09/02/2026
This week, we lost a novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, agrarian, farmer, and one of the favorite sons of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Wendell Berry leaves behind a legacy of wisdom in essays like 'The Gift of Good Land' and 'The Unsettling of America.' He also wrote of culture and the economy of rural communities in the novels and stories such as 'A Place on Earth,' 'Jayber Crow,' and 'That Distant Land.'
“Farmers begin with a vision of perfection. Every year in the course of the seasons and the work, this vision is relentlessly whittled down to a real result by human frailty and fallibility, by the mortality of creatures, by pests and diseases, by the weather. The crop year is a long struggle ended not invariably by the desired perfection, but by the need to accept something less than perfection as the best that could be done.”