The Ground of Freedom The role of private property is a necessary component of home economics. To begin, I would like to consider briefly what some writers from our Founding Era had to say about private property and then quickly trace the idea into the twentieth century. We will see that the idea of private […]

Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Jay that “Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds.”[1] At America’s founding, we were a nation of farmers—over […]

March is a busy month for us. The sap is running, and the first batch of chicks arrives. But most significantly, it is my youngest daughter’s birthday month.  Ula turned eight this month, and she likes to make the most of her birthday. She usually starts outlining her plans at Christmas. She is particularly fond […]

Families, Self-Sufficiency, and Limits I’ll Take My Stand, by “Twelve Southerners,” appeared in 1930 as a new statement of agrarian fundamentalism. In the American experience, Thomas Jefferson had framed the classic case for this outlook in his 1782 book, Notes on the State of Virginia. “Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people […]

Marriage, the Economy of Membership, and Ordered Diversity in the Fiction of Wendell Berry For as long as men have told stories, they have been primarily concerned with stories of a certain kind—those of love, of fidelity, of loyalty to kith and kin and country. The purposes of these stories have been as varied as […]