Oct./Nov. 1982 RAIN Page 21 quality of it and the quality of the head doing the fanning: look at the new seedings of legumes in the grain crops. He was also milking eleven young Holstein cows — and they were excellent cows. To hear him talk about them was a good deal like hearing him talk about his horses. He talked not just about their milk producing ability, but about the quality of their legs and feet and their ability to endure and withstand use. I believe he kept about 50 head of Holsteins and 40 head of horses. That was an 80 acre farm with 15 rented acres. His whole family, girls and boys, were out there leading and driving horses. The reason Tm so fascinated with this is that it's an example of fine intelligence modestly applied — applied on a modest scale. There are several good marks of intelligence on it. The main one is that this farmer hasn't specialized. I don't know whether you all know anything about the Belgians, but his herd sire is Constnico, and Constnico's sons and daughters have won the get-of-sire class at the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto for seven years straight. Now, if a lot of horse breeders should hit that kind of pace they wouldn't be any account for anything else. They'd feel like they had to concentrate on what was bringing in the money and getting the attention. But this man hadn't yielded to that all. He knew all about horse breeding and was fascinated with it. But there were those cows and all the rest of it going on. Well, the thing I think about is thatit's possible to have excellent work that's common, that's ordinary. That sounds like a paradox or a contradiction in terms to us — the idea of an ordinary excellence. But it's possible. Let me give you another instance. I heard on what I assume to be good authority that the British Isles developed more breeds of sheep than all the rest of the world put together. These breeds are regional products — Suffolk, Cheviot, Southdown, Shropshire and so on. Such an accomplishment doesn't mean simply that the British Isles had the good fortune to produce a handful of crossbreeding geniuses. This couldn't have been done on the star system. There's such a thing as a livestock breeding genius, I don't have any doubt about that, and you'd have to have had your share of them to produce that many breeds of sheep in such a small area. But the geniuses couldn't have worked all by themselves. Each of these breeds of sheep had to come from a region pretty well populated with breeders and shepherds of sound judgement, good sound intelligence and a highly developed sensitivity to local weather conditions, local soils and forages, and local economies. Now what a priceless thing it would be to have that going on in this country! Here we have a country many times the size of England and all our sheep, virtually, are Suffolks and Hampshires. All our milk cows, virtually, are Holsteins. What a commentary that is on our intelligence! So that, I think, is what we want: the best intelligence applying itself locally at a modest scale. And I think great things can come of it. But you've got to get rid of the star system and this leftover, rundown notion of aristocracy that we have. To have intelligence applied that way you've got to have people who think well of themselves even though they have their hands on animals and clods and that sort of thing. To understand how that kind of intelligence works is a lifetime project for us all. We can't gather up too many examples of it, because it's fading away. If we want to know about it, we've got to be alert for the survivors and find out what they know, and find out how they know it (which is more important). You see, this notion that we'll pull ourselves out of the mess we're in by information is just malarkey. Most of the great work in farming has been done by people who had comparatively little information. It's a structural matter. It's a formal matter like art. It's not how much you know about farming, it's how you put together what you know. □□
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