Reclaiming the Commons: Community Farms and Forests in a New England Town [Hardcover]

Brian Donahue (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0300076738 | ISBN-13: 978-0300076738 | Publication Date: August 11, 1999 | Edition: 1st

This book is a lively account of a community working to combat suburban sprawl and discover how to live responsibly on the land. A founder of the Land's Sake community farm in Weston, Massachusetts, Brian Donahue describes the joys and sorrows of farming in the suburbs. He calls for every community to protect its common land, establish community farms, and engaged citizens with the land on which they live.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The title of Donahue's visionary, green blueprint for transforming the face of America's suburbs is no mere metaphor. He wants each suburb or town in the U.S. to establish a local commons, a swath of the surrounding countryside that would be jointly owned by the citizens and used for local, sustainable food production, forestry or both. Donahue, who teaches American environmental studies at Brandeis, speaks from hands-on experience: in 1980, he and fellow activists launched Land's Sake, a nonprofit community farm in the Boston suburb of Weston, Mass., a model of organic farming and local self-reliance. To critics who blast the local commons concept as a form of creeping socialism, Donahue replies that common land ownershipAa system brought over from EnglandAwas an important yet largely forgotten feature of the first New England towns. His grassroots, dirt-under-the-fingernails autobiography is interwoven with an eco-history of New England, showing how the mixed husbandry practiced by colonial farmers gave way to commercial livestock production, which ultimately yielded to today's factory farms, automotive suburbs and clogged cities. Donahue advocates a national shift away from agribusiness toward increased local food production for reasons of health, energy conservation, climatic stability, and reduction of pollution, pesticide use and fossil fuel consumption. His radically conservative manifesto offers new approaches to make suburbia economically healthy, more livable and ecologically balanced. Photos. (June)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Environmentalist Donahue appeals to suburbanites to protect farmland by using the land for small nonprofit community farms. His observations are based on the 25 years he has spent helping to operate community farms in the Boston suburb of Weston. Donahue describes the experience of creating a farm that grows fruits, flowers, and vegetables using organic methods. He recounts the successes, failures, and hard lessons learned about ecology, agriculture, and sociology. His suggestions aren't meant to replace private farming but to move Americans who voice concerns about the environment from a passive to an aggressive stance that gets them engaged with the land. Donahue combines social and natural history to examine how our culture and economy favor development and consumerism at the expense of the environment. His message is aimed at the suburbs because of their proximity to rural areas and because they epitomize irrational development, with sprawling subdivisions and commuter traffic. This book is an engaging look at environmental issues and what can be done beyond hand-wringing. Vanessa Bush

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 349 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; 1st edition (August 11, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300076738
• ISBN-13: 978-0300076738
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #215,634 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book that will inspire action, May 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Reclaiming the Commons: Community Farms and Forests in a New England Town (Hardcover)

In Reclaiming the Commons, Brian Donahue has given us a remarkable portrait of a thriving community farm in Weston, Massachusetts called Land's Sake. In 1980 the nonprofit organization Land's Sake was formed in Weston, a suburb of Boston, to work closely with the town's Conservation Commission on managing and using the town's growing public land. Its three founding principles were to care ecologically for Weston's land, to involve the community and especially young people with the land, and to be as self-supporting as possible through the sale of products and services. By thinking of the land as a rural space that could "benefit from our presence, rather than need to be protected from us," they opened the possibility that they could engage suburban youth with the land and produce high-quality natural products for local sale, offering ample educational and recreational activities while striking "a balance between protecting natural ecosystems and making sustainable, productive use of the land."

Land's Sake sends about one-fifth of their fresh organic produce to Boston's homeless shelters and food pantries, as well as sponsoring a Harvest for Hunger every September, thus ensuring that their surplus finds an assured wholesale market (the town pays the price to send the food to the inner city) which benefits the disadvantaged and disenfranchised in the nearby urban areas. Donahue shows that suburbia "is the condition of residing outside the city proper with little functional connection to one's neighbors, aside from the schools, and almost no functional connection to the land," and he shows that community farms on common land offer a vibrant opportunity to keep farmland from being lost to development, and to transform the suburban condition from alienation to connection. This is a surprisingly powerful and exciting book that will show suburban and city readers how to become more connected to their land and to their source of food.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a fresh approach to sustainable suburban living., August 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Reclaiming the Commons: Community Farms and Forests in a New England Town (Hardcover)

This book,written by a newcomer in the environmental landscape, will become a landmark. It points the way to transform the suburban way of life into one that is sustainable.This it would do by converting suburban open spaces into community sanctuaries for agriculture,husbandry and forestry, administered by suburbanites themselves,especially by their youngsters.The great strength of the proposals is that they have been demonstrated to work by the author and his associates in the upscale Boston suburb of Weston. Another plus is the grace and humor with which the book is blessed.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read!, July 19, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Reclaiming the Commons: Community Farms and Forests in a New England Town (Paperback)

Reclaiming the Commons is an excellent read for anyone interested in the natural history of New England, community farming, open space issues, and the value of farms in the landscape. This is a well written, thoughtful book that offers an inspiring vision for a future of locally produced food, protected farmland, and community involvement that farms help to create.