Mary Berry Reflects on Wendell Berry's 50 Years at Lanes Landing

Summer is flying by. The older I get the faster the seasons go. Lost in the flurry of work at The Berry Center is, to me, an important anniversary. Fifty years ago this summer my parents Tanya and Wendell Berry moved to Lanes Landing Farm in Henry County, Kentucky. They were nice enough to bring my brother Den and me with them. Den was three and I was seven. It was 1965.

By then we had lived in Europe, California, and New York City with stays in Kentucky between moves. It is hard for me to believe now but the intention was to buy the farm as a weekend and summer place. My father says of my mother that she has made his work possible. Anyone knows that when he says that he means that she has made the whole of life at Lanes Landing possible. He has told me that at some point in the spring of ’65 my mother said to him, “You don’t want to spend weekends here, you want to live here and so do I.” 

Read more via The Berry Center August Newsletter (pdf)