Country Boy

~ This article first appeared in the leader-Vindicator newspaper. ~

There exists a growing rift between a country boy and his country.  I believe that country boys are removing themselves from the land despite their continued occupation of it.

Here’s how it happens:  What country boys don’t like is anything associated with being “city”.  That’s not entirely destructive; every culture requires a careful measure of insulation from the outside to ensure its continued unique identity.  But, when that insulation becomes inertia that rejects outside influence simply because it is from the outside, the separation becomes hazardous for the culture people are trying to protect.  In this way, internal efforts to save what is valued become the cause of its demise.

A good example of preference rejection can be found within the subject of food.  The urban population has embraced food, and they strongly encourage small farms, healthy ecosystems, nutrient rich ingredients, farmer-consumer relationships, regional foodscapes, and everything else within the spectrum of deliberate eating.  Unfortunately, urban “ownership” of local food causes wholesale abandonment of these qualifications among rural dwellers.

No, I’m not making that up:  Try to find a red-blooded country boy shopping at a farmer’s market.  Rural citizens are very likely to defend agribusiness, to scoff at the word organic, to support chemical technology, and patronize chain restaurants serving huge amounts of food provided by industrial agriculture, because “that’s what we’ve always done”.  Pressure to hold fast is enormous; those who jump ship are tagged with a stigma of becoming one of them.

In an effort to maintain separation from city culture, good old country boys have abandoned the abilities inherent with country life in favor of goods and services provided from somewhere else: mega retailers, agribusiness, and foodservice.  Today we have a generation of country boys who live on the land, rather than from the land.

I probably ruffled a lot of feathers with this observation; country boys’ language still very much conveys a close association with the outdoors.  The language is largely empty of meaning, however.  For example, a hunter once revealed to me that his family “has hunted this (my family’s) property for forty years,” implying deep connection with the land and wildlife.  Those hunting excursions, though, consist of one-day-a-year shoot-‘em-up deer drives, followed by 364 days of abandonment.  Yes, they’re out hunting, but no, they’re not actually close to the land at all.  His story sounds good, anyway: “Hunted there for forty years!”

Living on the land is to approach the landscape as nothing more than the necessary physical space to be, as my hunting friend demonstrates.

To live from the land, as Aldo Leopold puts it, is to reduce to your possession only that which can be obtained from your immediate vicinity.  This limitation drastically changes the dynamic of rural living, because one must have an intimate relationship with the land in order to acquire the necessities for life.

In this context, a country boy will become an enthusiastic environmentalist, gardener, homeopath, herder, cowboy, forester, permaculturist, seed-saver, craftsman, survivalist, intellectual, student, leader, servant, salesman, and community organizer, among other things, because a combination of all of these characteristics is required to sustain a family from the land.  By aggregating these skills we seem to find a new category of person that is neither city slick nor country boy stubborn.  Wendell Berry refers to someone exemplifying these characteristics as an Agrarian.  Alex Langlands says such people are “craefty.”  Regardless of what they’re called, these people have found freedom from the “us versus them” mentality.

The ironic truth is that to live from the land – arguably, to become “more country” - rural culture will implement many of the ideas already accepted by urban populations.  Of course nobody wants to cross that bridge; urban media has made haughty efforts to tell the world that rural people are worthless idiots (pride goes before destruction, folks).  We need to break the barrier, and in order to do so politics need removed from the discussion entirely.  If clean water is associated with a president, people will pee in their drinking water just to spite the other side.  I remember my international agriculture professors hammering on the fact that farm advice in developing countries absolutely cannot come from government sources, because people so strongly distrust the government.  Guess what?  The same applies for developed countries.

Here is what I’ve learned from experience:  Relationships can shatter stubbornness.  I know a host of urban people who truly, deeply care about the well being of me, my family, and our farm.  Likewise, we deeply, truly care about their well being.  That’s a pretty satisfying place to live, because together we can set out on a mission to do something meaningful without feeling like we’re being slighted by the outside or outcast from the inside.  We just are. 

Living from what you have and for those you live with is not an urban novelty.  It’s the purest expression of freedom.  To intertwine food with the quagmire of politics is to automatically remove some people from the discussion, a simplification and separation that will indefinitely maintain trajectory.

Can a country boy survive? Absolutely. Their spirit just needs redirected and refined a little bit (as everyone’s does). Ladies and gentlemen, your values can only remain viable with an infusion of fresh ideas. Step up and show the world what you’re made of. Everyone is counting on you – even if they don’t realize it yet.