From GENE LOGSDON

The kind of readers who visit this website may have noticed that one of our heroes, Wendell Berry, made President Obama laugh right out loud the other day. Wendell recently received a National Humanities Medal in Washington, and when the President leaned forward to drape the award over Wendell’s shoulders, the two exchanged whispers and the President broke out in a huge grin. It is a wonderful picture and appeared in many newspapers. To be able to get the president of the United States to laugh like that in front of the whole world in these awful times… well, that’s a real accomplishment. I am not surprised, however. If you know Wendell, he can make very funny remarks at the most unexpected times. I asked him what he whispered to the president but he’s not talking. Says he can’t remember.

Two other writers who received a National Humanities Medal this year were Joyce Carol Oates and Philip Roth. Jacques Barzun, the historian, got one too. This is top notch stuff, and I don’t know anyone who deserves the recognition more than Wendell. He is the hardest worker I know, traveling and giving speeches incessantly. He’s written 40 books so far and still manages to do a little farming with the help and support of his equally amazing wife, Tanya, and his son Den and daughter Mary and their families. His message, now and always, is that society is ignoring and abandoning ecological and economic common sense and we will pay for it. Is he right? Look around you. More Gene…

From GENE LOGSDON

The one thing that I’ve learned living in the woods is that trees can take care of themselves. All we puny humans need to do to help them is to stop the bulldozers from removing them in favor of more asphalt and corn. But since my inclination is to worry too much about almost everything, learning that trees know what they are doing has not been easy.

I like oak trees, especially white oaks. They may not be the very best wood for any particular purpose, but they rank up close to the top in just about everything wood is good for. One big old beauty stands right outside our bedroom window. We run the clothesline on pulleys over to it from the deck, the way the Amish run a clothesline from a porch to the side of a barn. Easy to reel the day’s laundry out for drying and back in again. I also take great pleasure in sitting on the deck for unseemly long periods of time staring up into its branches.

Taking special notice of this tree every day, I have become aware of just how many dangers the oaken world faces while it goes about its business.  I am beginning to understand the resilience of nature. The trees will outlast us even if they don’t know the Pythagorean theorem or how to figure compound interest. Nature’s math is a far cry from ours.  Mrs. White Oak will graciously produce many thousands of acorns and figure it a profit if she gets only one new tree out of the effort. More Gene Logsdon…

From GENE LOGSDON

My new novel, Pope Mary and The Church of Almighty Good Food, is raising lots of eyebrows so maybe I should write something about it. The story takes place in the rural countryside which should be no surprise to readers familiar with my books. But this time the subject is very controversial for a lot of people: the closing of so many local churches. The inspiration for the book came from the closing of a little rural Catholic church that I can almost see across the fields from my place. Perhaps some churches do need to be closed because of dwindling congregations, but this one had the money and parishioners to keep on going just fine. Friends asked me why I cared, since I’m not a church goer anymore. First of all, I care because I think many small churches are closing for the same reason small farms are closing, that is, false notions about economics. The general thinking is that it is more profitable to cram more people into fewer, bigger churches just like it is more profitable to cram more hogs into fewer, bigger barns. I don’t buy that kind of banker talk anymore. Secondly, to me it is a matter of justice, not religion. That church was built and paid for (some of them were my ancestors) before there was a bishopric or diocese in this area. I don’t see how church authorities can close it against the will of the people who worship there.

Anyway, this dispute went to court, and unlike any other case I know about, the judge ruled against the church authorities. He ruled that this was a matter for civil law not church canon law and that the protestors could indeed hold legal title to the property. The upshot was that the protesting parishioners got their property back, not as a bonafide Catholic church anymore, but as a place they could meet for various community exercises like marriages and funerals. This was really an extraordinary court victory but it happened too far out in the countryside to attract public attention. So I decided to write a novel inspired by it. More Gene Logsdon,,,

From GENE LOGSDON

I know it’s different in advanced agriculture today where tractors and the implements they pull are the size of aircraft carriers. But on farms like mine, which make only limited use of three-point hitch systems, attaching a tractor to a plow, disk, rake, baler, wagon or star has not changed much since the “old fashioned” days. (I heard e-mail referred to recently as “old fashioned.”)  You back the tractor up to the implement’s tongue, get off the tractor while it idles, lift the tongue up to the drawbar and drop the pin through the holes in the tongue and the one in the drawbar.  Sounds easy, doesn’t it. It was fairly easy back when family farms really were family farms. Dad, on the tractor, could always bellow, and some poor child (me) would come running to do the actual hitching. As Dad, always in a hurry, roared in reverse back in the general direction of the wagon to be hitched up, poor child held the tongue up with one hand, prepared to move it to one side or the other to keep it lined up with the oncoming tractor draw bar. At the proper moment poor child dropped the hitch pin in place with the hand not holding up the wagon tongue, praying to God that Dad would stop the tractor at more or less the right time and that his foot would not slip off the clutch. The process often involved more shouts of “whoa!”, “back!” “up!” than it took to hitch horses to an implement.

When agriculture entered its FFA phase—Fathers Farming Alone— a whole new art had to arise to take the place of poor child. As all of you know who have spent the better part of your working life hitching and unhitching stuff, when you are alone you must bring the tractor to a dead stop at the exact right place, get off, and because you never are in the exact right place, pull the implement forward or the tractor backward the inch or so necessary with brute, hernia-causing strength. No tractor yet made, even on perfectly level ground, will stay put exactly where you stop it for hitching. When you push in on the clutch and put the gear shift in neutral, the tractor will ease an inch forward or an inch backward by the time you climb off and attempt to attach the tongue to the drawbar. So you outfox the bitch by stopping just a bit beyond the drawbar hole or not quite to it, depending upon whether your tractor likes to ease forward or backward. But that rarely works because the bitch senses that you are trying to outwit her and chooses to sit exactly where you stop her for the first time in 20 years. More Gene Logsdon…

From SARA SNOW

I just recently discovered what many people before me have, that the crock pot or slow cooker (call it what you like) isn’t just for countrified cooks who don’t know the upside of a pairing knife.  It’s for busy moms and dads, bachelors and spinsters, who love a delicious home cooked meal but can’t find a dedicated hour or two at the stove in the evening.