Seven Amish Farms by Wendell Berry

IN TYPICAL Midwestern farming country the distances between inhabited houses are stretching out as bigger farmers buy out their smaller neighbors in order to "stay in. " The signs of this "movement" and its consequent specialization are everywhere: good houses standing empty, going to ruin; good stock barns going to ruin; pasture fences fallen down or gone; machines too large for available doorways left in the weather; windbreaks and woodlots gone down before the bulldozers; small schoolhouses and churches deserted or filled with grain.

In the latter part of March this country shows little life. Field after field lies under the dead stalks of last year's corn and soybeans, or lies broken for the next crop; one may drive many miles between fields that are either sodded or planted in winter grain. If the weather is wet, the country will seem virtually deserted. If the ground is dry enough to support their wheels, there will be tractors at work, huge machines with glassed cabs, rolling into the distances of fields larger than whole farms used to be, as solitary as seaborne ships.