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

Gene Logsdon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2000

For decades, Logsdon and his family have run a viable family farm. Along the way, he has become a widely influential journalist and social critic, documenting in hundreds of essays for national and regional magazines the crisis in conventional agri-business and the boundless potential for new forms of farming that reconcile tradition with ecology.
Logsdon reminds us that healthy and economical agriculture must work "at nature's pace," instead of trying to impose an industrial order on the natural world. Foreseeing a future with "more farmers, not fewer," he looks for workable models among the Amish, among his lifelong neighbors in Ohio, and among resourceful urban gardeners and a new generation of defiantly unorthodox organic growers creating an innovative farmers-market economy in every region of the country.
"To love farming--real farming--in this day and time requires what a lot of people like to call crankiness but is in fact courage. . . . I have been reading Gene Logsdon for many years, and I have always taken courage from him. I thank him, and I shake his hand."
--Wendell Berry
Nature knows how to grow plants and raise animals; it is human beings who are in danger of losing this age-old expertise, substituting chemical additives and artificial technologies for the traditional virtues of fertility, artistry, and knowledge of natural processes. This new edition of Logsdon's important collection of essays and articles (first published by Pantheon in 1993) contains six new chapters taking stock of American farm life at this turn of the century.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this collection of essays reprinted from a variety of farm journals, a fourth-generation farmer in north-central Ohio looks at the current state of the family farm with cautious optimism. But Logsdon is sharply critical of agricultural education, charging that land grant colleges pay more attention to agribusiness and technology than to the moderate-size family farm. In one essay, he explores the relationship between farming and nature, tracing a cowpat full cycle to show how pastures and livestock complete the food web. The author talks to Amish farmers who illustrate exemplary care of the land; he describes small specialty farms, urban gardeners and organic farmers. He advocates a traditional farm with mixed livestock, crops, garden and orchard. Readers who garden or farm will be heartened by these essays.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Logsdon is a farm writer and keen observer of the trends in American agriculture. In this collection of essays, written over a 12-year period (1980-92), he identifies the factors responsible for the decline of American agriculture and the demise of rural communities. Using his native Ohio as an example, he holds farmers, land grant colleges, farm organizations, and government officials accountable for sacrificing the long-term good in favor of short-term gains by operating farms that are labor- and chemical-intensive and economically and environmentally unsound. He predicts a rebirth of small-scale, profitable farms around the country using sustainable practices that will change the nation's attitudes concerning agriculture. Logsdon spent time observing an Amish community and was impressed by their formula for survival--a mixture of self-sufficiency, sustainable farming business acumen, and family life. Recommended for all readers who long for a return to traditional farming practices. --Irwin Weintraub, Rutgers Univ. Libs., Piscataway, N.J.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 250 pages
• Publisher: Chelsea Green; Revised edition (February 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 189013256X
• ISBN-13: 978-1890132569
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #220,988 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #70 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Agricultural Sciences > Sustainable Agriculture

More About the Author

Gene Logsdon farms in Upper Sandusky, Ohio. He is one of the clearest and most original voices of rural America. He has published more that a dozen books; his Chelsea Green books include Living at Nature's Pace, The Contrary Farmer's Invitation to Gardening, Good Spirits, and The Contrary Farmer.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars He's mad as hell and writes straight-from-the-shoulder, May 8, 2000

By 

GENE GERUE "Author, Find Your Ideal Country Home" (Zanoni, MO USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Living at Nature's Pace: Farming and the American Dream (Paperback)

Gene Logsdon, The Contrary Farmer, is that rare prolific writer who continues to delight me with the breadth of his subject knowledge. He knows modern American farm life as it really is, not only its hard-wrought joy but its deep, dark underbelly. Here he exposes the sad facts of crop subsidies and their effect on people who before political propaganda and intervention had the common sense to farm on a family scale and enjoyed the satisfaction that derived therefrom. Tractors that cost more than a farm should cost. Soil death by toxic chemicals and erosion. The criminal collusion (my words, not Logsdon's) of land grant agriculture colleges, equipment companies, chemical companies and politicians. The stupidity of laws that put Amish minister Henry Hershberger in jail for building a superior house but without a permit because of his religious beliefs. Logsdon also shows what works. The Kemp farm of Jerusalem, Ohio, with only 140 acres but a carefully built herd of cows whose pedigree commands value nationwide. A Berkeley, California, "farm" of one-third acre that grosses more than $300,000. The Amish farmers, whose success embarrasses agribusiness practitioners. Logsdon cares about people and nature. He is mad as hell and speaks plainly. He also has vision. "If we want to remake an agriculture that is technically correct for sustainability, we must make sure it is also culturally correct, or the effort will not succeed."

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wendell Berry in a raspberry patch. Wonderful!, May 24, 2000

By 

Jeff M. Chambers "jchambers1" (Lincoln, NE USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Living at Nature's Pace: Farming and the American Dream (Paperback)

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.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The garden at the center of the universe, April 18, 2003

By 

Andrew S. Rogers (Stamford, Connecticut) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: At Nature's Pace: Farming and the American Dream (Hardcover)

The volume titled "At Nature's Pace" is an earlier edition of the better-known one released several years later, with a half-dozen or so additional essays, under the title "Living at Nature's Pace." Not having read the latter yet, I can't comment on what the extra essays added to the ones originally collected. But I can say that I'm definitely looking forward to reading them.

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.