The Pleasures of Eating

Last night, after a late night, kerosene-lit, conversation with our boys concerning the state-of-the-farm, I read the most wonderful essay by Wendell Berry.  I want so much to simply re-publish it here but don't wish to to so without permission from the author, so I will give you a link and a quote and if I gain permission I will reprint it then.

Mindful Monday

How can we have something better

if we do not imagine it?

How can we imagine it if we do not hope for it?

How can we hope for it

if we do not attempt to realize it?

Wendell Berry

Writer and Region

in

What Are People For?

Mindful Monday

The ground, new worked, moist

and yielding underfoot, the feet

comfortable in it as roots.

From: The Satisfactions of the Mad Farmer

Wendell Berry

Gettin' Trashy with Joe

What?!?  A guest writer on my blog?  Well, actually I hope it happens more often.  And this one is so nice because he comes from within my own four walls.  So, Get yourself a nice cup of coffee or tea, and settle in for a nice long read, compliments of my sweet hubby, Joe Schanel.

To Till or not to Till, That is the Question

To Blog, or Not to Blog?

I'm a little fuzzy headed with an oncoming cold today, so I will blame any incoherence in this post on that.

Some of you may have noticed that I have been on vacation from writing for a while.  And today's post is no guarantee that writing will continue; it's more of an experiment.  I suppose the first thing folks will want to know is what's been going on around the farm so I'll start there and see where we go.

Mindful Monday

. . . I am in love

Alive in this mortal world 

Wendell Berry

A Timbered Choir 

 1994 VII

  

Mindful Monday

I will serve the earth 

and not pretend my life could be better served.

Wendell Berry

The Morning's News

Mindful Monday

Put your hands into the mire.

They will learn the kinship

of the shaped and the unshapen

the living and the dead.

Wendell Berry

from

Prayers and Sayings of the Mad Farmer

VII

Mindful Monday

At times she knew with a joyous ache that she completed him, just as she knew with the same joy that she needed him and he completed her.  How beautiful a thing it was, she thought, to be a half, to be completed by such another half!

Mary Penn in "A Jonquil for Mary Penn"

by

 Wendell Berry

Happy Valentines Day Everybody

What is "A Sustainable Transition"?

A Sustainable Transition (this blog) is the story of one family (my family) and their journey out of the cash economy or wage slavery and into a life of direct work.

Wage slavery is not all that far off from chattel slavery.  In chattel slavery an individual has no rights and no freedom of movement.  All of the worker's activities are meant to enrich the owner.