Remembering by Wendell Berry Page A

It’ll be plain.”
    â€œPlain will be lovely,” Andy said. “Thanks.”
    And so he left the car by the road and walked beside Isaac, behind the team, up through the woods to the barn, and on the way he questioned him.
    â€œHow much land do you have, Isaac?”
    â€œEighty acres.”
    â€œEighty acres. Is that enough?”
    â€œEnough for what?”
    â€œTo make a living.”
    â€œWell, we’re living, aren’t we?”
    â€œHow long have you been here?”
    â€œSeventy-four years.”
    â€œBut you’re not seventy-four?”
    â€œNo,” Isaac said, and laughed, “my father is seventy-four. We came here the year he was born.”
    Isaac and his wife had five children, three in school and two little ones still at home, and Isaac’s father and mother lived in a small house of their own a few steps from Isaac’s.
    â€œDo you have work for everybody?”
    â€œOh, yes, plenty of work.”
    â€œFor the old people and the little ones too?”
    â€œOh, yes, we need them all.”
    â€œYou stay busy all the time?”
    â€œWe don’t work on Sunday. Or after supper. Sometimes there’s a wedding, or we go fishing.”
    Isaac watered his horses and fed them, and Andy went with him to
the house. He met Anna, Isaac’s wife, and Susan and Caleb, their two youngest children. He bowed his head with them over the food at the kitchen table. It was a clear, clean room. The food was good. A large maple tree stood near the back porch, visible from the kitchen windows, and the wind quivered in the new grass at its foot. Beyond were the white barn and outbuildings. It was a pretty place, its prettiness not so much made as allowed. It was a place of work, but a place too of order and rest, where work was done in a condition of acknowledged blessedness and of gratitude. As they ate, they talked, making themselves known to each other.
    â€œOh, Scientific Farming, ” Isaac said. “I’ve heard of that.”
    â€œNo,” Anna said. “You’ve seen it. Our neighbor gave us a copy once. I read it.”
    â€œDid it give you any advice that you could take?” Andy asked.
    â€œSome, maybe.” She laughed. “Not much.”
    After dinner, taking Susan and Caleb along, Isaac and Andy walked over the little farm together, Andy questioning and, with Isaac’s permission, writing down many of the answers. He learned about the various enterprises of the farm, about the exchanges of work within the neighborhood, about the portioning of work within the family, about the economies of household and homestead from which the family principally lived. Putting together what he heard and what he saw with what he knew already, Andy began to see that these people lived very well on their eighty acres and with their neighbors, whose farms were all more or less the same size, and finally, uneasy but unable to resist, he asked point-blank, “Do you owe any money, Isaac?”
    â€œNot for a while.”
    â€œDo you have any money saved?”
    â€œWell, I’d better, hadn’t I, with five children?”
    â€œHow much would you say you net in an average year?”
    They looked at each other then, and both smiled in acknowledgment of the limit they were approaching.
    â€œAbout half,” Isaac said.
    â€œAre all the Amish good farmers?”
    â€œSome better than others. All the Amish are human.”
    By then Isaac was carrying Susan, who had gone to sleep as soon as he picked her up.

    And then Andy told him about Meikelberger’s farm. Had Isaac ever thought of buying more land — say, a neighbor’s farm?
    â€œWell, if I did I’d have to go in debt to buy it, and to farm it. It would take more time and help than I’ve got. And I’d lose my neighbor.”
    â€œYou’d rather have your neighbor?”
    â€œWe’re supposed to love our neighbors as ourselves. We try.