The Water Dipper

The Table, Topsoil, and the Midwest

Plough Quarterly No. 20: The Welcome Table. The Spring issue of Plough Quarterly is online and has many essays of interest to Porchers. To mention just...

Dairy Farmers, Nebraska, and the Common Good

"Sealed in Blood: Aristopopulism and the City of Man.” Susannah Black wrote a small book in response to Patrick Deneen’s recent talk on aristopopulism....

Caretaking, Decadence, and Widow Places

“Caretaking.” There are many gems in this conversation between Wendell Berry and Helena Norberg-Hodge in Orion Magazine. Here’s one from Berry: My quarrel with “movements,” and...

Aristopopulism, Partisan Divides, and John Ruskin

Make plans to join FPR in Louisville on September 14th for our fall conference: Paying Tribute to Wendell Berry. "The Integralist Mirroring of Liberal Ideals."...

Seeds, Workism, and Stoner

“Seeding Control to Big Ag.” Gracy Olmstead marvels at the wonders of seeds and explains the complex history by which a few large companies...

The Invisible Hand, Context, and Farm Robots

“Liberalism and the Invisible Hand.” Adrian Vermeule’s essay in American Affairs is worth printing and reading with care. He argues that “the key hallmarks or notes...

Green New Deal, Tech Utopia, and Faith

“Growing a Green New Deal: Agriculture’s Role in Economic Justice and Ecological Sustainability.” Fred Iutzi and Robert Jensen consider the promise and peril of...

Robots, Andrew Jackson, and Spiritual Journeys

“Best of Bacevich.” Mark G. Brennan reviews Andrew Bacevich’s new collection of essays and finds his assessment of American foreign policy to be, as...

Conservative Treehuggers, Manufacturing, and Monks

“Farms, More Productive Than Ever, Are Poisoning Drinking Water in Rural America.” Jesse Newman and Patrick McGroarty find that fertilizer and concentrated manure are...

Useless Reading, Bothies, and Davos

“Fables of School Reform.” The lead of Audrey Watters’s essay says it all: “Over the past five years, more than $13 billion in venture...