Without a Farmhouse Near

by Deborah Rawson

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345353870
• ISBN13: 9780345353870
• Release Date: July 1989
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 215 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Finger on the Pulse

This book is an exploration into the factors behind the suburbanization of an American farming community. When I first picked up this book, I did a double-take as I read the blurb on the cover "The story of Jericho and Underhill, two traditional Vermont communities in transition-from dairy farms to the suburbs." Since my arrival in Vermont ten years ago, I had always thought of Jericho and Underhill as rich suburbs of Burlington, and never had an inkling that these communities had been rural just a short time ago. In this book, Rawson, a first-generation New Yorker, interviews her Vermont relatives, the last generation in her family to make their living on the land. Over the course of 3 years (1985-1988), Rawson observes the development in Jericho and Underhill. She talks with her relatives, their neighbors, and local politicians to try to understand why farming seems to be on the way out in the area. The reasons for the agricultural decline are myriad. People coming to work at the IBM plant need housing, and their demands have increased land values. Increased land values make for increased property taxes, which are a greater burden for farmers than others because farms require larger plots of land than single-family houses. Technological improvements over the past 40 years have greatly increased farm efficiencies, but require much higher capital and maintenance costs. As a result, farms have to be bigger just to break even, but bigger farms require hiring outside labor. But with large employers like IBM in town, it's next to impossible for farms to find people willing to do tough farm labor for low farm wages. Residents and politicians alike shake their heads in dismay. They want to see farms continue to form a substantial part of the landscape, but they don't know how to successfully address the problems. Meanwhile, the farmers are getting on in years, and their kids either aren't interested in farming or they can't afford to buy their way in. As the farmers reach an age at which they can no longer actively farm, they need money for retirement, making developers' outrageous offers for purchasing their land overwhelmingly enticing. It's hard to see a way out of this quagmire that doesn't involve seeing farmland become suburbs. Land trusts make a valiant effort to save some of the land for farming or conservation, but their resources are limited. For the most part, this book is quite well written. Rawson does an admirable job of introducing us to the people in the area, explaining their backgrounds and motivations. In a few places, she gets bogged down in detail, but mostly the story flows rapidly from page to page.