This is the first of two posts (my talk recording is in the 2nd post here) reflecting on ideas from writer-philosopher-poet Wendell Berry that influenced my art-forest-policy work over the last two decades. The next post details the odd coincidence in that I have been invited by curators to talk about a forest text that has inspired my work–for the 2020 Dock Art Centre ‘Whose Woods These Are’ 3-day online festival, starting tomorrow.

Wendell Berry’s ‘A Good Forest Economy’ ideas

New to Ireland in the mid-90s, the home of my ancestors, I benefited so much by working with a small team of enthusiastic forest, wildlife and hedgerow experts: a visionary forester, rare Irish cattle breeder and wildlife advocate, Noel Kiernan; hedgerow, woodcraft expert Neil Foulkes and local wildlife ranger John Matthews, along with Australian Crann founder, Jan Alexander. I was mentored by a truly incredible team.

Back then in the late 90s, I knew very little about Irish forests or environmental matters, but I got busy producing and designing the Crann Newsletter, worked on the Crann Hedgerow project, sold local Irish timber crafts, illustrated a simple award-winning Rare Irish Tree and Shrubs calendar (Kiernan and Fitzgerald, 1997). Most important, was I witnessed firsthand the efforts to advance Ireland’s biggest community native woodland afforestation programme to date, Crann’s ‘Local Project’, encompassing landowners reforesting 300-acres  in County Leitrim, an area particularly affected by Ireland’s famine period in the mid-19^th Century and absentee landlords. Coming from knowing pristine remnants, now World Heritage recognised forests of Aotearoa New Zealand, I instinctively knew that there was much to address about forestry in Ireland. But, back then, I couldn’t articulate that at all or why I felt creativity was a means to translate and inspire an alternative forestry story.

At that time, in the small Crann shop (formerly in Mohill, Co Leitrim) that I lived in for a time and looked after during the summers of 1996-7, there was a tiny library of forest books and magazines. It was then, that I came across an article in the Scottish Radical Rowan forestry magazine, that seemed to articulate all the values for why and how we can establish permanent, vibrant mixed species, mixed-aged forests (like I had known back in Aotearoa New Zealand). Looking back now, the younger forest-learner Cathy Fitzgerald, who had a passion for nature art couldn’t have struck upon a more classic article for developing a ‘good forest economy’, ‘a good forest culture’. I remember ringing someone in Scotland to ask permission if I could reprint the article.

Below are the main points of Wendell Berry’s Good Forest Economy – it is a section in his essay ‘Good Forest Communities’, in his book Turning the Crank: Essays (1995, reprinted again in 2011)

A good forest economy

by Wendell Berry appeared in the CRANN newsletter in 1997, kindly reprinted from the Scottish Radical Rowan (forest magazine).

A good forest economy, like any other good land-based economy, would aim to join the local human community and local natural community or ecosystem together as conservingly and as healthfully as possible

A good forest economy would therefore be a local economy, and the forest economy of a state or region would therefore be a decentralised economy.

A good forest economy would be owned locally. It would afford decent livelihood to local people. And it would be serve local needs and fill local demands first, before seeking markets elsewhere.

A good forest economy would be properly scaled. Keeping the scale reasonably small is good for the forest. Only a local, small scale forest economy would permit, for e.g., the timely and selective logging of small woodlots.

A good forest economy would be locally complex. People in the community would be employed in forest management, logging and saw milling, in a variety of value-adding small factories and shops, and in satellite or supporting industries.

A good forest economy would obviously need to be much interested in local education. It would of course, need to pass on to its children the large culture’s inheritance of book learning. But also, both at home and in school, it would want its children to acquire a competent knowledge of local geography, ecology, history, natural history, and of local songs and stories..

And so, to complete my description of a good forest economy, I must add that it would be a long-term economy. Our modern economy is still essentially a crop-year economy, as though industrialism had founded itself upon the principles of the worst sort of agriculture. ..

But even the slightest acquaintance with the vital statistics of trees places us in another kind of world. A forest makes things slowly; a good forest economy would therefore be a patient economy. It would also be an unselfish one, for good foresters must always look toward harvests that they will not live to reap.

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Below are some of my comments from this blog on Wendell Berry’s essay ‘A Good Forest Economy’  back in 2006, for my preparation for THE LOCAL PROJECT REVISITED 2006 Crann exhibition with Jan Alexander, that we created for The Dock Art Centre, Carrick-on-Shannon, Ireland.

When I revisited the [Crann] ‘Local Project’ in 2005 [to undertake a celebratory art exhibition of Crann’s work, I was startled to find that I still had my original photocopy of this article by Wendell Berry from 1995 ! Some of the ideas naturally flow through ‘The Local Project’ film I made [… (Berry describes his points in the context of the US Menominee local community forest he visited)].

I have always meant to write to W. Berry. He is, I believe, a farmer/forester and a well respected writer in this area. He writes in the magazine, Resurgence but I read somewhere that he corresponds only by pencil, so I’m not sure what he would make of this art cum tree film-blog project.

Re-reading these words affected me in 2006 – and I wrote

 “It seems to me that there is a new type of forestry emerging in Ireland, involving local communities and broadleaf trees; it’s the beginning of a return to a sustainable Irish wood culture.”

Cathy Fitzgerald, 2006

And Wendell’s concluding remarks in his essay ‘Conserving Forest Communities’ that made an impression on me in 1996, still inspire me still in 2020:

Kentuckians looking for the pattern of a good local forest economy would have to conclude, I think, that the Menominee example is not complex enough, but that in all other ways it is excellent. We have much to learn from it. The paramount lesson undoubtedly is that the Menominee forest economy is as successful as it is because it is not understood primarily as an economy.

Everybody I talked to on my visit urged me to understand that the forest is the basis of a culture and that the unrelenting cultural imperative has been to keep the forest intact-to preserve its productivity and the diversity of its trees, both in species and in age. The goal has always been a diverse, old, healthy, beautiful, productive, community-supporting forest that is home not only to its wild inhabitants but also to its human community.

To secure this goal, the Menominee, following the dictates of their culture, have always done their work bearing in mind the needs of the seventh generation of their descendants.

Wendell Berry, 1995, p.45

In the next post, I share details of my discussing this text recently with the curators of the 2020 Whose Woods These Are festival.

As always, interested in any comments.