20 years ago I read a few Wendell Berry essays on agriculture and it changed my life. I immediately believed two things: 1) if it wasn’t for computers I’d be an

20 years ago I read a few Wendell Berry essays on agriculture and it changed my life. I immediately believed two things: 1) if it wasn’t for computers I’d be an agrarian and 2) I finally had a better idea of conservatism in the sense that nature selects for conservative agrarians. These ideas challenged my ideas of “turning it off and on again” and overall system design. I needed to prove to myself that I was more than a brain, and I was more than the “kid that was good with computers.” What was my body for? I quit my virtualization/sysadmin job and moved to a farm in central Wisconsin, helping a small family with 4 acres of veggies for market, milked 20 goats and 2 cows, turkey, sheep … the whole works. Farming didn’t work out long term for me but it taught excellent lessons and gave me a better foundation for understanding my satisfaction of being human, e.g. is the grass greener on the other side of the fence?