Wendell Berry: Farmer, Ecologist and Author

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BERRY: My friend Ken Kesey was here the other day and we were talking about the willingness to make marriage and the importance of that willingness in any kind of credible maturity in a man or a woman. My mother's parents' marriage was a good one and they lived long enough after Tanya and I were married for us to see that it was and to get lots of strength from it, a kind of inspiration. We learned a great deal from them about a certain kind of goodness.

That's one difficulty that today's marriages are laboring under — the failure of any good marriage to communicate its existence to any other. Tanya and I have felt this a whole lot. Marriages are crashing down all around us. We feel like the trees in a logging woods — who's going to be next?

PLOWBOY: Separation and divorce and estrangement are certainly characteristic of our "modern world".

BERRY: It's very much a failing of the whole society. Our culture finds it impossible to deal with the kind of love that keeps a community together and stable. It's embarrassed about domestic happiness and grief. And about any show of genuine feeling and love between men. I don't mean love in the sexual way but in the familiar open freehearted way that would let a man give another man a big hug. My family is always hugging a whole lot, and I'm for hugging. I grew up here around men who weren't afraid to touch each other. When I was a boy, older men were always touching me and patting me. I was pretty skinny and they'd squeeze my leg and say, "Boy, does your leg swell up like that every summer?" There was a great goodness and good-heartedness in that and no meanness at all.

PLOWBOY: That kind of openness and friendliness does seem more characteristic of the country than the city. Having neighbors like that can make a big difference to a newcomer in an area.

BERRY: Sure it can. People who are moving out into the country ought to keep that in mind. They can learn a great deal from their neighbors about conditions of the ground, for instance, and how to work it at certain times. Most people are willing to give that advice. To go into a place and base everything on an assumption of your moral and intellectual superiority to your neighbors seems to me to be the most insulting thing you can do. And it cuts you off from the very things you need to know.

If you're really going to neighbor, you go to them when they need you, and when you need help you call. Two brothers who live up the creek and another friend and I have known each other pretty near always, and we exchange work all the time. We don't keep books. I do all I can for them. They do all they can for me. And it's a good thing. Who knows what the record is? I helped one of them put in his crop of tobacco last year. He said, "What do I owe you?" I said, "Nothing." That's ceremony. He wouldn't want me to think that I hadn't worked well enough to deserve to be paid, or that he wouldn't be willing to pay me if I wanted him to. But when hog-killing time came I had two hogs to kill and he said, "I've fattened you a hog, you need three." He knew I hadn't had enough bacon the year before. I don't know whether he overpaid me or I overpaid him or where it stands. And that's the way I prefer to live. That means our work has escaped from economics and has value in an altogether different sense, and a much larger sense. Our work for each other is valuable beyond its practical worth because there's a deep strong bond of friendship and respect among us. It gives us pleasure to work together.

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