After a dry spring, we’ve been blessed with lots of rain this summer keeping the grass growing. This week we were blessed with a hot dry week to get some hay made. We mowed about 75 acres since Monday. If all goes well, we’ll finish up the 2nd cutting today and be done with making hay for the year. 

On Monday morning Hallie and Hasten helped me haul 32 weaned calves from my aunt and uncle’s property back to our place. To the hay field that afternoon mowing about 20 acres. 

More hay mowing on Tuesday. My dad and Mr. Hester also came that afternoon to help mow as well. We put down another 40 acres. On Wednesday cousin Tom mowed the remaining 15 acres while I started raking and baling. 

Although the hay was all mowed by Wednesday evening, the cabin yards were past the point of needing mowing. I mowed and trimmed around both cabins Thursday morning before hitting the hay field that afternoon. 

Cousin Tom back on Thursday to do some raking while I rolled. My dad and brother John, who had also been busy making hay this week, came up and raked and baled too. To say I’m thankful for their help is an understatement. Without the generosity of their time and work, I doubt I’d be halfway through the 2nd cutting on my own. Only about 15 acres to get rolled up today.

Still moving cows and chickens. The pigs in the woods are ready to be moved. Amy is back to broth making. She and the kids are building up their school days. 

With Wendell Berry’s passing this week, I couldn’t help but spend my tractor time listening to some of his non-fiction essays in The World-Ending Fire. If you’ve kept up with our farm for any length of time, you know that I’ve referenced Wendell Berry’s writings more so than any other author. By far. Both his fiction and non-fiction words inspire me to pursue a better relationship with God, my family, my neighbors, the land, and the all earth’s inhabitants. The world is going to miss Wendell Berry. Thankful to have his thoughts preserved in written words. 

From “The Way of Ignorance" (2004)

“The experience of many people over a long time is traditional knowledge. This is the common knowledge of a culture, which it seems that fewer of us any longer have. To have a culture, mostly the same people have to live mostly in the same place for a long time. Traditional knowledge is knowledge that has been remembered or recorded, handed down, pondered, corrected, practiced, and refined over a long time.”

“We have often been a destructive species. We are more destructive now that we have ever been, and this… is because of our ignorant and arrogant use of knowledge.”

“Our damages to water sheds and ecosystems will have to be corrected one farm, one forrest, one acre at a time… Arrogance cannot be cured by greater arrogance or ignorance by greater ignorance. To counter the ignorant use of knowledge and power, we have, I am afraid, only a proper humility. And this is laughable, but it is only partly laughable… If we find the consequences of our arrogant ignorance to be humbling and we are humbled, then we have at hand the first fact of hope. We can change ourselves.”

From “The Future of Agriculture” (2011)

“The future of food is not distinguishable from the future of the land, which is indistinguishable in turn from the future of human care. It depends ultimately on the health, not on the financial system, but of the ecosphere.” 

“We must learn if we can, the sources and costs of our own economic lives… We must give up the notion that we are too good to do our own work and clean up our own messes.”

Finally, from “Family Work” (1980)

“How can we preserve family life, if by that we mean as I think we must, home life, when our attention is so forcibly drawn away from home?… TV and other media have learned to suggest with increasing subtlety and callousness, especially and most wickedly to children, that it is better to consume than to produce, to buy than to grow or to make, to go out than to stay home.”

“For those of us who have wished to raise our food and our children at home, it is easy enough to state the idea. Growing our own food, unlike buying it, is a complex activity, and it effects deeply the shape and value of our lives. We like the thought that the outdoor work that improves our health should produce food of excellent quality that in turn also improves and safeguards our health. We like, no less, the thought that the home production of food can improve the quality of family life. Not only do we intend to give our children better food than we can buy for them at the store or than they will buy for themselves from vending machines or burger joints, we also know that growing and preparing food at home can provide family work, work for everybody.” 

Have a good week.

Will