Wendell-Berry on deep ecology

Eating is an agricultural act.

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Eating is an agricultural act.

It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work...The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready-made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die.

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready-made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die.

Profile: Wendell Berry

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Wendell Berry (1934-2026) was an American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist and farmer whose agrarian philosophy of “the care of the earth” placed sustained attention to land, place and local community at the centre of ethical life. Over nearly seventy years and more than 50 books, he became one of the central voices of American land ethics, bridging agrarian practice, literature and environmental thought.

Born in Henry County, Kentucky, into a family that had farmed there for five generations, Berry earned his B.A. (1956) and M.A. (1957) in English at the University of Kentucky, taught at Stanford, NYU and the University of Kentucky, then in 1965 returned with his wife Tanya to Lane’s Landing Farm on the Kentucky River at Port Royal - the place that grounded the rest of his life and work. He farmed there, by horse-drawn plough rather than tractor, for over sixty years.

The care of the earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility.

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The care of the earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility.

The earth is what we all have in common.

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The earth is what we all have in common.

There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration...and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say, 'It is yet more difficult than you thought.'

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say, “It is yet more difficult than you thought.”

We are living in the most destructive and, hence, the most stupid period of the history of our species.

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We are living in the most destructive and, hence, the most stupid period of the history of our species.

Wendell Berry – Poet, Activist, Humanist, Mad Farmer

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On 31 August this year, the official spokesperson for the Mad Farmer Liberation Front, signed off for the last time.

I am sure that, like me, many in the deep ecology community around the world – who knew and loved at least one poem of Wendell’s – wish for him the peace of wild things. May he find rest and freedom in the grace of the world.

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things.

What I stand for is what I stand on.

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

What I stand for is what I stand on.

When despair for the world grows in me...I come into the peace of wild things.

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things.