Allan Carlson: Excerpts of “Green Rising” Chapter from Third Ways

By Allan C. Carlson
[Editor's Note: This chapter deals with European agrarian history. It is taken from Allan Carlson's latest book, Third Ways, and is used with the kind permission of the publisher, ISI Books.]
Agrarian politics had its roots in romantic views of the organic society. The peasant campaign reaped the harvest of various nineteenth-century movements: [...]

Barbara Wuest: The Dairy Farm

By Barbara Wuest
The barn air reeks of manure.
But how sweet the silage, corn,
barley and wheat ground into
feed for the bare-eyed milk cows.
They stare dumbly; I stare back.
They know nothing, know too much.
A row of brown-furred bodies,
they serve the people like troops.
Old soldiers with udders hanging
full of thick, yellowish juice.
Louie, the farmer, chews grain,
testing for firmness, [...]

Jeremy Beer: Agrarianism

By Jeremy Beer
AGRARIANISM posits that the practices associated with the agricultural life are particularly—and in some cases uniquely—well-suited to yield important personal, social, and political goods. The precise character of these goods—and the respective roles of government, society, and individuals in procuring them—varies according to which school of agrarian thought one wishes to consider. The [...]

David Walbert’s Backyard: April 2008

By David Walbert
In the woods behind my house is a clump of daffodils. Each year they emerge with the first false temptations of spring and for a few brief weeks throw bright yellow sparks from the still-brown floor of the forest, garishly urging the calendar onward. Then their blossoms wilt and return to the ground, [...]

Thorpe Moeckel : Windfall

By Thorpe Moeckel
We gathered on Thursday afternoon. We gathered blowdowns, plucked them from the ground. No experts on apples, we were surprised by how round the Staymans were. And their color, like leaves of dogwood trees growing on a west slope two weeks after first frost, inspired a haunted kind of thirst.
It was a windy [...]

Judith Skillman: Wheatlands

Wheatlands
By Judith Skillman
To travel is to dream of wheat,
passing over and under the drape
and pleat of hill and valley, darts taken in
when floodwaters passed over the earth.
To dream is to revel in scenery,
to be nourished by land—its crop tarnished
by harvest, like the stubble on a man’s face
that makes the face handsome to a woman.
To sleep [...]

Jim Goodman: The Rebel Dairyman

By Jim Goodman
Recently I was reading Tom Hayden’s book Irish On The Inside and his speculation that the Irish character contains the seeds of rebelliousness rather than conformity, idealism rather than materialism and communal ethics rather than individualistic ones. I’d agree with that. I also think in these times we all need to be a [...]