Leaf by Leaf Book Club: The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry

The works of Wendell Berry speak to the core of what we embrace here on our farm – local community, sustainability, and simplicity. Originally published in 1977, The Unsettling of America examines the modern agriculture system in the United States and it’s effects on local rural communities.  The book has been widely recognized as a seminal text in agrarian thought and environmental ethics. Berry believes that good farming is a deeply human and spiritual practice. It requires intimate knowledge of the land you care for. The 50th-anniversary release in 2027 highlights just how relevant these warnings remain in the modern world today.

Join us as we dive into this fascinating topic. If you haven’t read Wendell Berry yet, then you are in for a treat! He is a very poetic, wise, and thoughtful writer that challenges readers to think about their place in community and relationship with the land. Berry was born in 1934 in Kentucky where he still lives today on his farm. He is an influential American novelist, poet, essayist, and farmer who throughout his career has published more than 50 books and countless essays and poems.

In Chapter One of The Unsettling of America, Berry writes, “The cost of this corporate totalitarianism in energy, land, and social disruption will be enormous. It will lead to the exhaustion of farmland and farm culture. Husbandry will become an extractive industry; because maintenance will entirely give way to production, the fertility of the soil will become a limited, unrenewable resource like coal or oil. This may not happen. It need not happen. But it is necessary to recognize that it can happen.” He wrote those words in 1977.

Another favorite – just in the first chapter – “But the care of the earth is our most ancient and most worthy and, after all, our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it, and to foster its renewal, is our only legitimate hope.”

Jamie has long been an avid reader of Wendell Berry. Here is a list of other highly recommended works from our collection at SGN:

• The Farm – a beautiful long-form poem
• The Peace of Wild Things – one of his most famous poems
• The Art of Loading Brush – combo of essays and fictional stories on agrarian philosophy
• The World-Ending Fire – collection of essays on consumerism, farming, and nature
• Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front – poems and manifestos written by his fictional character “The Mad Farmer”
• Jayber Crow – fictional novel about life in rural America set from 1930s-1970s in Kentucky
• just to name a few!!!

If you are interested in a great audio version of The Unsettling of America, the narration by Nick Offerman makes it an engaging & interesting listen!

We look forward to a lively discussion on one of our favorite authors!

The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

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
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.