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By Samuel Powell
After working on a small farm over the summer, I’ve taken an interest in historical farming methods over the past few centuries, especially those in England. There are notable differences in regional livestock breeds of past eras, as well as the presence of crafts that have dwindled and tools that are absent from modern contexts, like billhooks, scythes, and horse-drawn equipment. Readily apparent, not only in their farming but in their daily lives, is the deep influence of place upon people of the past. They were centered around their place, adapted to it, and so characterized by it.
While researching a flourishing region of the Edwardian Era, I noticed that the village blacksmith made a special cutting tool, a billhook, designed to chop the native aspen shoots for the local hedgerows. The specific billhook he crafted was developed for the Devonshire region. I also found that there were multiple styles of shovel, spade, and blade created for other locales. Even Devonshire and Cornwall, separated only by the River Tamar, had different styles of spades and blades.
The village blacksmith, in a way, represented this intimate form of locality and adaptation to a place. It was his craft and art to fabricate what the locale needed. In this way he addressed the unique elements of the place and enabled his people to live well within them.
In all places there is a way to live—a way to get along with it and its inhabitants. There is something peculiar about each place—something that makes it different from all other places, makes it odd. And these oddities cannot be planned out. They develop according to the forces at play and their consequences. Our role, as people of a place, is to figure out how to best live within these oddities, for no place is devoid of them. The people who come to terms with this become, like the native animals, best suited to live in these places.
Animals contribute to their places with their lives just by existing there. They know nothing beyond where they are, and they act like it. The beaver who dams up a river does so because he means to live there. It is his way of giving his life to that place. Inevitably, the place will look different when this happens, but there is a resiliency to nature that allows for this. The same may be said of the small-scale farmer, for he gives his life to a place so that both may grow in life together. His well-being is tied to the well-being of the place. The same may be said of the city dweller, for as long as someone lives in a place, it must be maintained. A city in upheaval is not fit for harmony, flourishing, or human life.
For the farmer or urbanite to live well in his place, he must see it as it is: no amount of denial can change its reality. He must grapple with what sets it apart from the others and come to terms with it. Actually, he must do more than come to terms with it—he must live with his countryside or cityscape fully. As a resident of the city, there is no soil around my house to plant a garden; there is, however, a farmer’s market nearby and easy access to a variety of local artisan goods, cafés, and trade stores within walking distance. There will always be tradeoffs, but to live well in one’s place means to embrace what I do have, to come to know the good in it, not longing for what I don’t have. This only comes by recognizing particularities.
There is a responsible way to live in a place that has been consciously done by humans for thousands of years and animals for longer than that. It does not matter if the place is in the city or the country; its vitality is its inhabitants’ vitality. If we make our places unfit for living, then we carry within us something destructive that we must reject. The way we alter an environment should only promote life, for our lives also depend on it.
Wendell Berry treats this topic in the country context (though really it applies to all places), in his essay “Renewing Husbandry,” in which he sets forth the idea of husbandry as “to use with care, to keep, to save, to make last, to conserve” (97). In order to do this, one must understand one’s place in its complexity and deal with it in these terms. To take something fully into account makes it much more complex. Nothing is known simply when pursued completely.
To neglect the “old questions” of “local nature, local carrying capacities, and local needs,” is to subject our places to “a radical oversimplification of form” (102). It is then by “unsimplifying what is in reality an extremely complex subject” (103) that we will be able to reclaim knowledge and better use of the places we live. As in the beginning example of the Edwardian farmer, armed with his Devon billhook, we too must look to our locality and form our actions according to its needs. With a one-size-fits-all tool, efficient production has been achieved, but what is lost is the effectiveness of a blade specifically crafted to work well in its region. And what’s more, the tradition of a place is lost as well.
As for the city, the same virtues apply. According to Jane Jacobs or Jonathan F.P. Rose, the city is a good place to live if done properly. If a city is to become more sustainable (and thus more lastingly livable), it must look to the energies naturally available and make use of it, like the ever-constant sun and wind; buildings and rooftops can be made into green spaces, gardens could be planted in small unused spaces. How the water is used and how waste is disposed of also plays a role. The wider use of public transportation is often lacking. Now, these are general issues common to cities, but the way they are considered must account for the layout of the city, its capabilities, its needs. What works for one city may not for another, but all city-dwellers are responsible for understanding what their city needs and how to help it accommodate best the residents that call it home. The city has the increased responsibility of not only looking toward land use, but also how it addresses its population and cares for them, which only adds to the complexity of the city.
As it stands, both are as delicate as they are resilient. Like the human body, the countryside and cityscape can remain standing despite much destruction. By the same token, however, both are easily damaged, with balances easily thrown off, deteriorating them over time. The end goal is the flourishing of one’s place and its people, and the first and most important step is in recognizing the complexity inherent in all places and working within these. Effectively, it is to again make metaphorical Devonshire billhooks for our Devonshire hedgerows. But first we must know that it is Devonshire and that we are living there.
Berry, Wendell. “Renewing Husbandry,” The Way of Ignorance, Counterpoint Press, S.I., 2006.