The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 16 December 2011
edited by Richard Wizansky
This 1973 book is edited by Wizansky, but it was authored by twelve members of a Vermont communal farm, along with words from another twelve friends and family. It is a communal document of a communal experiment, one of the many that took place in the counterculture years of the late sixties and early seventies. The book relates each of the authors' personal experiences on the farm. The essays and stories and poems relate everyday life, the work and economy of the farm, and how it came to be. We read of their discoveries in farming fruits, vegetables, grains and animals. They slaughter pigs for meat, milk a cow and a goat, dig wells for water, press apples for hard cider, and do the hard work that keeps a farm going. There are even several food recipes included, the kind of food that gives hippies the energy to get some things done. They do it all with their unique countercultural attitude. Profit is not the goal of the farm, nor is luxury. They relish only the work that needs to be done and then relish the leisure they've earned every day. The tone of the various pieces carries a common thread through the story. It says "this is what we tried to do, this is how we did it, and this is who we are." A bunch of young and mostly urban individuals went back to the land to learn a thing or two about living simply, and to project their vision of life out to the wider world. They wanted to transform themselves as well as others, to have a somewhat medieval view of work and sustainability. In the end, that might have been a little naive. The realities of making a farm work, and interpersonal conflict must have put a lot of strain on the project. In this book, however, there is only a little mention of tension between individual members of the commune. Maybe those got worked out by the time the book was written. Maybe by that time, too, those people who didn't fit in with the project had moved on, like Ray Mungo, whose farewell letters punctuate the end of the book. The farm itself is no longer a commune, more than forty years later, but one of its members, Verandah Porche still lives there. So the place has kept its magnetism for at least one resident. One would be interested to know what the others now think of this period in their lives. As they tell it, in a refreshingly direct manner for the era, it sounds like a workingman's paradise of honest labor and languid leisure in a beautiful New England landscape. It is often quite sweet in its tone, and the reader may come away wanting to try out some of its recipes or learn a thing or two about farming. At least three other books came out of Total Loss Farm (or, as it was also known, Packer Corners). The place is better documented than most other back to the land communes.
See Also:
[Total Loss Farm by Raymond Mungo]
[Burnt Toast by Peter Gould]
[Country Commune Cooking by Lucy Horton]