Sowing Winter Wheal: Preparing Seed and Soil for the New Era

Although I am a historian, what follows is not an exercise of history, nor of botany. In a classical sense it is an attempt to understand the trajectory of the times, and to engage accordingly.

As my hibernal title indicates, my sense is that this trajectory will be difficult. Having been misled repeatedly over the last three election cycles by all sorts of media, witnessed two bizarre assassination attempts on a presidential candidate, and become deeply suspicious of state-level shenanigans, I was persuaded that the re-election of Donald Trump would be a long shot. I further believed that another victory by the powers that be (hopefully “the powers that were”) would continue the advance of a culture of death determined to cast a wintry chill over the country, especially among traditionalists of a broad stripe. Imagine how pleasantly surprised I was to see Harris and Walz traipse off the national stage accompanied by the vibrant pulsations of the Village People’s “YMCA.”

Although undoubtedly some viewers of MSNBC believe they’re trapped in a real-life Mel Brooks production, watching the global debut of “Springtime for Hitler,” recent months have revealed a phenomenal amount of positive energy coming out of those ‘vibing’ with the MAGA-MAHA-DOGE alliance. Like Wordsworth, we can hear the new-right exclaim, “Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive / But to be young was forever heaven.” And yet I am not willing to give up my concern about an encroaching Wintertime in the West.

I hope this is not just pedantic stubbornness: the product of a dour, recovering Calvinist, ensconced in the narrow, benighted valleys of Western PA, where things are done the way they always have been, where the Steelers are continually just above average, and where the sun shines maybe 160 days out of the year, Phil and other prognosticating groundhogs notwithstanding.

Whence does this cold-hearted claim arise?

First there is a cautionary tale. The Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries endured a Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist winter for two or three generations. Yet the collapse of Communist bureaucracies created not a springtime but a vacuum, leaving its citizenry vulnerable to exploitation from native oligarchs and unscrupulous external influences. Despite efforts to rejuvenate a sense of spirited purpose in Poland, Russia, and even Hungary, there doesn’t seem to be much life in these places, nor in the rest of Europe, which in the words of a recent traveler, “feels like a museum.”

Additionally, there are four signs that, left unchecked, presage the arrival of a wintry season.

The first element is the spirit of positional confusion—like schoolchildren trapped in a flash snowstorm during Laura Ingalls’s Long Winter, we have lost all sense of location and direction. Ever since the sixteenth century, Western man has boldly defined where he stood athwart the passage of world history—the Renaissance, the Era of Good Feelings, the Gilded Age, the Cold War. The zenith of this self-definition came in the 1990s with George H. W. Bush heralding the advent of “a New World Order,” and Francis Fukuyama proclaiming “the end of history.” Coincidentally, ever since that moment, we’ve become not only Lost in the Cosmos, but Lost in Time, fumbling around in our “post-Cold War world” with all the trappings of post-modernity: post-structuralism, post-colonialism, post-nationalism, post-humanism, post-liberalism to name a few. The sparks of a 9/11 could not enlighten our darkness; the dulling of our senses during the COVID years has merely exacerbated it. Trumpian rhetoric about a golden age notwithstanding, what explains our inability to elucidate not only what we are, but also when and where we are? This blind drifting over ever-shifting ground inhibits our desire to take a firm stand anywhere on anything.

The second hyperborean sign is the emergence of a Cold Culture. Absent a vibrant Tradition and neglectful of Things Divine, man is now seen as little more than a mass of potential friction, activated whenever he has to relate to his fellows face-to-face. The more we reduce or eradicate this friction, the happier we will be. With the advent of so-called “social” media, with texting supplanting phone calls, with online shopping or self-checkouts at stores, with iTunes & Spotify dominating the music industry, we have promoted impersonal, raw efficiency as the preeminent social value. These developments are much beloved by Silicon Valley transhumanists, but real “[I]nteraction, cooperation and collaboration” (David Bryne of “Talking Heads”) have been replaced by an “Anxious Generation” (Haidt). As anyone who has ever tried walking on ice can readily appreciate, maintaining your balance and gaining traction in a frictionless environment requires a tremendous expenditure of energy and forces us to contract our posture and our pace. In a similar way have you noticed this is true on a personal level? The simplest tasks our grandparents or parents did in raising families and communities now seem to demand so much more out of us.

Which brings me to the third wintry portent—sterility.

Forget declining birth rates: over the past decade, I have noticed an increase in sterility all around me, from student work (far fewer PDAs in the hallways between classes) to professional publications (which all sound the same) to supposedly-new technology (what real differences are there between the iPhone 6 to 16?) and, sadly, even in matters of faith. Evangelicals might be moving TradCath or Orthodox, learning the rites by rote, but is it really just LARPing, with nothing life-engendering about the change? Parents, teachers, and ministers are having trouble recruiting the imagination of the younger generation towards action—it’s yet more work for us to do in a day that already confronts us with confusion, anxiety, and care.

Which leads me to the final augury: that of exhaustion.

Vivek Ramaswamy, talking with Andrew Schulz on 30 January 2025, admitted “especially over the last four years, we’ve gone through a lethargic period.” It strikes me that this personal confession reflects a deeper, more poignant weariness within every single institution in the West: the family, the Church, the neighborhood, the school, the market, the state. Like sweet peas in the springtime, Americans shot up quickly in the fecund soil of liberal modernity, accomplishing great things in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, yet we now find ourselves attenuated, desperate for nourishment, struggling to know where to begin. Teachers are tired of the growing illiteracy, parents are tired of fighting daily battles on behalf of—and in some cases with—their children. Our sons and daughters are not prophesying, our old men do not dream dreams, our young men do not see visions. We seem to stumble, doom-scrollers all, day by day, to the last syllable of recorded posts on X before dropping off into restless slumber.

A discordant choir arises to help us make sense of this. There are the nihilists, who seek to control the dying systems, and their allies, the cynics, whose only concern is to game those systems long enough to attain some measure of political or economic security. Their voice is quite alluring, and since they dominate most media, they tend to be the loudest. Opposition to these sirens (usually by those who do not inhabit the halls of power) tends to fall into three camps: those who wish to be left alone, confident that there is safety in smallness, those who desperately try to force nourishment from modernity’s first principles, licking the last drops of wine squeezed from the old wineskin, and those who preach that the soil is completely exhausted and vainly contemplate how to plow the fallow field of premodernity anew.

For now, I want to suggest a different vision I am persuaded is capable of engendering hope as well as providing a pragmatic agenda. In the spirit of Cicero’s “On Old Age,” coincidentally written during a time of republican exhaustion, it begins by considering the grains of the field: in particular, winter wheat.

The Nature and Metaphor of Winter Wheat

This extraordinary variant of the staff of life was brought over to our country in the late nineteenth century by Mennonite immigrants from Russia. Its harder variety took root in the Great Plains, notably Kansas and North Dakota. Farmers initially appreciated it for spreading out the workload and harvest in challenging environments. It supplemented livestock feed through the spring until thicker grasses returned. Today, used primarily as a cover crop, winter wheat halts the proliferation of weeds and generally reduces the pests and diseases that may afflict spring wheat. In exposed areas, planting it reduces the effects of wind and water erosion. Its roots soften compacted ground, and in soil that has become overused, it injects and retains nutrients.

It is sown in the early weeks of September, ideally into the stubble of a previous non-wheaten harvest. The stubble serves as a protective barrier against the strong winter winds and forms a scaffolding for the snow to drift into the furrows, further insulating the young wheat. Stems and leaves sprout in the first weeks, forming a canopy for photosynthesis before the first cold hits. From that point onward, the plant lies dormant under a true blanket of snow. The greatest danger actually comes as April frosts loosen the soil, which can cause the wheat to “lose anchor.” The warmth of spring animates the reproductive stage; sixty days after the last frost, the ear will be fully developed, producing yields historically as good as spring wheat, if not better.

Fascinatingly, these yields are determined, not so much by the number of ears but by their robustness—the number and size of grains on each ear. Quality rather than quantity is the goal, and it’s precisely quality that is out of the farmer’s control. His hands may craft the right conditions, but they cannot determine anything further.

Current market trends are not favorable to winter wheat compared to other varieties, and there are issues that plague the crop—not least of which is the prevalence of wild oats growing up like biblical tares alongside the wheat that have developed immunities to older herbicides. Without a spray that targets only the oats, and in a culture that values mere efficiency at mass scale, the future is not that bright for winter wheat.

Beyond the obvious conservative metaphor that different farms will have different climates, soils, and weeds, calling for different methods of plowing, sowing, and care even of the same crop, we can glean other valuable metaphors that arise this grain.

As to its sowing: first, it is sown deliberately in advance of deadly cold weather. The stark bleakness of the future does not deter the hopeful farmer, nor ought it deter a hopeful parent or teacher. Second, dead stubble plays an active role: shielding immature stalks is essential for the wheat’s survival. The heroes and heroines of old, preserved in classic as well as popular art, serve a similar purpose, reminding us that they were once as we are now, in need of protection, guidance, and inspiration. They serve not only as cautionary tales but as meaningful symbols to help us make sense of our time.

Again, the properties of stubble and snow, together with residual ground warmth, make this wheat strong enough to face all the harshness of a Dakota winter. In similar manner, the true test of a man’s strength may come only through long trials, aided by the most unexpected of supports. Pressing further, we confront the profound paradox that the deeper the snow—cold, wet, and not desirable to the touch—and the longer its duration, the greater the insulation, and the more likely our endurance to the end.

A final facet of this metaphor appears as we assess the wheat’s relationship to the soil itself.

First, it can break up the compacted soil of unexplained tradition: those tales that, repeated ad nauseum and without purpose, dull the spirit of their hearers, might be converted into notes from that “old, old story, that I have loved so long.”

That same breaking up, however, when faced with a sudden, severe frost can result in an anchorless plant every now and then, so farmers must be vigilant to spot the loose roots and tap them down when necessary.

Lastly, even when current returns are modest, sowing winter wheat invariably yields stronger harvests for spring wheat. We should not necessarily expect great things of every generation but trust that our labors now are setting the stage for fruit two or three generations down the road.

What are we to do? Most farmers now are eschewing winter wheat in favor of simply letting their land lie fallow. But for the sake of our metaphor, we cannot quite do that. As exhausted as older generations may be and as wearied as those who witness the enervation of the soil may be, our youths may still be itching with life in its rawest form.

In an era filled with misinformation, disinformation, and just plain gaslighting, the sanest thing we can encourage each other to do would be to start focusing on plants—they will never lie to you. There’s a sense that the rising generation of Zeds and Alphas have intuited this, given their popular admonition to “touch grass.” But trying to understand what will make plants healthy take work, especially for a novice gardener who doesn’t yet know how to read the signs.

If we are to truly aerate the compacted soil of liberalism, we need to generate new terms in political discourse. I would like to suggest that “life” and “death” supplant the originally accidental and increasingly meaningless “right” and left.” Cultivate an eye for the contours of life, for the circumstances that promote life, principles of which can be found in the work of the late Christopher Alexander (The Nature of Order, vol. 1, The Phenomenon of Life).

Life is something that occurs naturally, but ever since Genesis 1, greater life is possible only with the injection of human labor: this is the essence of stewardship. This is a labor that must be ongoing. Jesuits and Orthodontists might believe that as long as you straighten a child’s doctrine or dentures they will be set for life, but arborists know better: you must train but not constrain a tree, and do so regularly, if you want it to bear fruit. We are to bring up our children in the Way, and yes that way is narrow but it’s not a tightrope. Mathematically, there are a near infinite number of ways of walking the Tao: our Lord is more than capable of using less than whole numbers to achieve His ends, as He seems to be doing with less than whole people! By bearing in mind both the boundaries and the breadth of the Way we can better enjoy unexpected developments and be less obsessed with curating sons that look and behave exactly like their boomer sires.

A final principle flows from this, from master conservator Roberto Nardi: always conserve in a manner and with materials that can be easily revised and replaced, without damaging the original, if better methods are found.

If all this agricultural talk brings to your ears echoes of a certain parable, I would contend that just as Tolkien considers us to be sub-creators with God in our limited spheres, perhaps in the same way we might be sub-sowers with His Spirit. One might also be reminded of Hayek’s 1974 Nobel Prize acceptance speech where he exhorted those wishing to bring health and life to the social order, “not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.”

This environment is composed of essential truths, especially of Resurrection; for “unless a kernel of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone: but if it die, it brings forth much fruit.” (John 12:24) It also clearly conveys why these truths matter, through the mysteries of love. Love is particular, grounded in intimate knowledge of the other, and is known by its fruits, not its intentions.

How can we tell if we’re doing it right? Even pagans recognize life by the energy they feel in its presence. Will our actions and words give greater energy and life to those around us? Will they feel like Dr. Neil’s Garden in Edinburgh, where growth and care are not only good for the physical and mental health of patients but are directionally blessed steps to take?

So lean into the friction of human engagement. Start there, not with an image in your mind about what is going to come forth, but with a simple question—what is the most important thing I can do now to bring forth a bit more life in this area?

Whether we are headed towards an Indian summer or a vernal American Renaissance is for those with better sight than mine. I merely hope that this glutenous conceit may aspire to the rank of “new social imaginaries” that James Davidson Hunter has recently called for. At the least may it inspire us to the task at hand: for the fields are ripe unto sowing, but the laborers are few.

Image Via: Wikimedia Commons