Quote of the Day – Tools Edition

E. B. White is per­haps best known as the au­thor of books for chil­dren, such as Char­lotte's Web or Stu­art Little. But he was also a mas­ter­fully en­ter­tain­ing es­say­ist – not to men­tion an ex­em­plar of ped­es­tri­an­ism. Is­sue No. 2 of The Ped­es­tri­an (Tools) in­cludes three es­says by White, each of which con­siders life on his Maine farm. From the es­say “The Prac­tic­al Farm­er”:

“A good farm­er is noth­ing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of hu­mus. The re­pair as­pect of farm­ing looms so large that, on a place like my own, which is not really a farm at all but merely a private zoo, some­times months go by when noth­ing but re­pair goes on. … I have been fool­ing around this place for a couple of years, but nobody calls my activ­ity ag­ri­cul­ture. I simply like to play with an­im­als. Nobody knows this bet­ter than I do – al­though my neigh­bors know it well enough and on the whole have been tol­er­ant and sym­path­et­ic.”