Dear readers,
My children have brought me tulips every day this week. We have pink, yellow, burgundy red, and bright poppy-colored tulips all over the backyard. One of the delights of this season has been observing their joy in all that the garden holds. They just noticed peonies popping out of the soil, and I can’t wait for them to see the irises bloom.
I have had a few different speaking engagements of late, and wanted to share links with you all to those talks. It has been a busy—and fruitful—season of discussion, with all sorts of incredible people. Links below:
Scruton Legacy Foundation Interview with Mary Berry
Last summer, Mary Berry and I discussed her work with the Berry Center in Kentucky, her parents’ legacy, and her vision for local farmers and advocacy. We also discussed the failures of the “locavore movement,” and how we ought to support small farmers throughout the U.S.Scruton Legacy Foundation Interview with James Rebanks
In January, James Rebanks and I discussed farmers, the work of regenerative agriculture, and love of home. We talked about his own efforts to plant trees and restore land in the Lake District, and we discussed some favorite authors (such as Jane Jacobs and Rachel Carson).Scruton Legacy Foundation Interview with Dr. Norman Wirzba
Dr. Wirzba and I discussed his books and vision for a faith that is deeply embedded in place, committed to nurturing the soil and community in which we live. We talked about living faithfully amid apocalypse (half jestingly), and about what it means to be rooted.Scruton Legacy Foundation Interview with Gabe Brown
In March, Gabe Brown shared insights from his book Dirt To Soil, and explained the soil science between the regenerative agriculture movement. He shared insights from his own experiences as a farmer, and gave practical tips on soil care and restoration to participants.Scruton Legacy Foundation Interview with Lady Scruton
Sophie Scruton shared her vision for place care and the work she’s done with her local community in the United Kingdom to plant hedgerows, restore the land, and care for her farm. We discussed the ways in which environmental stewardship requires knowledge of local history and community, as well as knowledge of soil science and the local environment. My son also made a surprise appearance in the middle of this interview. :)Scruton Legacy Foundation Interview with Jamie Blackett
A few weeks ago, Jamie Blackett and I discussed his work as a farmer in Scotland, and his hopes for long-term agrarian renewal. We discussed the difficulties of governmental bureaucracy, and the importance of empowering local farmers to care for their land.
Finally, I had the wonderful opportunity to visit The University of Chicago Institute for Politics last week, and I got to talk to Benya Kraus about love of home, transience, and care for place:
Institute for Politics Interview with Benya Kraus: “The Power of Place and Particularity”
It was such a wonderful time and conversation. You’ll see, if you watch, that it was also a rather emotion conversation, as Benya and I both grappled with the reality of homesickness and what it means to love a place that you are not living in. Of course, I’ve had the incredible blessing of getting to move back to Idaho. But that means my family and I left Virginia—our home for over a decade—behind. And we love Virginia, and all our friends and family there. We were there over Easter, actually, and only left with lots of tears. My sweet daughters were so sad to leave their cousins, who are as close as siblings. I felt that pang that so many of you also feel, as you feel torn between two places and love them both.
In my conversation with Benya, we talked about what it means to love a place, and I argued that it’s not all that different from loving a person. Close loved ones encourage us, care for us—and they annoy us and trouble us. When we truly love them, we love them in and through those moments of frustration. (Sometimes, we have to leave behind both toxic places and toxic relationships; I’m thinking here of more common, everyday annoyances and troubles.) When we love a person for a long time, we often find we love them despite—or even through—the ways in which they annoy us, disappoint us, and need us.
I think places are quite similar: they demand a lot of us. They can disappoint us. We should be sorrowful over their injustices and their hurts, and we should be thinking actively about their needs. But the process of attending carefully to these places is a necessary part of growing and deepening a love that isn’t saccharine or temporary, but long-lasting and deep. I suggest at the end of Uprooted that “Anything less [is not] love,” but rather, “idolization.”
During my conversation with Benya, I quoted a section from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116:
love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken…
Every election year feels a bit like a “tempest” year for U.S. communities. (I am sure folks in other countries experience this, too.) There is a lot of division, anger, and fear. There are a lot of people who will threaten to move out of the country after the election is decided. They feel fed up, tired, and disillusioned. Perhaps you’re one of these people. I know I have been one of them.
But we need to love each other, and love our places, through the tempest. That is, after all, what it means to love. I know we can weather the storm together, in the months ahead. But it starts small: it starts by remembering that you neighbors need you. And that loving this community you live in is a work not done only when it’s easy, but also—and most importantly—when it is difficult.
Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments, and any feedback you have on the above interviews! What a fun and busy spring it’s been.
I have a couple Q&A’s coming up next month, and I can’t wait to share more details. Stay tuned for a Granola-hosted interview with Seth Kaplan (author of Fragile Neighborhoods) and an interview with Brooks Lamb (author of Love for the Land).
essays + news
“Stuck in Place”: this New York Times article considers the perils of homeownership for a lot of older Americans. For many, loneliness, upkeep, and the sheer financial burden of home ownership has been detrimental. I am curious how much the home’s location (Suburb? City? Walkable?) and size makes a difference here.
Dan Charles writes of efforts to support and revive traditional crops, and of the health benefits they offer.
Allie Volpe critiques our “obsession with self-improvement”: “We’ve collectively overcorrected when it comes to the impulse to self-correct. When there’s always a new ideal to strive toward, a new workout to try, a new home renovation project, a new way to hack bodily functions, it can be hard to feel adequate, sufficient, enough.”
Joanne Silberner writes of the subversive dangers of noise: “Through daytime stress and nighttime sleep disturbances, loud sounds can hurt your heart and blood vessels, disrupt your endocrine system, and make it difficult to think and learn.”
An excellent Q&A with Austin Frerick about his new book, Barons!
books
The Farmer’s Wife, Helen Rebanks
This is a warm, beautiful book. It’s important on its own, and will be appreciated by those who care deeply about motherhood, good work, and good food. Helen manages to capture emotions and experiences that are incredibly relatable and important for mothers. It is also an important read for those who have long appreciated James Rebanks’s books (Helen’s husband). Helen offers her own story—and while there are parallels with James’s writing, this book offers a fresh and vital perspective on their journey over time. She writes of the difficulties—and beauties—of the farming life, and reflects the partnership such work inevitably represents. I so appreciate the way she threads truth and grace through this book. The recipes are also fantastic, and I cannot wait to try more of them.
The Living Mountain, Nan Shepherd
This is such a stunning book, a thoughtful meditation on what it means to attend to our place and landscape. I had to read Shepherd’s book after reading Robert MacFarlane’s exploration of her life in his book Landmarks. He wrote that Nan Shepherd showed us how one might focus one’s entire life in one place and yet not be dismissed as “provincial,” narrow or tribalistic. He suggests that for Shepherd, focusing on one place became an opportunity for life “cubed,” not life “curbed.”
And The Living Mountain is a testimony to this: in it, Shepherd explores at length the idea of “hill craft”—that there is a specific degree of skill, technique, and ecological mastery required to navigate a landscape like the Cairngorms. I’d love to write about this idea of “hill craft” more in the future, but for now, I’ll leave you with a quote from Nan: “At first I was seeking only sensuous gratification—the sensation of height, the sensation of movement, the sensation of speed, the sensation of distance, the sensation of effort, the sensation of ease: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life. I was not interested in the mountain for itself, but for its effect upon me…. But as I grew older, and less self-sufficient, I began to discover the mountain in itself. Everything became good to me, its contours, its colors, its waters and rock, flowers and birds. This process has taken many years, and is not yet complete. Knowing another is endless…. The thing to be known grows with the knowing.”
food + drink
A pot roast for any rainy day (and an easy meal to bring to someone who needs comfort food).
This gorgeous asparagus frittata is an old favorite!
A favorite Huckle & Goose recipe: Rustic Rhubarb Cornmeal Cake, perfect for spring.
I very much appreciate your observations, particularly germane this US election season, about what it means to love a place. You don’t use the word “responsibly”, but it’s implicit in your message and I agree. In this election year, our nation will be better for the efforts of individuals across the political divide to love our nation responsibly and to seek common ground where it can be found. We’re not gonna convince crazies; I’m referring to what reasonable people of goodwill might accomplish together.
I've been saving those interviews as you've been sharing, and I look forward to listening!