Some notes on the nature of value.

A personal account from Will Lisak, head of the farm.

Though we are not focused on financial profit, we are focused on profit writ large. For the last centuries there has been a conflict between financial value and cultural value, and cultural value has found itself on the losing side, not because it is the lesser, or people have less faith in it or love it the less, but simply because in a mechanistic world, it is harder to measure.

When you care for an elderly neighbor or relative, that value, though dear and meaningful, is not measured or accounted for. However if you put someone in a home or into industrial care it is measurable, there is a healthcare industry that contributes to our gross domestic product.

When a mother cares for her child, there is no accounting of those hours or the depth of their contents, a chain of care and knowledge going back to the dawn of humanity, but when she gives it up to a childcare agency, there becomes a measurable quality, there is now an industry that can be lobbied for and measurable needs that can be met by public policy.

This same simple principle applies to all things today, and any enterprise that bears significant cultural value finds itself at a loss for words when asked to show its “profits.”

When you care for your

“The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth—that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community—and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means” - Wendell Berry

On social vs financial value

Continuity is social value. Understanding and the meaning of place are social value.

“However small a landmark the old bucket is, it is not trivial. It is one of the signs by which I know my country and myself. And to me it is irresistibly suggestive in the way it collects leaves and other woodland sheddings as they fall through time. It collects stories too as they fall through time. It is irresistibly metaphorical. It is doing in a passive way what a human community must do actively and thoughtfully. A human community too must collect leaves and stories, and turn them into an account. It must build soil, and build that memory of itself—in lore and story and song—which will be its culture. And these two kinds of accumulation, of local soil and local culture, are intimately related.”