Family Work by Wendell Berry

FOR THOSE of us who have wished to raise our food and our children at home, it is easy enough to state the ideal. Growing our own food, unlike buying it, is a complex activity, and it affects deeply the shape and value of our lives. We like the thought that the outdoor work that improves our health should produce food of excellent quality that, in turn, also improves and safeguards our health. We like no less the thought that the home production of food can improve the quality of family life. Not only do we intend to give our children better food than we can buy for them at the store, or than they will buy for themselves from vending machines or burger joints, we also know that growing and preparing food at home can provide family work-work for everybody. And by thus elaborating household chores and obligations, we hope to strengthen the bonds of interest, loyalty, affection, and cooperation that keep families together.

Forty years ago, for most of our people, whether they lived in the country or in town, this was less an ideal than a necessity, enforced both by tradition and by need. As is often so, it was only after family life and family work became (allegedly) unnecessary that we began to think of them as "ideals."