Two recent book finds.

The autumn light in the hour before sunset seeps through the thinning branches of the big tulip poplar, landing in bright splotches on the ground by the barn where I stand. The smell of overripe bananas is heady in the air. They are now piled in their bunches in a large tub that once contained a sweet-protein mix for cattle, and already are bubbling slowly, fermenting into a mush. Pigs love bananas, and the riper the better. When I spotted the blackening bunches, my hands were already coated with sticky, gloppy residue from digging through two fifty-gallon barrels of not-yet rotting produce and sorting it into half a dozen buckets.

An hour later, having pulled out the mostly packaged fruits and vegetables from the depths of the barrels and separated the contents into the buckets and tub, I finish this task. The buckets are now filled with berries, mushrooms, lettuce mixes, even cucumbers and tomatoes—all ready to be fed to the hogs in the coming days, along with the mush tub of bananas, courtesy of a local grocery. I bag the plastic wrappings from the haul and put the trash in the back of the pickup. The pile of citrus and onions, neither of which the pigs will eat, I carry to the compost bin and bury under a fresh load of wood chips. Still remaining are the twenty-five gallons of milk, always a bonus with pigs. I trundle them in a wheelbarrow to another building that houses a spare fridge.

Sounds through the wall from the adjacent workshop indicate that Cindy is still working on a drop-leaf tabletop. This is a project she has labored over during the past several months. I stick my head in and say hello before returning the wheelbarrow to the barn, then walk up to the house to wash my hands. As I do, the sun drops behind the ridge and the high scalloped clouds turn gold.

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I spent the past weekend in Madison, Wisconsin, at the annual Front Porch Republic conference. Other than being butt-sore from sitting and listening to speakers for a full day, I found it mostly enjoyable. Paul Kingsnorth was the keynote speaker. Being that it was my first FPR conference, I was not certain what to expect. But this summation of the gathering, by Jeff Bilbro, gives you some idea: One of the particular delights of FPR conferences is the wide range of people who gather: farmers and academics, truckers and housewives, tech workers and artists, socialists and anarchists, Anabaptists and Catholics and agnostics. What unites us? Paul suggested that at the heart of his writing and thinking over the years lies two convictions: a suspicion of power and a desire for roots. That’s a pretty good summary of FPR’s center of gravity.

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