of place becomes ingrained. Because they know their land and love it, they learn to sense its needs and harvest potential acre by acre or even yard by yard. It responds to their mindful cultivation with a bounty that does not deplete the earth. And for all that, there is virtually no public appreciation for the disciplines necessary to good farming. The good farmer, along with the bad, is “typically regarded as a drudge without learning, a hick without dignity.” I didn’t buy this book from Amazon—I picked it up at a library bin sale. I’m taking time to write this review because I want other readers to know that, over 30 years later, the wisdom in these pages has not lost relevance and has, perhaps, gained in urgency. It would be hard to come up with a better companion piece to the Pope’s latest encyclical (the one about climate change). Wendell Berry is no Bible thumper. But that did not stop him from making his own case for the proper Christian approach to agriculture and the conservation of resources. In the final chapter he advocates for an ethic that esteems perseverance in un-heroic tasks equally with the grand action. He wonders whether the work of real stewardship, like real prayer and real charity, must be done in secret. These are his concluding words: “To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of the Creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration. In such desecration we condemn ourselves to spiritual and moral loneliness, and others to want.” I think I need to read more Wendell Berry.

Great item, well packaged and swiftly sent. Thank you!!

Bloody brilliant!Totally relevant; it was a real problem to put it down. I am so busy, but I set the clock for 04:45hrs to get a few sections in before the madness of the day started! It was a revelation, it made me question currently what I am doing; it has set in progress change for me and my dependents.A manifesto that brings back sanity to farming sustainably, but also what is necessary for humanity to live sustainably on this non-renewable planet. It reminds you of the things that we have forgotten are important.