What do you ask of the earth?

The poet and farmer, Wendell Berry says that when he approaches a piece of land, he asks not what he can take from the soil, how much yield it would give, how much he could harvest, rather he asks,

What is it that I can give to the soil?

Posture is important, your stance and approach to the world and those you seek to serve matters

Ask not what you can take, ask what you can give.

Below is Berry’s most famous poem, The Peach of Wild Things.

Talk soon,

pierre

The Peace of Wild Things - Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.