Making the Most…

Wendell Berry included the following poem in his essay “The Agrarian Standard,” published in The Essential Agrarian Reader (2003). The poem comes from Virgil’s Fourth Georgic, and reads:

I saw a man,

An old Cilician, who occupied

An acre or two of land that no one wanted,

A patch not worth the ploughing, unrewarding

For flocks, unfit for vineyards; he however

By planting here and there among the scrub

Cabbages or white lilies and verbena

And flimsy poppies, fancied himself a king

In wealth, and coming home late in the evening

Loaded his board with unbought delicacies.

This poem contains words that feel especially meaningful. Unbought is significant in the foods system, and meaningful to me because for how interested I am in food, I grow little to none of my own, though I value the concept of providing food for oneself. The alternative agriculture movement is just that alternative – and what to me signifies the most typical in our culture? Consumption. Buying. While organic farming in many cases is very much an industrial process, the concept behind supporting a small, local, organic farm is that you aren’t buying into the system of conventional foods. You aren’t buying from food producer conglomerates. Unbought.

Early in the poem the setting is laid out: An acre or two  of land that no one wanted. We live in an age of abundance. Someday we may be expected to do with less. We may ask ourselves if we can maintain a high quality of life with what to others would seem like too little. The Cilician considered himself rich from the fruits of his labor in something where others saw no value. He did not use the land to make a profit, he used the land to provide for himself. He did not carry his loaded board to market, he carried it home. He provided himself not only essentials, like cabbage, but also items for pleasure, like white lilies. Can we do more with less?