In Memory of Wendell Berry: His First Article in Organic Gardening and Farming

When Wendell Berry criticized technology, he practiced what he preached--like heating his home with wood and building a composting outhouse.

On August 31, 2026, the organic movement lost one of its most influential writers—Wendell Berry. According to a survey that I sent to organic farmers back in 2021, Wendell Berry tied with Rodale Press as the second-most influential author in the organic farming movement. Only Eliot Coleman was mentioned by more people.

The organic community news in the past week has been filled with tributes to Wendell by other leaders like Joel Salatin and Marion Nestle. Reading these, from people who actually knew and worked with Wendell Berry, I realize I have little to contribute. I never met him or even sent him a letter, so I don’t have any personal anecdotes or stories to tell. We were just spaced a little too far apart in history. By the time I started researching organic farming history, Berry was retired and reclusive, never leaving his Kentucky home and no longer engaging much with others.

So in lieu of a personal tribute to Wendell Berry, I’ve decided to highlight the first article he ever wrote for Organic Gardening and Farming magazine, in December 1973. The topic? The composting privy that he built on his Kentucky homestead.

Water pollution from sewage was a huge concern in the 1970s. As most organic farmers knew, Sir Albert Howard had envisioned a day when all human wastes would be composted and returned to the land to fulfill nature’s Law of Return. But existing infrastructure and sanitary laws made it difficult to put that concept into practice in urban areas.

Out in the hills of Kentucky, there was a little more flexibility. Wendell Berry was involved in environmental activism, protesting a proposed jetport near Lexington and warning about the dangers of water pollution from sewage. In the summer of 1971, he decided to do something about it. He converted one end of an outbuilding with a cellar into a composting outhouse. Berry turned the compost every few weeks and used the finished product on his fruit trees.

“I may as well admit right away that this method is neither so odor free nor so labor free as the flush toilet,” Berry said. “But it is both easier and less offensive than most people would suppose.”

“I was a little taken back when I requested to use the bathroom and was told, ‘No, you may not!’” Jim Foote explained when he described a visit to Berry’s farm in 1972. “But I was welcome to use the outhouse.…Wendell’s outhouse is a pleasant surprise. The interior is painted with white enamel.…The floor is concrete. This day there was a flower arrangement, and magazines for those who had the time. The interior is bright, airy and clean.”

Wendell Berry's plans for his composting privy, from the December 1973 issue of Organic Gardening and Farming

Berry included detailed plans and diagrams for his privy design so that interested readers could build their own. “I am far from believing that what I have said here is the final word,” he concluded. “My hope is that more competent hands will take it from here.”

None of the obituaries about Wendell Berry that I’ve seen have mentioned his composting outhouse, and I’m not sure whether he was still using it in his later years. But it was a great example of how he tried, as much as possible, to practice what he preached about using a minimum of modern technology and living lightly on the land.