Living at Nature's Pace: Farming and the American Dream

Gene Logsdon is, in his way, just as "revisionist" as many of the historians I've found myself reading lately. He challenges many of the orthodoxies of the "farm crisis" we city folk have been hearing about for decades, arguing that in fact most of the farms succumbing to economic pressure are large-scale "factory farms" that have been uneconomically overextended from the very beginning. Small, family-owned farms that resist the lure of going into debt to purchase more land, more chemicals, and more expensive machinery tend, he argues, to do just fine. Logsdon's prime example of this is the Amish farms of his native Ohio, whose owners have grown positively rich (especially by their own standards) by keeping their farms to manageable size.

Another of Logsdon's key points, especially worth thinking about, concerns the misleading nature of economic calculation as it is frequently applied to farming. Is raising livestock, as well as crops, and using the manure to fertilize your fields a cost, or a cost-savings, relative to using expensive chemicals? What is the value of working with your family on a small farm versus hiring hands to work a larger one? Logsdon raises many questions about "cost" versus "value" that are worth contemplating, even by those of us in the suburbs.

The book begins with contrary, sometimes (by his own admission) angry essays about the economics of farming and the general uselessness of university agricultural-education programs. But they soon transition into portrayals of farming life that are both idyllic (in the original sense) and subtly instructive. The three closing essays ("closing" in this edition; they're toward the middle in "Living at Nature's Pace"), "A Woodcutter's Pleasures," "The Pond at the Center of the Universe," and "My Wilderness," are all deeply moving.

This was my first exposure to Gene Logsdon's work, but it definitely won't be my last. I'm planning on tracking down his many other titles as well. As a third (or more) generation child of the suburbs, my connection to the farm is somewhat attenuated. But Logsdon's writing makes me feel closer to it nonetheless, and it's a feeling I find myself really appreciating.


Wendell Berry in a raspberry patch. Wonderful!   May 24, 2000
Jeff M. Chambers (Lincoln, NE USA)
11 out of 11 found this review helpful

This book introduced me to Logsdon work. I've since read it over several times. He speaks what he thinks with no varnish of correctness. Incredibly refreshing these days. Covers apsects of rural society in the modern world. For an outsider that wishes to gain some perspective on the "problem" and the promise of rural America this is a great place to start and finish up.


It's been done before, but rarely better than this.   November 17, 1997
11 out of 11 found this review helpful

Gene Logsdon, writing from anger and experience, has put together a collection of poignant, and persistent essays. His discomfort follows you long after you have envisioned a strip of grains from the midwest to Florida, the workings of dung beetles, and the mission of the "contrary farmer." Logsdon gives insight into the weaknesses of industrial agriculture and how its woes are most painfully obvious in rural communities. Such a reasonable subject is rarely taken on so furiously and so well...Logsdon has become a spokesman worthy of friend Wendell Berry's praise as the finest of the farmer essayists.