Gleanings From The Field., Vol. 14
South Africa, the Work of Spring, some thoughts on freedom and limits, Superfund sites, and more.
Welcome to another Gleanings From the Field, an occasional newsletter of updates, recommended reading, and snippets of thought.
News from the Field
Wendell Berry Reading Group
Next week, I will be holding another online Wendell Berry Reading Group, looking at Mr Berry’s essay ‘Horse Drawn Tools and the Doctrine of Labour Saving’. It is one of my favourite essays from Wendell Berry with so much to discuss concerning tools and technology, agricultural change, and the “doctrine of labour saving” (which, in my opinion, is one of Wendell Berry’s best bits of wisdom). This meeting, which will take place on Zoom on Saturday 13th April 6.30 GMT time, is for my paid subscribers. Soon, they will be receiving an email with zoom codes. If you would like to join this session there is still time to upgrade to a paid subscription which will also give you full access to all my offerings here on Over the Field:
The Land of the Springbok
During the first two weeks in March, I visited South Africa with my wife to stay with her father (a German leather craftsman who lives half the year out in SA) and then to do some travelling round the Cape regions. South Africa is a deeply scarred but beautiful country with some of the most impressive wildlife and scenery I have been blessed with seeing. From the endless, desolate vistas of the Great Karoo, to the lush and unbelievably diverse Fynbos there was so much life, diversity, and beauty to keep a nature enthusiast like me perennially content.
For the first week, we stayed on my father-in-law’s farm near Knysna. Surrounded by mountains and the thick, impenetrable Knysna forest (where a near mythical lone forest elephant still roams free) Kynsna is an idyllic place, though even here in what seems like paradise, wounds are present. Perhaps the most stark (apart from the reminders of Apartheid), are the remnants of the devastating Great Fire of 2017. This catastrophe almost engulfed my father-in-laws farm and decimated much of the surrounding countryside of Knysna, claiming a seven lives in the process.
The history of the Knysna forest along with its famous elephant herd and the story of woodcutters who made their living there is both fascinating and tragic — and will be the subject of a soon to be published Reflections From the Field. Other bits and bobs from this trip will also work their way into essays and reflections which I look forward to sharing.
Inaugural published piece
Finally, I am delighted to link to my first ever published piece over at Hearth and Field. Sincere thanks to
and Matthew Giambrone for publishing this and for all their wonderful edits and feedback. I couldn’t have asked for better editors. Read The Work of Spring here.Gleanings From the Field
is a very well-known nature writer here in the UK (though he now is enjoying the delights of France where he now lives). As soon as I saw he has started a Substack it shot to near the top of my “always read” list of publications. And he has not disappointed. His brief reflections on natural history are simply marvellous. There is always something fascinating and new I learn from reading his essaylets (phrase John Stewart Collis used for his reflections of a similar nature) and this post about the Cuckoo - the most devious of birds - has been my favourite so far. is someone I have followed for a while over on “the social media site named after a letter of the alphabet” (or Twitter) and it was a delight to find that he had a substack wonderfully titled The Country Gentleman. His essay on the Signs Of Spring is a fitting complement to the essay I have just had published, and I commend it to you here: and Goodie’s Bell Farm Miscellany is another of those “always read” publications. Thoughtful, insightful, and well researched, these are essays that leave you pondering the mysteries and magnificence of life and creation. Especially so, perhaps, in the “ordinariness of things” as Jack’s reading of Augustine shows:In his homilies on John, Augustine is at pains to show his listeners that creation is full of marvels that are continuously unfolding in front of them. They have trouble recognizing them as marvels because their minds are distended, or stretched across, the warp of time. (In case you’re interested in the philosophy of time, Book XI of the Confessions for Augustine’s most thoroughgoing treatment time as distensio.) Except in freak weather or geological events, the created order presents itself as a continuous flow of natural causation. It encompasses our lives as biological agents. For most of us, though, it’s background. Augustine thinks that if we could shake off our habitual numbness and attend to the beauty of the natural world, we would see wonders [mirum, singular here, which I’ve made plural] “enough to set you trembling as you think about [them]” (Hom. 8.1).
From the Barn
An essay from my archives. This essay from a while back on Winter was the inspiration for the Work of Spring that has just been published by Hearth and Field:
From the Threshing Floor
Normally, From the Threshing Floor and Further Gleanings are for paid subscribers only. But from time to time, I release these sections to all my subscribers. And today is another one of those days.
I was pondering a few days ago about the topic of freedom and whether or not freedom is as good of a thing as we are constantly told. This might sound odd to Western ears: “of course freedom is a good thing! It is what we should all be striving for isn’t it?!” I am not so sure. Yes certain freedoms are unequivicoable goods. Freedom from slavery, freedom from debt, freedom from sin. These and much more should be strived for to attain that blissful state of “total freedom”, for which at least in this life, the first two can be achieved. However, I remain convinced that unfettered freedom in all areas of life is a deep problem - and one which explains many, if not most, of the ills we face in society today.
Take for instance the free market (which is where my thoughts wandered to yesterday). Unfettered freedom here is seen as an economic virtue and a standard of utmost desirability by many classical economists, right-wing think tanks, and, it must be said, a sizeable proportion of the general public. But this infatuation is, I believe fundamentally amiss. If the free market means the breaking down of all regulations and restrictions (as some advocate for) due to the belief “the market knows best” and that any externalities that these regulations strive to prevent will be remediated by the market somehow, then this is belief in the goodness of freedom here is a deluded fallacy. History is one long inditement1 against this naive view of the benevolence of the market, as mountain top removal and a whole host of decimated landscapes testify. As do workers the world over who are crying out for their wages (James 5:4). Total freedom: freedom from ecological limits, freedom from labour laws and rights, freedom from the responsibility for one’s actions, and the freedom to be greedy and exploitative are surely unequivocally bad, and in many cases, positively harmful.
Freedom, therefore, cannot be de facto a good.
Other areas where unfettered freedom is a negative state abound. The freedom to kill and maim in vendettas and raids (as existed in some of the tribal societies around the world up until relatively recently) is an evil. The freedom some of our politicans seem to think they have to lie and deceive is a scandal. The freedom to pollute destroys creation for future generations to clean up the mess. The unfettered freedom to live how I want no matter the consequences for others is immoral. Thus again, freedom is not necessarily a good, and I am convinced that our modern-day, and seemingly uncritical infatuation with freedom is therefore helpful. The world may be more free than it has ever been due to the so called “triumphs of liberalism”2, but the mess that lies in liberalisms wake still prevails.
If freedom is not the standard to aim for, what is? The answer I came to will not surprise long-time readers of Over the Field: limits. Within certain limits we can be totally free and limits are essential for freedom to be good. We are free to use creation within its capacity for renewal and the “doctrine of Return”. Doing so will yield sustainably for our needs and will ensure a continued home for the rest of creation. Within the limit of love to neighbour we are free to interact and love them as we see best. Within the limits that our “fearfully and wonderfully made” bodies impose on us we are free to work, rest, and play (for an extended analysis on why I view transhumanism as such a risk to our flourishing see my essay here). Outside of these limits we either burnout or neglect our responsibilities. Our Maker has made us fundamentally limited beings in a limited world. Inside these limits is where we flourish. Inside these limits we can be free indeed. Supposed “freedom” which transgresses and shirks any form of limitation will prove to be no freedom at all in the end.
Thus, my preliminary thought is to argue that we should be pursuing “responsible limitedness” rather than freedom. These thoughts will be refined and will eventually become an essay — but in the meantime I would love to hear your thoughts on freedom in the comments section.
Further Gleanings From the Field (non-substack articles)
Jeff Bilbro, on the always worth reading Front Porch Republic, has posted a very balanced review on what sounds like a very important book: Petroleum 238. The issue of pollutants is one that affects us all — some of us disproportionately so — and perhaps none more so than those who live in the looming shadow of a superfund site. These sites hold a grim fascination for me from the UK where sites like this are unheard of (but I wonder what near me would actually fall under the classification if the superfund was applied over in the UK!).
I could hardly believe reading in Jeff’s essay how petrochemical lobbying has meant that “none of the oil and gas industry’s waste was to be labeled hazardous” simply because we don’t know how to deal with it and that committing to address it would cause too much economic pain. This is surely a case of burying one’s head in the sand to the utmost extreme.
Needless to say, the conversation around waste is going to become ever more important during the up and coming energy transition. Conversations like the one started by this book and Jeff’s essay are going to be increasingly pertinent as we search for complex solutions to complex problems. On this matter of complexity, it was refreshing to see that Jeff fully embraces the complexity of our complicity with the oil and gas industry and how we as the consumer are partly repsonsible for the ills it causes. Only when we have faced up to our own responsibilities are the necessary changes and “long hard looks” likely to happen.
For those who want an excellent and deep analysis of our current food system as well as a novel idea for system transformation, I thoroughly recommend
’s paper Food: From Commodity to Commons. I especially liked Gunnar’s term and exploration of 'choice architects' and how food preference has shifted from being dictated by local ecology to global markets. That explains a lot about our modern food system and how it works.A thought that occurred to me off the back of this: The erosion of ecological ‘distinctives’ and local limits (e.g, the homogenisation of the field system into improved grassland or fertiliser supported fertility cropping) thus helps the market in this regard by shifting the “choice architecture” ever further away from place based ecological limits. If ecological areas are homogenised to the improved-intensive standard, so too (to an extent) can their production be homogenised and better integrated into global homogenised markets. It is worth then, considering what your local place (expressed in its culture, ecology, limitations, and history) “wants you to eat” and adapting your diet to conform to this.
That’s all for now. Once again, thank you all for your support, it means a lot to this “young lad” (as I was recently called on a podcast!).
Warmly
Hadden
See Mark Stoll’s book Profit, An Environmental History. For more on this.
Very disputable.
Great thoughts on "responsible limitedness", Hadden. For many years now, I have embraced the phrase "Freedom within limitation" because it allows me to express myself creatively in spite of visual impairment. Freedom within limitation means you get to choose from a limited palette of colours, so to speak, and make something that is more considered and distinctive than would be the case if you had no limits at all. Limitation is, as you say, a divinely-ordained condition for us all, and to think we would be better off throwing off restraint to become utterly boundless is sheer folly.
The question about freedom brings to my mind the thinking of Karol Wojtyła, a philosopher, priest, bishop, and finally, the Pope John Paul II. My formative years fell in the early, dynamic and revelatory time of his pontificate, hence his philosophy etched an indelible mark on my outlook.
Wojtyła clearly discerned freedom from lawlessness. Freedom is not the liberty to do anything one wants; it is a gift (from the Creator), and an assignment to fulfil.
Freedom, not to become its negation, must abide by two norms: the truth, and the moral good.
The truth compels a seeker of freedom to abide by the findings of the humanities: history, psychology, sociology; and by the results of sciences: economics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, (now I add) climatology.
Moral good comprises equality, justice, and being considerate about our peers.
These two: truth, and moral good, are the necessary limits within freedom can thrive.
We experience two stages of freedom. The first, more fundamental, but less creative, is the freedom from the evil, oppression, coercion, despicable conditions of life. The second stage is the freedom towards: doing good, being creative, fulfilling one’s vocation.
We should strive for freedom, within the limits which prevent it to distort into lack of social rules.