Spring Inspiration--"It all turns on affection"

Photo by Pam Spalding

I cannot believe it has been almost 3 months since I last posted on the blog; especially since I should be using the blog to promote the fact that I still have CSA shares available, see website for details.  I have had all kinds of inspiration for potential posts, its just been a very busy spring--full of garden work and events--so difference from last year when the long cold winter kept me indoors pining away for warm dry weather.  This year is just the opposite, instead I am counting these recent rainy days a blessing.  I am have be longing for the excuse to be inside and catch up on paper work and farm promotion.  Plus, until very recently, the garden was dangerously dry. 

But enough about the weather.  What finally prompted me to post on the blog, is the wonderful Wendell Berry.  Not a surprise to anyone who reads my blog on a regular basis.  I am a huge fan, and so often incorporate quotes or poetry into my posts, that it has become sort of joke around the farm.  This however is a special occasion.  On Monday, Wendell Berry delivered a National Endowment for the Humanities Jefferson Speech at the Kennedy Center entitled "It All Turns on Affection"  click link to watch speech or if you prefer to read it click this link.  It begins around minute 11.  The speech is sober, studied, timely, inspirational, and brilliant.  I was tearfully humbled to be part of the local food economy he referenced in the speech.  If you have an hour, I strongly recommend taking the time to watch it.  Turns out I am not the only Wendell Berry fan--click here to read Mark Bittman's recent piece for the New York Times.  Like Mark Bittman I believe Wendell Berry is a true American Hero.

“Because a thing is going strong now, it need not go strong for ever,” [Margaret] said. “This craze for motion has only set in during the last hundred years. It may be followed by a civilization that won’t be a movement, because it will rest upon the earth.
E. M. Forster, Howards End (1910)¹