Edmund Morris, "Ten Acres Enough..."

Morris, Edmund, Ten Acres Enough: The Classic 1864 Guide to Independent Farming, Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1864, 2004.
This text by Edmund Morris must have served as inspiration for so many of those back-to-the-landers depicted in Eleanor Agnew’s Back from the Land. Here, Morris details the exact steps he took to remove his family from the congested city of Philadelphia, and install them into the countryside of New Jersey where he commenced to build a personal economy that was sustainable and profitable, with only a small initial sum with which to make all his first purchases, including the farm itself. And Morris hardly dwells on just the pecuniary riches that his farm generates – he talks briefly about humankind’s role on the landscape, as both stewards, and as advanced animals, capable of destroying just as much as creating (91-92), which echoes many of the sentiments expressed by Wendell Berry.
What is so interesting about Morris’ book is that he makes farming out to be a completely accessible endeavour by nearly anyone, which is not necessarily true. The relationship between Morris and his land is a testament somewhat, of the power that farming, practiced sustainably, has to be profitable. Certainly, some of his techniques and equipment used are obsolete now in this era of information-tech and mechanization, but Ten Acres serves as a lesson that one need not dive deep into indebtedness and farming on gargantuan farms in order to live a sustainable and worthwhile existence on the land.