Wendell Berry. . . .

Ironic that as an English Major and poet, I did not come to Wendell Berry from that road. Rather, when 13 years ago I began the journey to What Joy Farm from a small cabin in the redwoods, I knew I was going to WV, and to a place of my own, but the preparations needed took several months to bring about. In the meantime, much as I loved living in the redwoods, I also wished to prepare for what was to be.

There was a lovely little organic gardening enterprise in Sebastopol, and among its other enticements was a very good book section on organic gardening and farming. I filled my time with reading and dreaming. Among the more arcane books I acquired at that time was one named The Gift of Good Land by Wendell Berry. It was one of those books which literally change your life.

(In the Peruvian Andes) "I wanted to see ancient American agriculture that has been carried on continuously for...4500 years... (on) steep, rocky, and otherwise 'marginal' land." "What seemed so alluring and charmed then, and seems so hard to recover now, is a live sense of contrasting scales. The scale of that landscape is immense....This way of farming that has obviously had to proceed by small considerations. It has had to consider dirt by the handful. Every seed and stem and stone has been subjected to the consideration of touch - picked up, weighed in the hand, and laid down."

There, he also spoke of the dangers of farming in Peru. . . . One of which was: a farmer may fall out of his fields. . . .

And there, I discovered his poetry, which is every bit as grand as his farming, eh? Later, on the Dean blog, I came to know a farmer in Iowa, whom I love, who is also a fine poet who knows, has met and talked poetry and farming with him (Phil Specht, some of his poetry has been published here). As we say: the internets have made a small world even smaller.

To see some other pretty stunning pictures of Peru, click here.

The first year I lived here, after a session with wasps and anaphylactic shock, and a visit to the local clinic to get a prescription for an Epi-pen, I met a young doctor from Peru (working off college loans by working in a rural setting for a few years). He allowed as that bees and wasps did no such things in Peru, and he must needs consult with his head doctor at the clinic. When he returned I asked him if he didn't miss, say, blue potatoes here, since the varieties available to Americans is poor at best? (Peru has over 5,000 varieties. . . ) An then I felt guilty, because the inquiry brought such a look of overwhelming homesickness across the young doctor's face.