Pro-Am
City slicker become peasant, Noel Perrin, professor of English, bought 100 Vermont acres about 16 years ago; he also bought notebooks and recorded his progress as an amateur farmer in essays written mainly for the benefit of city peasants - urban dwellers who think they yearn for the farmer's self-sufficiency. From the magazines of their original appearances, the essays have been gathered under the title FirstPerson Rural.
The more first-person the essays, the better they are, and Perrin is most first-person on his agricultural accomplishments. For instance, he decided to fence the five acres which constitute the summit of Bill Hill, a mound on his property, so that his neighbor's cows could save him the trouble of dragging out his sickle each summer (Perrin likes to picnic with a view). By the time the neighbor finishes with suggestions on efficiency and such observations as where the water is, Perrin has fenced 18 acres. Agreeably tricked and instructed at once, Perrin is pleased to have added a green hill to Vermont. "It will be no bad legacy, to leave," he concludes.
There are essays of advice - buying a pickup truck or chainsaw, raising sheep, making butter, grading maple syrup. I tested my new knowledge about syrup at Gould's Sugar House on Route 2 in northern Massachusetts last summer; Perrin's essay had made me more informed than the sales clerks. There are also essays which scold - for example, one which describes Vermont's hypocritical desire to be modern and appear old-fashioned.
If Perrin's essays could be graded like maple syrup, I would accord "Fancy" to the stories of shaping the farm — fencing or making syrup — in which his own limitations make the experience real. Grade A (good enough for waffles in the Perrin homestead) is for the essays of advice, and grade B (for pancakes) for the others.
In an essay called "The Other Side," Perrin disparages the life he has chosen and finds virtues in the city life he left. Water is cheaper in the city, we learn, and muggers less likely than bats to be lethal. But his heart is not in the easier city ways. If it were, Sears would do his fencing, and he would buy his maple syrup as I do, venturing to New England during summer vacation for a year's supply.
Still, the lore is interesting, as it is throughout the book. The feel of the whole is much like what Perrin must have felt when his neighbor inveigled him to fence more of Bill Hill than he intended. Perrin acts as our neighbor, amusing and instructing us citified people more than we thought we wanted. (After all, it takes a professional writer to tell how it goes with the amateur farmer.) And that is not a bad legacy, either.
FIRST PERSON RURALBy Professor Noel PerrinGodine, 1978. 124 pp. $7.95
Marshall Ledger is staff writer of the Pennsylvania Gazette, the alumni magazine of theUniversity of Pennsylvania. His farming experience extends to living on one duringsummer vacation.
