“When you know better, you do better” — so said Maya Angelou, the venerable and respected American poet and speaker. Ever since I started doing this work, I’ve been trying to articulate — with varying degrees of success — why I think it’s worth doing.

Laying The Groundwork

Let me help you understand the trajectory here. First, Wendell Berry died and just a few weeks later, Annie Dillard followed him. Right there, I’ve lost two of the biggest poles on my particular planet, the anchors for each meridian that criss-crosses the ground I walk on. I started to revisit their work and, as often happens I find when one is feeling a bit raw between the ears, I heard and saw new things in familiar works. Slowly, the grinding gears in my head started to clank into life.

Next, two different articles popped onto my radar thanks to a couple of days of cosmic algorithmic alignment. The first came via The New York Times, “The Nobel-Winning Psychologist Who Believed He Found the Secret to Happiness” by David Epstein, from May 12, 2026. The second was from The Atlantic, “Why Do So Many People Think Trump Is Good?” from July 8, 2025 and written by David Brooks. Now before you go bananas, yes, there are paywalls and yes, I happen to think both publications are well-worth your hard-earned dollars and no, The Atlantic article is NOT about the president of the United States — that’s a bit of headline tomfoolery.

What both articles did was challenge me on some very specific fronts — with the machinery in my head already turning, these two writers provided more grist for the mill.

Let’s start with the NYTimes. In an article unpacking the term “satisficing,” coined by Herbert A. Simon. Simon was concerned with the limits of human decision-making. I’m interested in taking his idea one step further: what if we deliberately set reasonable boundaries around our choices not merely because optimization is impossible, but because refusing to optimize may make the whole system more resilient? (I’ll include a link to Simon’s own work at the end of this post). Now Simon wasn’t advocating for “settling”, for “good enough”. Satisficing means choosing the option that meets the “adequate” threshold. He believed that in meeting that threshold rather than chasing the relentless need to “optimize,” the decision maker could focus not on “What is the best of all the possible choices?” with all the attendant anxiety that potentially making the wrong decision can entail, but rather on meeting the required expectation and then moving on and living life. There is no endless feedback loop of what ifs in the satisficing approach; there is an expectation, it is met, and then we move on able to enjoy the fruits of our choices.

Now let’s let The Atlantic into the conversation. In this article, Brooks is making the argument that morality used to be a community-based construct that people understood not just as a way to behave but as a way to belong. Brooks introduced me to the work of moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre who believed that really since The Enlightenment, mankind (at least the western version) has moved so decidedly in the direction of individual autonomy that we are now in a situation where many feel adrift and unmoored, struggling to make meaning in a world that no longer offers them a place in which to fit. MacIntyre held that humans become “good” when they participate in communities that have views, rules and expectations about what excellence looks like. Crucially, MacIntyre thought that character is formed by practice.

Finally, a little bit of social media magic crossed my feed and I am damned if I am able to recall who was in the video snippet I watched. Two women and a man were discussing Wendell Berry and his legacy when one of the women made the assertion that Berry was only able to farm the way he was because he had an independent source of income — he wasn’t relying on farming to keep the lights on or the children fed. Farming the way Berry did, she said, simply doesn’t work.

That got my attention.

Suffice to say, it made me curious so down to the comments I went where the first of these stopped me in my tracks. Now, I so wish I could show you the post (if you feel like a bit of Instagram sleuthing, go for it and send it to me!) but the comment pointed out that while the podcast guest was essentially correct, Berry wasn’t promoting his approach to farming as a method that would succeed in the current market and policy context. He was proposing his method of farming as its antidote. Berry wasn’t even trying to go with culture, he was standing on Kentucky bedrock opposing it with every word he wrote and spoke. So while it’s true, the commenter argued, that Berry wouldn’t be considered a “successful” farmer within the current market/industry context, he wasn’t trying to be and in fact, a close reading of Berry would show that the Kentucky poet was far more radical than his gentle words might suggest.

So. That’s what we’re after, pigeons. That’s the smell we’re tracking.

Drawing the Warp Together

My dear friend Mackenzie is a helluva weaver. In a moment of sheer optimism, he taught me (or attempted to. I learn well but my retention is horrible) how to draw the warp threads and to lay them into the loom so that what will be woven is strong and resilient. As I chewed over my various smells — sorry, we’re going to be mixing our sensorial metaphors throughout, try to keep up — I put his meticulous approach to the exercise into action and slowly but surely, a structure began to emerge. I’m going to try and unpack it for you here.

So let’s begin with MacIntyre. I agree with him that, maybe (and it’s a whopper of a maybe) some people are intrinsically good, in the main, the vast majority of us are not “good” people, we become good by doing good. It’s a practice, not a state. So with farming – one isn’t naturally a farmer. One becomes a farmer. . . by farming. One becomes a shepherd by shepherding.

I became a shepherd by practicing shepherding — I went out with the sheep, spent time with them, kept them clean and fed, treated them when they were sick, sat with them while they birthed their babies, sat with them when they died. I learned responsibility, judgement, when to hold back and when to act. I learned husbandry. In MacIntyre’s view, I became a good shepherd by practicing good shepherding.

. . . So. . . how do we define “good”?

The Criteria for Good

In farming, as in so much of life, I can make my plans but there are often others outside my head who have a huge role to play in results. I can make my plans but that doesn’t mean the sheep will play along, alas. In a farming context, ideology is often more of a hindrance than a help because while it can tell you what “should be done,” it doesn’t take any of the non-speaking actors into account. The sheep simply don’t care and reality may not be what you expected.

Have you ever watched a sheep actually walk? Or a cow? Or a small child for that matter. None of them are particularly inclined to walk in a straight line. So it is with farming — you can line up all the variables (at least the ones you can think of) but the actual path often wanders off squint. I have the science that backs this up — fecal egg counts that show parasites when there’s no earthly reason for parasites. Soil tests that show deficiencies despite our careful applications of compost. Linear processes don’t guarantee desired outcomes. The farm gets a vote.

So the first criteria for determining what is good is paying attention. In order to work out the satisficing level of good, I have to pay attention, I must discipline myself to watch without expectation. What’s happening in front of me?

I must allow what I’m observing to alter what I believe.

Don’t get me wrong, like MacIntyre and Berry both, I believe principles are important. However, I also know that principles can become dogma if they don’t allow you to see the actual breathing thing in front of you. Good intentions and meticulous adherence are insufficient, in order to determine what is good, it must be rooted in the reality that’s in front of you, tempered by the on-the-ground facts staring you in the face. So our first discipline for determining good is observation. Paying attention.

Next, in deciding on “good”, we have to accept that optimization is NOT our currency. Good and “maximum” are not synonymous. In fact, like Berry in his counter-cultural stance, good and maximum may be antithetical. They may be in conflict.

Instead, determining our good may require us to ask another question entirely: “What is enough?”

Now just take a moment and let that little nugget sink in. This is — by far — the most renegade thing I’ve ever written. Consider all the ways and occasions when you’ve tried to work out — to strategize — how to get the most out of a given scenario. The most bang for your buck, the best view, the most return. It’s like breathing to us — in many ways, this perspective has become our very air, the lens we use to view a transactional world. Looks-maxxing, soft-maxxing, hard-maxxing, protein-maxxing, gym-maxxing, solo-maxxing, social-maxxing. . . I could go on. It’s everywhere, like maggots on rotten meat.

And then there’s Berry and Simon. Both of these gentlemen stand in the breach and in their own way, they’re each saying, “What is enough?” Our second discipline in determining good is right there. What decision can we make, what behaviour 0r attitude can we choose, that will allow enough to happen? Which of our abundant options will provide enough for future flourishing?

Moving on, I think that determining “good” requires feedback.

In my farming world, feedback tells me when I’ve gotten it wrong. It happens more often than I’d like to admit. . . Pride is such a pain in the ass. At any rate, feedback — permaculture principle number 4, as it happens — is like me tabulating the farm’s vote. I have built a farming system that tells me when I’m wrong, it provides an accountability mechanism that lets me down tools and go back to the beginning, back to paying attention. It’s my check-and-balance, the farm’s congress to my oval office (in a perfect world, anyway).

A healthy moral system requires contrary evidence because that’s how improvement happens.

I want to be good. I want to get better as a shepherd and a farmer. I need contrary feedback to do that so therefore, I have to build and protect a system that holds me to account. Accountability is not a punishment. It isn’t personal criticism. It is the mechanism that lets me — to go back to MacIntyre — practice doing better. When I know better, I do better. Thank you Madame Angelou.

And this brings up something I think is so important and so often goes unsaid in many of our worlds. . . I know I’m guilty of this often. In my world, I have a select few people who are allowed to tell me — nay, encouraged to tell me — when I’m wrong. They have to do it nicely of course but this is their job. It is their responsibility. My husband Bob is chief among them and I value – although I don’t always appreciate — his carefully-chosen and judiciously dispensed words of wisdom and correction. (Seriously, the man is a diplomat of the first order.) These folks are to be cherished and are utterly essential. Without them, we risk drifting into our own ego-centric myopia, back toward the prevailing individual aggrandizement of our current era.

Every time I don’t prioritize the maximum, I practise restraint.

Every time I look again rather than defend my choices, I practise humility.

Every time I notice and respond, I practise care.

Every time I go outside in horrifying weather, I practise responsibility.

Every time I make a decision and remain transparently accountable with the consequences, I practise courage.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.”

So how do I know what is good? Well, assuming all the disciplines I’ve outlined above have been considered carefully, I will go on to think about things like:

• Which decision allows the sheep to be their most sheep-like? What holds their welfare highest?
  
• Which of the available options allows for greater resilience within the system over the longest period of time? A decade from now, which choice will provide the greatest runway for future flourishing?
  
• Have I built in a sufficiently robust feedback mechanism to allow me to make a reasonable choice? Will I have enough information to course correct if necessary?
  
• Which choice lets me become part of the system rather than the driver? I am always aiming for a flat system rather than a hierarchy.

And finally, when all this is over and I am no longer the one who walks these pastures and hills, there is this, the ultimate question, the question every life, everywhere, must reconcile:

What did my choices make of me?

This is the heart of husbandry. Not merely of sheep and soil, nor the me focus of our hyper-individualistic era. This is the husbandry of character. It is the MacIntyre morality, the Berry landscape, the Simon sufficiency. I lived here. Was I responsible, accountable, honest, humble, careful and courageous?

It is by practicing that we become.

When we know better, we do better.

To Read More:

• Herbert A. Simon Nobel Lecture
• Alasdair MacIntyre After Virtue
• Wendell Berry “Less Is Enough,” Harper’s

This is a Living post, a post to share my thought processes, my experience and the philosophy that underpins our activities here at the homestead. It is not a how-to, “expert advice” or meant to reflect a wider experience than just my own, on my farm, here with my sheep.