Reclaiming the Commons: Community Farms and Forests in a New England Town. - Review - book review

American Forests, Autumn, 2000 by Carl Reidel

Reclaiming the Commons: Community Farms and Forests in a New England Town by Brian Donahue, $27.50.

Here's a handbook for people living in America's suburbs who want to protect and sustain their communities' natural landscapes. It is the author's story of founding Land's Sake, a community farm and forest in Weston, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. He tells it with humor and honesty about the successes and failures of the venture.

Author Brian Donahue explains how citizens of Weston, working with the town's Conservation Commission, protected 2,000 acres of common land--a quarter of the town. Employing young people, they created a 25-acre community vegetable, fruit, and flower garden, managed the 1,500-acre town forest for firewood and maple syrup, and developed a 65-mile trail system. Details about the never-ending tasks on this suburban farm give the story a personal quality.

The principles that shape Land's Sake's farming and forestry practices are the "ecological, economical, educational, and esthetic." Although ecology came first. the economic imperative was strong, and the educational principle was "perhaps the most important," the author writes. He adds, "In a way, the esthetic principle was a mere consequence of getting the other three right."

This is a tale of good philosophy being sound in practice. Howard Dean, the environmental governor of Vermont, describes it as "a well observed journey from a spiritually based environmentalism to a more pragmatic sustainability. I recommend it to those who love the earth and want a practical guide for how to save it." I agree.