Agrarian Notebook
A Sustainable Traditions blog by writer, cultural critic, and greenhorn farmer Ragan Sutterfield
By Ragan Sutterfield on 05/12/2010
There are many people who want to live like Shane Claiborne or Wendell Berry, but that would be a mistake. This is not to say that we should not learn from lives well lived—there are lots of things worth imitating—but we have to ask where God has called us and to what he has called us…
Posted in Agrarian Notebook, Features | Tagged authentic living, identity crisis, Jean Vanier, Shane Claiborne, Thomas Merton, Wendell Berry |
By Ragan Sutterfield on 04/26/2010
Four and a half miles from the end of our hike, we came across a gigantic pile of sawdust…this area had been clear cut and run through the mill. Now that history was mostly invisible except with careful observation…
Posted in Agrarian Notebook, Environment & Creation, Features | Tagged creation, ecology, Gerard Manley Hopkins, great outdoors, hiking, nature, resurrection, sawmill |
By Ragan Sutterfield on 03/23/2010
Not long ago I had to decide—new cell phone, no cell phone; smart phone, plain phone…I found the most basic free phone I could—one that could make calls, text with difficulty, and maybe survive my abuse. In making this choice I was choosing much more than a cell phone—I was choosing a different form of life…
Posted in Agrarian Notebook, Features, Technology | Tagged capitalism, Christian faith and technology, Consumerism, holiness, Simple Living, technology |
By Ragan Sutterfield on 03/12/2010
How do we know where we are? Increasingly the answer is through the dot on a screen—the little man on a Google map, the arrow on a dashboard GPS…
Posted in Agrarian Notebook, Features, Society and Culture | Tagged anchors, Community and Ecclesia, cultural heritage, culture, culture of place, gps, local culture, localism, place, society |
By Ragan Sutterfield on 03/01/2010
I have been thinking a good deal lately about culture and how it happens. There are two kinds of Pop culture it seems—the kind we consume and the kind we produce. These days the kind we consume seems to dominate. That we consume culture is not a bad thing, but that this form of pop [...]
Posted in Agrarian Notebook, Features, Society and Culture | Tagged culture, local arts, local living, local renaissance, means of production, music, pop culture, video |
By Ragan Sutterfield on 02/05/2010
The practice of actively turning our lives from sin and embodying our mourning for sin is called penance—an ancient practice that needs to be recovered in the lives of Christians seeking to live their lives holistically.
Posted in Agrarian Notebook, Features | Tagged christian ethics of consuming, christian practices, crisis of consumerism, ethical eating, ethics of eating, fasting, justice economy, penance, repentance, spiritual disciplines, thanksgiving |
By Ragan Sutterfield on 01/26/2010
If we are to recover the agrarian virtues of self-reliance and free ourselves increasingly from the bad valuations inherent in the money economy we are going to have to not only grow our own but breed our own…
Posted in Agrarian Notebook, Features | Tagged chicken breeding, Christian agrarian, Heritage Breeds, Homesteading, Marx, Poultry, self-reliance, self-sufficient living |
By Ragan Sutterfield on 01/15/2010
Caitlin Flanagan recently created a stir with her article in The Atlantic criticizing school gardens. There have been some excellent rebuttals to Flannagan, but as I read the article I kept hearing Wendell Berry’s poetic character, “The Mad Farmer,”…
Posted in Agrarian Notebook, Features | Tagged agriculture as education, Caitlin Flanagan, Education, School Gardens, Sustainable Agriculture, The Atlantic, Wendell Berry |
By Ragan Sutterfield on 01/06/2010
One result of the consumer economy has been a weakening of desire and a diluting of pleasure. This may seem counter-intuitive at first because desire is all around us after all…
Posted in Agrarian Notebook | Tagged Anti-Consumerism, Chesterton, Christian hedonism, commercialism, Consumerism, economy, hedonism |
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