Dear Readers - Letters From the Country

If those stimulants to exertion which arise from the wants of the body, were removed from the mass of mankind, we have much reason to think that they would be sunk to the level of brutes from a deficiency of excitements, than that they would be raised to the level of philosophers by the possession of leisure.

-- Thomas Malthus, 1766-1834

It has been a year since we said good-bye to urban Shelby County and Memphis. It seemed to me appropriate that while you are scratching your head over my choice of epigraphs for this article I should recount to you our impressions and discoveries.

ALL YOU AGRARIANS, RAISE YOUR HANDS

The last week in June Justin, Wright, and Mercy drove with me to Beersheba Springs, Tennessee for a weeklong League of the South seminar on the Southern Agrarian Tradition. On beautiful Ben Lomond mountain, in an inn build before the War of Northern Aggression, listening to lectures from the finest and best read minds, anybody would be tempted to wax romantic and sentimental about the country life.

Then you remember the sweat.

Listening to the professorial eloquence at Beersheba [locally pronounced BURshubba] Springs it occurred to me that we four seemed to be the only ones there practising this agrarian lifestyle.

Why? Beyond the questions of moving out to the country and making a living (you just about have to have an outside source of revenue) there is the question of work. Lots of it. Hard. Unrelenting. Unforgiving if ignored. Face it: we are a society accustomed to easy living. For most people, "work" consists of sitting and typing or shuffling papers for a nominal eight but actual six (or fewer) hours a day, and then " leisure" (TV) for another six. Light years separate that life from the demands of the earth (and we by no means come close to answering them all). In the end, however, that work pays far greater rewards.

To go to bed exhausted from that sort of labour is as satisfying a pleasure as I have ever experienced. It occurred to me the other day that this is what I have wanted to do all my life, but somebody or something was always keeping me from it. Now it is here, and the only thing that gets in my way is my duty to write and take care of my other business, so I can indulge my weakness for working outside.

Which brings me to Thomas Malthus’ sentiments above. The fact is, that old proverb is true which warns that "an idle mind is the devil’s workshop." God created man for work. Remembering the goodness of God, the difficulty of the labour after man’s disobedience turned all creation disobedient against him, the "sweat" of the curse, should be understood to redeem as much as it punishes. A cursory survey of the lack of work and abundance of leisure in America today solidly supports that conclusion. It seems self-evident that since "exertion" has been removed from the American scene, leisure has produced more brutes than philosophers.

Whoa, slow down – I’m waxing too philosophical myself. I was supposed to be telling y’all what it was like to escape the city and live in the country.

WORK APLENTY

The chief reason people don’t live on farms any more has little to do with the amount of money you can’t make. It’s the work. I know that’s the reason my grandfather left it in 1912. Every day brings some new job – fences down, beans in, corn up, blackberries out. Failure to catch it at the right time means that you miss it altogether, or bring a lot more work on yourself.

Whoever said (and lots of philosophers have) that farming forms an independent and responsible character knows what he was talking about. Responsible because there is no one else to answer for things. You care for them, you foresee the needs, or it doesn’t get done. Independent because you are in charge and no one else.

TIME SLOWS DOWN

Although it seems like you never have enough time to do all the jobs shouting at you, the rural dilation of time compensates for that. Yes, that’s right, as Einstein theorised, time does actually slow down -- in the country. More accurately, country people move according to their own internal clock. They won’t and can’t be rushed, so you might as well settle down and enjoy yourself. When you pass them on the back roads, everybody waves. If your vehicle is stopped, they stop to ask if you need help. The idea of "instant" everything – food, service, gratification – dies pretty fast. Besides, you enjoy not only the end of the trip, but the trip as well.

As a great by-product of this the frenzy of modern life falls away the same way a healthy snake sheds his dead skin. You know what I mean by frenzy – that frantic but pointless urgency that infects you from driving in traffic or shopping in a mall. A genuine and patient calm wants to assert its rule over your soul.

LEISURE, TOO

Focussing on all the work skews the true picture. It’s not just grinding drudgery all the time until you collapse with your face in the dirt. Some of the work – like picking blackberries – becomes more social occasion than labour. We can’t seem to find the time to watch much TV but have lots more time for conversations with each other.

CEREMONY & SACRAMENT

Days have become much more ceremonial and sacramental. We have become more aware our part in each day. Perhaps because we are more likely to be outside, we notice how glorious the sunsets are.

My friend Professor Jim Kibler of South Carolina warned me before I moved that you couldn’t get to know a place in anything less than a year. Jim was right. Every day brings some change to the face of the land that changes your appreciation of it. In the winter you can see for miles and miles. You learn to appreciate the austerity and solemnity of it. Then the spring comes and like Chaucer’s little birds you "sclepen all the night with open eye[s], so prikketh [t]him Natur in [t]hir courages." You can’t wait to wake up and see what has happened overnight. First redbuds and crocuses warn you that spring is coming, then dogwoods floating among the trees, then overnight whoosh the leaves are out. Then you can forget about the florist, because (as Susan says) you can pick your dinner bouquet off the roadside.

MONEY IS NOT THE CURE

I know that Ecclesiastes 10:19 says that "money answereth all things," but you have to construe that in the whole context of a farm. Money will not cure eveyrthing, but a farm will eat all your money. We would have been a lot better off if we had followed Charlie Ritch’s advice more closely – start small, go slow, learn the land and your animals. Make haste slowly – festina lente – has to rule when you undertake any new project, and nowhere is that more true than on a farm. I’ve fed enough chickens and ducks to dogs, coyotes, weasels, and owls to stock two farms with poultry. And just given the learning curve with cattle, swine, and chickens, thank God we didn’t buy any sheep or chinchillas. Learn before you spend.

NOT MUCH TO MISS

When we visit the city, we don’t find much to miss. The traffic is terrible, and it takes a day or two to shed that infectious frenzy. The ever-present urban racial tension is absent in the country. It’s true, we don’t have air-conditioning (Justin & Ellen and Lib & Johnny do, those slackers), but even the hottest day brings a cool evening and night. We have to drive 25 minutes to the nearest Wal-Mart Super Center, but we lived that far out in Shelby County. Of course, there are friends we miss. We wish they lived out here with us. Other than them, we didn’t leave anything behind.

All in all, we have no plans to move back.

The best part of living in the country is that daily the mighty works of God are played out before your eyes. I know, living in the city doesn’t prevent your seeing those, but when they are played out so dramatically and majestically and personally before your eyes day after day, it’s easier for me to hold on to the presence of God. That in itself would be reason enough to live out here.

The heavens declare the glory of God;

and the firmament showeth his handiwork.

One day telleth another, and one night certifieth another.

There is neither speech nor language;

but their voices are heard among them.

Their sound is gone out into all lands

and their words into the ends of the world.

-- F. Sanders

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