Voices from the Farm: Adventures in Community Living

Rating:
Summary: Excellent perspective on communal living and human nature
Review: Ironically, I grew up in a small town close to The Farm, but never knew much about it. A friend asked me about it, and when forced to confront my ignorance on the subject I purchased the book to correct that shortcoming. Little did I know how much I was about to be entertained!

Voices from The Farm is written--as a book on the communal living experience should be--by a number of the folks who participated. It is a collection of stories that together summarize the experience of the members, and the life-cycle of the community.

The Farm and its various off-shoots accomplished some great humanitarian feats in the face of the suspicion and prejudice of its neighbors. Winning over those neighbors provides some of the most entertaining tales in the book. However, the biggest obstacles seem--as with human society in general--to be rooted in the human nature of the members of The Farm community.

This book is a great, entertaining collection of stories that together tell the tale of a marvelous exercise in social science and community economics. Excellent work by the editors in preserving, selecting, and arranging the individual contributions to tell the story of The Farm.