A Success Story about (gasp!) New England Farming

UB groupies know they can count on us for intermittent spasms of anguish about the bleak folly of trying to farm the New Hampshire uplands. But here's an interesting wrinkle: a source who argues that there was one brief period when New Hampshire farming actually made money. The secret it emerges, was sheep; evidently they thrived in this unforgiving climate, albeit not vigorously enough to survive the onslaught of foreign competition and technological innovation.

The proponent is a chap named Steve Taylor who by all accounts has the background to equip him to know whereof he speaks. I can't find his work in print so far, but here is a promising summary:

According to Steve Taylor, Plainfield farmer and retired New Hampshire Commissioner of Agriculture, the only period of agricultural prosperity in the state, albeit a “flash in the pan,” occurred with the institution of sheep farming in the 19th century. Forests were “stubbed,” a process of girdling, burning and clearing away trees; 250,000 miles of stone walls were constructed (100,000 miles remain today); 1,500 Marino sheep were imported from Spain and bred until they outnumbered the human population; woolen mills popped up in nearly every village; and the sheep farmers thrived building large country estates supported by a strong demand of wool products.

The construction of the Erie Canal and the development of railroads (opening the European market to the Midwest), competition from Australia and Argentina, and the Industrial Revolution (workers worked indoors warmed by box stoves instead of heavy wool coats), all contributed to the equally rapid decline of the sheep farmers prosperity.

It’s been more than 150 years since the sheep boom and now the forest fills 85% of the New Hampshire landscape, which was once pastureland, and only 5% in open farmland remains. Taylor is fighting to retain the small niche that farmland holds today.

And here I thought those stone walls went back to the 18th Century, or even the 17th.  In my youth, they were great for berry picking. I should think the berries also have faded, the victim in this case of the second growth timber.  I assume the population of rattlesnakes, still a novelty in my youth, continues to grow.
 

Live Free and Face the Wrath of the Historic Commission

Ha! I suspected as much! One of my old New Hampshire friends, commenting on cellar holes, reports:

God forbid that anyone here in [this lovely, high-income New Hampshire town] remove a stone from one of the many stone walls. One fellow put up a multi million dollar home, and he got so much grief because he opened up a slot in the stone wall for his driveway. WOW, the Historic Commission made an exception., after a long battle. We also have a big thing here about cutting down trees along some of the very narrow dirt roads, that are a hazard, and especially this past winter when he had an ice storm and the trees were hanging down over the roadway.

To repeat, ha! This is New Hampshire we are talking about, home of Live Free or Die, the state where no one over the age of consent has to wear a seatbelt, and every motorcyclist has a constitutional right to splay his brains (if he can find them) on a public highway. But apparently if you try to get the icicles out of driving range, it's all "touch not a single bough."

It's a hobbyhorse of mine: there really aren't any libertarians. Some may come closer than others, but for every one, we can find one or a hundred issues on which they are perfectly willing to slam their tastes down someone else's throat.

I can hear the protests now. But the stone wall is different, they will say, because this is one place where your tastes affect me. Well, of course they affect me. There wasn't a Mrs. Grundy born who couldn't make that argument, and with a perfectly straight face, about anything that got her blood up. Or they'll say: but this time it is money, you are damaging my property values. Well, since when did vulgar, venal property values trump something so sacred as our God-given right to cut a gap for a driveway?

There is a deep-seated paradox here, built into the fabric of our perception of anarchism. Nobody wants Hobbes' anarchism, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." What we want is a chance to impose values so self-evidently (to us) right that we don't even know they are being imposed.

So, enjoy your stone walls, New Hampshirites: best way I can tell, it was my ancestors who by great sweat and effort rolled them into place, and is nice to know that somebody wants to preserve them. But don't give me that dog twaddle about "liberty." You're as tightly wound a society as any I know.

Post-New Hampshire Vent

Loose ends on New Hampshire:

• I am so glad Obamamania is over. At least for the moment, and I hope it stays over. Nothing personal: I think Barack is an extraordinarily attractive human being with great natural (and well-schooled) leadership skills. But the last few days—i.e., until 7 EST last night have reminded me way too much of Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern and, yes, Bobby Kennedy—a children’s crusade which was far too likely to leave us all with a nasty hangover in the morning, or rather next November. Barack has a great future and I look forward to sharing it with him. But the idea that we would have to explain away this stripling against a John McCain in the fall, is a thought I do not like to bear.
  
• The Clintonistas are falling all over themselves with delight at the egg on the face of Chris Matthews and others in the press who, as they say “hate Hillary.” Well now. In fact, there are a lot of people who “hate Hillary”—hate her with a visceral and abiding enmity that is beyond all thread of reasonable conversation. But there are a lot of other people who don’t hate Hillary, but who really don’t like her. They’ll put her at the top of her wonkery class, and they will give her merit citations for hard work, for suffering long, and for being mostly right, most of the time. But they think she is a bossy know-it-all who still can’t comprehend why her trailer-trash husband is so much more popular (and effective) than she. This includes an awful lot of the people who know her best (check any list of insiders for any other Democratic candidate). And, yes, it probably includes a good many in the press.

Oh, Buce, are you getting ready to vote Republican? Let’s see, New Hampshire gave us (1) a guy who thinks we should stay in Iraq 100 years; (2) a guy who thinks we should double the size of Guantanamo; and (3) a guy who thinks Guantanamo isn’t tough enough. Ri-i-i-i-ght.

• Finally, on a personal note. I’ve had it up to here with all this talk about flinty, independent minded New Englanders. I say “personal” because I grew up there—in Manchester and Bedford, NH, almost on ground zero of primary central (but back before there was any such thing). I’ve got roots there that go back to the American Revolution (we couldn’t afford to get out). And three things: one, I’m not flinty, I’m flabby. Two, the people I went to school with in Manchester were mostly French Canadian immigrants and nobody ever called them flinty. And three: I wouldn’t be surprised if half the population of New Hampshire today were people who (or whose parents) moved there after I moved away—mostly technobabies from Massachusetts who don’t like to pay taxes. Didn’t I mention someplace earlier that the state motto is “Life For Free or Die!” Oh and by the way, Robert Frost was born in San Francisco.

Thanks, I feel less flinty already.

Con-Hop-Bokinton

I see I have a hit this morning from Bow, NH. That's nice. New Hampshire is my natal state and I'm always a little chuffed that I don't seem to get more New Hampshire action. I see that the median household income up in Bow is now $79,329, which is probably about the same as what the aggregate income was when I left there so long ago (link) (the winter temperature, however, still averages 22 degrees).

My aunt Olive used to live just over the town line in Concord. There was as lake--I suppose there still is--that straddled the boundaries of Bow and Concord and Hopkinton, next door. They had some kind of a contest to the name the lake. My aunt Olive suggested "Con-Hop-Bokinton." It did not win, but hey, folks, there is always time to reconsider.