How the work of Wendell Berry formed me into who I am today

Soil and Souls and How to Be a Poet

I was seventeen when I first heard the term grass farming, sitting at a farmer’s table with my family, on the cusp of y2k, in the full-on fever dream of my father’s desire to be off-grid before the apocalypse. We were six hours from my safe, suburban home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania and my parent’s realtor had connected us with another homeschooling family who had recently moved from Pennsylvania to this strange part in New York State called the North Country.

The table at which we sat was a smooth butcher block one, surrounded by mismatched chairs, a warm woodstove, real wood paneled walls, and this new family we’d just met. I didn’t know it then—couldn’t know it then—but this family would become intertwined with mine in a thousand different ways and become some of the most formative people of my life. The cultivation of grass aside, these people cultivated my soul.