by BARBARA KINGSOLVER
from the November 3, 2003 issue of The Nation
Sometime around my fortieth birthday I began an earnest study of agriculture.
I worked quietly on this project, speaking of my new interest to almost no
one because of what they might think. Specifically, they might think I was out
of my mind.
Why? Because at this moment in history it’s considered smart to get out of
agriculture. And because I was already embarked on a career as a writer, doing work that many people might consider intellectual and therefore superior to anything involving the risk of dirty fingernails. Also, as a woman in my early
40s, I conformed to no right-minded picture of an apprentice farmer. And
finally, with some chagrin I’ll admit that I grew up among farmers and spent the
first decades of my life plotting my escape from a place that seemed to offer me almost no potential for economic, intellectual or spiritual satisfaction.
It took nigh onto half a lifetime before the valuables I’d casually left
behind turned up in the lost and found.
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