About Us
Our Mission
The Berry Center is putting Wendell Berry’s writings to work by advocating for small farmers,
land-conserving communities, and healthy regional economies.
Our Story
When we consider these objectives, the remarkable accomplishments of three Kentuckians stand out. The works of author Wendell Berry, his father, lawyer and farmer John M. Berry, Sr., and his brother, state senator and lawyer, John M. Berry, Jr. reflect a single vision: a state and a nation of prosperous well-tended farms serving and supporting healthy local communities. The speeches, letters, manuscripts and articles of these men, especially as they pertain to agriculture in the state of Kentucky and the nation, are held and studied at The Archive of The Berry Center for study and dissemination.
The Agrarian Culture Center and Bookstore at The Berry Center develops cultural programming for rural readers, encouraging the preservation of local knowledge and pride of place for generations of people who are ever more distant from their agrarian roots.
Taken all together, The Berry Center promotes the vital connection between urban centers and the rural communities that surround them by collaborating closely and working actively alongside entities and institutions with complementary goals. We hope that you, too, will join us in this good and vital work.
Our Vision
Wendell Berry’s The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, published in 1977, awakened a national and global conversation on the dire state of agriculture. The Berry Center was launched in 2011 to continue this conversation and preserve the legacy of Wendell Berry’s work and writings and the exceptional agricultural contributions of his father John Berry, Sr., and his brother John Berry, Jr. We are putting these inspiring writings and histories into action through our Archive at the Berry Center, Agrarian Culture Center and Bookstore, Our Home Place Meat—a local beef initiative, and The Farm & Forest Institute. The core of our work is to advocate for farmers, land conserving communities, and healthy regional economies.
Our work seeks to provide solutions to essential issues that are rarely in public discourse and certainly not reflected in agricultural policies. “What will it take for farmers to be able to afford to farm well?” and “How do we become a culture that supports good farming and land use?” These are just a few of the questions that The Berry Center is addressing. We believe that the answers—while firmly rooted in local work—are central to solving some of the world’s most pressing problems including the devastation of natural resources and biodiversity; rapid onset of climate change; economic and social inequities; and the collapse of healthy farming and rural communities.
Visitors from all over the world travel to The Berry Center to visit our archive and neighboring Agrarian Culture Center and Bookstore and learn about our agricultural programs. Located in the handsome 1820 Oldham House in downtown New Castle, Kentucky, we are becoming a principle destination for historians, researchers, students, and agrarian leaders seeking information and history that is difficult to find or even unavailable.
Learn More About Our Initiatives
The Berry Center Director
MARY BERRY
Executive Director
The Berry Center Executive Director Mary Berry and her brother, Den Berry, were raised by their parents, Wendell and Tanya Berry, at Lanes Landing Farm in Henry County, Kentucky from the time she was six years old. She attended Henry County public schools and graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1981. She farmed for a living in Henry County starting out in dairy farming, growing Burley tobacco, and later diversifying to organic vegetables, pastured poultry and grass fed beef.
Mary is married to Trimble County, Kentucky farmer, Steve Smith, who started the first Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farming endeavor in the state of Kentucky. If daughters Katie Johnson, Virginia Aguilar and Tanya Smith choose to stay in Henry County, they will be the ninth generation of their family to live and farm there.
Mary currently serves on the Boards of Directors of United Citizens Bank in New Castle, Kentucky, the Schumacher Center for a New Economics in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and Sterling College in Vermont. She speaks all over the country as a proponent of agriculture of the middle, in defense of small farmers, and in the hope of restoring a culture and an economy that has been lost in rural America. Her writings have appeared in various publications and collections, including “Letters to a Young Farmer: On Food, Farming, and Our Future” (Princeton Agricultural Press, 2016) and the introduction for a new edition of essays, “Our Sustainable Table”, Robert Clark, ed. (Counterpoint, 2017).
The Berry Center Staff
VIRGINIA BERRY AGUILAR
Director, The Agrarian Culture Center and Bookstore at The Berry Center
Virginia Aguilar is the ninth generation of her family to be raised in Henry County, Kentucky. After graduating from Bellarmine University in 2007 with an honors degree in history, she became a founding faculty member at Louisville Classical Academy where she taught history, ancient languages, art, and served as middle school principal.
In 2016, after eight years of teaching, Virginia joined The Berry Center where she currently serves as director of the Agrarian Cultural Center and Bookstore at The Berry Center. In her time at The Berry Center she has overseen the development of the Agrarian Literary League, a nationally recognized rural reading program, and the annual Kentucky Arts and Letters Day. In 2018 Virginia and her husband Ben were able to move home to Henry County and they welcomed their daughter, Lucinda Dee, in the spring of 2020.
DR. LEAH BAYENS
Director, Farm and Forest Institute
Dr. Leah Bayens is a lifelong Kentuckian. Soon after graduating from high school in Louisville, she settled into her family’s Boyle County home place for over twenty years before relocating in 2019 to Port Royal with her partner, Bruce, and their son, Burley. Leah earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in literature from Eastern Kentucky University. In 2011, she completed a doctorate in English from the University of Kentucky, where she studied 19th century American literature, environmental humanities, and agrarian cultural studies.
Since 2012, she has contributed to The Berry Center’s work by developing an agriculture education curriculum that applies Wendell Berry’s writing to learning. Leah founded the Berry Farming and Ecological Agrarianism Program at St. Catharine College, where she also served as Chair of the Department of Earth Studies. From 2018-2023, she was Dean and faculty member of the Wendell Berry Farming Program of Sterling College. Leah led the adaptation of this curriculum to a community education format, now called the Farm and Forest Institute, which she directs.
Leah teaches courses that highlight cultural aspects of farming: agrarian thought and arts, agricultural history, and cooperative rural leadership. Her humanities-based field experiences combine with the Institute’s hands-on study in fields, forests, and pastures to form a deeper understanding of agrarianism—“a way of thought based on land,” as Wendell Berry puts it.
Leah’s research has been published in Working for Social Justice: Inside and Outside the Classroom, Appalachian Heritage, The Whole Horse Project, The Notebook: A Journal for Rural Women and Girls, and What Kind of Ancestor Do You Want to Be?
MICHELE GUTHRIE
Archivist, The Archive of The Berry Center
Michele Guthrie grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, went to the University of Kentucky and graduated with a degree in Special Education in 1973. She moved to Louisville after graduation and taught in the Louisville City School System, later the Jefferson County Public Schools. She married Jim Guthrie in 1975 and soon afterwards they purchased the farm in Henry County near the Kentucky River where they have lived now for thirty-eight years. They have three children, Joe, Rosalie and Paige.
In 1994 she received her master’s degree from Spalding University in Louisville as a school library media specialist. She worked for the Carroll County Pubic Schools as a library media specialist, the Kentucky Department of Education as the Kentucky Education Technology System coordinator/consultant for Region 8, then for the Oldham County Public Schools as library media specialist at La Grange Elementary School until her retirement in 2011.
In the summer of 2011 she was hired by The Berry Center as an archivist and librarian to curate an agrarian collection of books and materials and to organize, catalog and preserve the records of the Berry Family particularly as pertains to their work in public service, culture and agriculture, and advocacy for farmers and land-conserving communities in our state and the country.
DARRA SMITH
Office Manager, The Berry Center
Darra Smith joined The Berry Center’s work in 2015 as the office manager. Darra has over 20 years’ managerial and administrative experience. She spent 18 years serving as District Manager in the drinking water industry and has a strong water quality and customer service record. She and her husband, Tim Smith, live on their farm on the Little Kentucky River in Trimble County, Kentucky. They have two children, Casey and Kelly. Darra handles bookkeeping, invoicing and customer service.
BEN AGUILAR
Director Of Operations
Ben Aguilar joined The Berry Center as Director of Operations in 2018 after many years of teaching and technical production in academic settings in Louisville, as well as agricultural work in rural Kentucky. He was raised in Lexington, Kentucky and holds a B.A. and M.S. from Bellarmine University, and is glad to be working on the ground for people who work with the ground.
He is also glad to have moved with his wife, Virginia, near to her family’s home place in Henry County, where they are raising their daughter Lucinda, now a 10th-generation Henry Countian.
Ben is the editor of For The Hog Killing, 1979: Photographs by Tanya Amyx Berry (University Press of Kentucky, 2019), and hopes to document and preserve more of the agrarian history of the country going forward.
BETH DOUGLAS
Director, Our Home Place Meat
The Berry Center Board Of Directors
MARY BERRY
The Berry Center Executive Director Mary Berry and her brother, Den Berry, were raised by their parents, Wendell and Tanya Berry, at Lanes Landing Farm in Henry County, Kentucky from the time she was six years old. She attended Henry County public schools and graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1981. She farmed for a living in Henry County starting out in dairy farming, growing Burley tobacco, and later diversifying to organic vegetables, pastured poultry and grass fed beef.
Mary is married to Trimble County, Kentucky farmer, Steve Smith, who started the first Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farming endeavor in the state of Kentucky. If daughters Katie Johnson, Virginia Aguilar and Tanya Smith choose to stay in Henry County, they will be the ninth generation of their family to live and farm there.
Mary currently serves on the Boards of Directors of United Citizens Bank in New Castle, Kentucky, the Schumacher Center for a New Economics in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and Sterling College in Vermont. She speaks all over the country as a proponent of agriculture of the middle, in defense of small farmers, and in the hope of restoring a culture and an economy that has been lost in rural America. Her writings have appeared in various publications and collections, including “Letters to a Young Farmer: On Food, Farming, and Our Future” (Princeton Agricultural Press, 2016) and the introduction for a new edition of essays, “Our Sustainable Table”, Robert Clark, ed. (Counterpoint, 2017).
KATHERINE DALTON BOYER
Katherine Dalton Boyer has worked for magazines in New York and Illinois and written for publications ranging from the Wall Street Journal to the University Bookman to the online magazine frontporchrepublic.com. After moving back to her home state of Kentucky in the 1990s, she ran a communications business for clients that included Rohm and Haas and GE Appliances. She has contributed to the books Wendell Berry: Life and Work and the forthcoming Localism in the Mass Age: A Front Porch Republic Manifesto. She and her family live in Louisville.
JOHN LOGAN BRENT
John Logan Brent lives with his wife Lori, and children Gracie, Morgan, and Jake on their 160 acre farm in Turners Station, KY. John Logan has many passions, at the top of the list are his faith, family, farm, and community.
At a very young age John Logan discovered a passion for raising and growing things. Along with this passion, he developed a deep love for the people, places, and agrarian culture of his Henry County Home. In 2003, he was elected to his first term as Henry County Judge/Executive. At that time he was the youngest person in the state to hold the position. He currently is his fourth term of service to his community. He and his family raise tobacco, cattle, and hay on several family small farms. They have been selling finished beef off the farm to individuals for a number of years. After years of driving long distances for farmstead meat processing, John Logan was very involved in bringing Trackside Butcher Shoppe to the community in 2015.
John Logan graduated from Henry County High School, the University of Kentucky, and attended a post graduate program at Harvard University. In addition to the Berry Center Board, John Logan serves on the Baptist Hospital Lagrange Board, the United Citizens Bank Board, the County Extension Board, and he chairs the Tri-County Community Action Agency Board.
CHRISTY BROWN
Christina (Christy) Brown is originally from Frederick, Maryland and has lived in Louisville, Kentucky since 1968 when she married Owsley Brown II. Christy is a proud mother of three and grandmother of nine. She co-founded the Center for Interfaith Relations in 1985 and went on to launch the first US Festival of Faiths in Louisville. She believes passionately in the potential of faith communities to effect positive change by working together, at the same time celebrating their commonalities and differences.
Christy is an International Trustee of Religions for Peace, the worlds largest international interfaith organization. She is currently serving on the board of the Sustainable Food Trust in England, The Land Institute in Kansas, The Center for Interfaith Relations, The Louisville Orchestra Board, and Riverfieds of Louisville. To bring about the kinds of changes that will help people live healthier lives, she founded and is currently serving as the board chair for a new organization, The Institute of Healthy Air, Water and Soil. The Institute is leading the nation is creating new models that empower “citizen scientists” to reveal the connections between environmental health and human health.
BONNIE CECIL
Bonnie Cecil was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. She taught primary-aged students in Jefferson County Public Schools for thirty years. During those years she developed a personal style and curriculum that went beyond classroom walls. Students took frequent field trips to parks, nature preserves, libraries, museums, theatres and community events, and participated in two three-day camping trips yearly.
In 1980-1981 she was accepted into the Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program and taught primary students in London, England. In 1992 she was named an Ashland Oil Teacher Achiever for innovation in the classroom. In 1993 she was named Kentucky Elementary School Teacher of the Year, and went on to be named Kentucky’s Teacher of the year. In 1994 she was recognized as a Milken Family Foundation National Educator. Today, she operates The Little School in New Castle, Kentucky, for preschool and primary aged students.
She has served on The Berry Center Board since its inception in 2010. As the Center’s first development director she helped to plan and co-ordinate “The Resettling of America Conference” in 2012. She currently serves on the board’s Education Committee.
She also served as a deacon at Port Royal Baptist Church, Port Royal, Kentucky, 2011-2013, and 2016-2018.
Along with her husband, John Grant, Ms. Cecil owns and operates a 200-acre ridgetop farm in Henry County, Kentucky. In addition to tending a kitchen garden and watching their flock of chickens instead of TV, they raise cheviot sheep for market.
LOIS MATEUS
Lois Mateus is a fifth generation Kentucky farmer who owns Tallgrass Farm, a
1000 acre hay and cattle operation and wildlife preserve in Mercer county.
She is a former senior vice president of Brown Forman, where she was executive
director of corporate communications and services for twenty-six years. With
CEO Owsley Brown, she launched Brown-Forman’s Sustainability Initiative and
was a major shareholder for the company’s creation of Woodford Reserve
bourbon.
She was co-founder of the Slow Food Bluegrass chapter and is a former board
member of Partners for Family Farms, the International Association of Culinary
Professionals’ Culinary Trust, and the Center for Inter Faith Relations.
She is on the board and former chair of the University of Kentucky’s Institute for
Rural Journalism and Community Issues, and a past recipient of the University’s
Lifetime Achievement Award in Communications and Public Relations. She has
served on the boards of Lenox China and Hartmann Luggage and currently is on
the boards of Hindman Settlement School and the Kentucky Humanities Council.
She is president of Tallgrass Farm Foundation (www.tallgrassfarmfoundation.org)
and in 2021 created the Tallgrass Endowment Fund at the University of Kentucky
College of Agriculture, Food, and Sustainability.
STEVE DOUGLAS
Steve Douglas is a Henry County farmer and businessman, and the proud father and grandfather of farmers and future farmers. After graduating from Eastern Kentucky University, he began an extensive background in financial services, serving in various leadership roles at agriculturally focused lending firms and in the banking industry. He brought this extensive experience to serve The Berry Center first as volunteer bookkeeping support and adviser, and now as interim treasurer.
MAGGIE KEITH
Maggie Keith is a fourth-generation steward of Foxhollow Farm, a Biodynamic Farm Community in Crestwood, Kentucky. In 2007, Maggie used her business degree and love of food and the outdoors to convert her family’s 1300-acre farm from a conventional three-crop rotation operation to a Biodynamic farm raising grassfed beef. Since 2008, Maggie has been selling and marketing 100% grassfed beef. In 2017, she grew the business, launching Foxhollow Delivery, a subscription delivery service bringing Foxhollow Farm’s grassfed beef to homes throughout the continental USA. For the past 11 years, she and her Mom have worked together with the head herdsman of Foxhollow to grow their herd from 30 to 450 beef cattle. They have also built a community of fellow entrepreneurial Biodynamic farmers who work and live on Foxhollow Farm.
Along with managing the business operations of the farm, Maggie is passionate about growing, harvesting, and cooking food! She grows a variety of heirloom vegetables, along with a pick your own pumpkin patch. Maggie is a co-host of the television show, The Farmer and The Foodie and serves on the board of Dare to Care Food Bank. Her goals are to grow more farmers, advocate for grassfed beef and Biodynamic Farming, and encourage everyone to take the time to enjoy a meal around the table with friends and family. Maggie lives on Foxhollow Farm with her two young children and husband, Benton Keith.
LORI COLLINS-HALL
Lori Collins-Hall is the interim president at Sterling College. Lori has spent twenty-five years in higher education as a scholar-practitioner, engaging students in transformative learning opportunities and high-impact community engagement, including community-based service-learning, coalition building, and work-based education. Prior to her roles in administration, Lori was a tenured faculty member, department chair, and assessment coordinator. As a Teagle Scholar she did extensive work examining pedagogical models of experiential learning and assessment, with particular attention to small liberal arts schools.
Support The Berry Center
Years Of History
Preserved in The Archive Of The Berry Center, informing agrarian thought and practice, helping to chart a way forward for sustainable farming and rural prosperity.
Farmers & Community Members
Working towards a full-time, tuition-free sustainable farming degree right here in Henry County, Kentucky, in our Farm & Forest Institute.
Agrarian Books
Distributed by the Agrarian Literary League, a nationally recognized adult rural reading program from the Agrarian Culture Center and Bookstore at The Berry Center
Acres conserved
By Our Home Place Meat farmers, raising and processing the best livestock locally and humanely in a program based on the Burley tobacco cooperative model.
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