What is a peasant? A humble person, one of low rank; the lowest class. Uneducated and unchanging. Crude, coarse, boorish, ignorant. In need of progress. Those notions have stuck to it, but it’s worth returning to the word’s original meaning. The English word (borrowed from French) began to harness associations of rustic poverty in the early fifteenth century, but the Old French païsant means, simply, a country person. Pays (“countryside”) is from the Latin, pagus, which refers to a country district, a locality and its community. In its origins, the word simply meant person who lived on, and by, the land.

What might our peasant ancestors teach about living closer to the earth?