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

Brian Donahue

Yale University Press, Mar 1, 2001 - Nature - 352 pages

This book is a lively account of a community working to combat suburban sprawl, to protect a large part of the landscape as common land, and to enjoy the land productively in an ecologically sustainable way. Based on the practical experience of one New England town, the book urges suburban environmentalists to go beyond preserving open space to actively engaging people with the places where they live. Brian Donahue, an environmental historian, in 1980 was a founder of Land's Sake, a community farm in Weston, Massachusetts. Working with the town's Conservation Commission, Land's Sake cultivates a twenty-five-acre organic fruit, flower, and vegetable farm, makes apple cider and maple syrup, maintains a sixty-five-mile trail system, harvests firewood and timber from fifteen hundred acres of town forest, and has kept draft horses and sheep. Donahue recounts the joys and sorrows of farming the suburbs. But beneath the light hearted tales of sheep straying into tennis courts and middle-school students tapping sugar maples in the town cemetery runs an incisive ecological history of New England and a penetrating analysis of how to live responsibly with this difficult but rewarding land. Donahue concludes with a call for all places to protect common land and establish community farms-especially in the suburbs, where most Americans live and where, like it or not, environmentalists may make their most lasting mark on the world.

What people are saying

Review: Reclaiming the Commons: Community Farms and Forests in a New England Town

User Review  - Kristymiller320 - Goodreads

Again, I did not have the chance to finish this book. It was very interesting and informative, maybe a little too detailed. Continued to support my interest in community farming/growing and buying local food. Especially relevant because we are living in New England right now.

Review: Reclaiming the Commons: Community Farms and Forests in a New England Town

User Review  - Ivy - Goodreads

This is actually a book about the farm I worked on outside of Boston, written by a 20-year Board member who is a professor of environmental studies at Brandeis. It is quite fascinating to see how they ...

About the author

Brian Donahue is associate professor of American environmental studies on the Jack Meyerhoff Foundation, Brandeis University.

Bill Vitek is associate professor of philosophy at Clarkson University. He is the author of several books, including "Promising, Rooted in the Land: Essays on Community and Place "and "Applying Philosophy,"

Wes Jackson is the president of the Land Institute and former professor at Kansas Wesleyan and California State universities. He is the author of several books, including "Rooted in the Land: Essays on Community and Place," "Becoming Native to This Place," and "Altars of an Unhewn Stone,"

Bibliographic information

• Title: Reclaiming the Commons: Community Farms and Forests in a New England Town; Yale Agrarian Studies Series
• Author: Brian Donahue
• Contributor: Wes Jackson
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Yale University Press, 2001
• ISBN: 0300089120, 9780300089127
• Length: 352 pages
• Subjects: Nature / Environmental Conservation & Protection; Political Science / Public Policy / City Planning & Urban Development; Science / Environmental Science; Social Science / Sociology / General