Join Mary Berry and Meriwether Lewis Hardie for a rare, no‑nonsense conversation about what it would really mean for American agriculture to come home again—to a culture that supports good farming and a lived “land ethic.”
Recorded live at the Mannix family ranch in Montana, this Old Salt Festival panel braids together two deep journeys home to place:
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Mary’s family, ten generations rooted in Henry County, Kentucky
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Meriwether’s 2025 solo horseback ride through the West, retracing some of the historic route of her forebear, Meriwether Lewis
At the center of their exchange is The Unsettling of America—the landmark book by Mary’s father, Wendell Berry—marking the 50th anniversary of its printing on August 25, 2026. As Mary notes, it would be better if we no longer needed this book. Instead, we may need it more than ever.
Together, Mary and Meriwether ask what it really means to “come home” to land—whether you’ve inherited a place over generations or are building one for the first time—and what that kind of homecoming will demand of American agriculture in the next 50 years.
More about the speakers:
Mary Berry is executive director of the Berry Center in New Castle, Kentucky, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting what Bill Moyers has called “the agrarian revolution” of her father Wendell Berry, the award-winning writer and farmer. Get involved with the Berry Center on social.
Prior to founding the Berry Center, Mary spent 32 years farming for a living— first as a dairy farmer, then raising tobacco, and later raising organic vegetables as well as pastured poultry and beef.
Meriwether Lewis Hardie is a writer, land steward, and business leader whose work explores the intertwined futures of people, place, and food. She is currently at work on a book about the future of the American West—grounded in questions of land use, water, belonging, and rural change—shaped in part by her 2025 five-month solo horseback journey across the West. Follow her journey on social.
