Green Mountain Farm

by Elliott Merrick

33 Members ½ (4.67)

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Description

In 1934, in the depths of the Great Depression, Elliott Merrick and his wife bought a ramshackle farm on a Vermont hillside for $1,000. Merrick, a young writer with a healthy dose of idealism and a determination to live in the country, had just sold his first book to Maxwell Perkins at Scribner's. "I had an idea that I would be rich and famous henceforth," Merrick wrote, but added, "nothing could be farther from the truth . . . As I look back, I'm amazed that we could so blithely have show more crossed our great Rubicon on a spiderweb. But it turned out to be one of those fortunate mistakes--one of those fraught-with-peril enterprises that you might never have embarked on if you had known the consequences--like being born, for instance." Green Mountain Farm describes Merrick's and his family's often haphazard attempts to make a go of it on these stony, wintry acres, in a house that was falling down around them. As Merrick puts it, "We did everything wrong, but it came out right." They were dirt poor, but through it all, believed wholeheartedly in going directly after the things they wanted most: to write and to farm, however they could. A lyrical, funny, richly fulfilling book about old houses, farming, writing, and the joys of country life, this book is as fresh today as when it was originally published more than fifty years ago. show less

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Mountain Adventures
26 works; 1 member

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7+ Works 136 Members

Common Knowledge

Original publication date
1948

Classifications

Genres
Biography & Memoir, Fiction and Literature
DDC/MDS
843.8Literature & rhetoricFrench LiteratureFrench fictionLater 19th century 1848–1900
LCC
PS3525 .E6394 .Z47Language and LiteratureAmerican literatureAmerican literatureIndividual authors1900-1960
BISAC

Statistics

Members
33
Popularity
860,448
Rating
½ (4.67)
Languages
English
Media
Paper
ISBNs
2
ASINs
1