In 1934, in the depths of the Great Depression, Elliott Merrick and his wife, Kate, 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. "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 crossed our great Rubicon on a spiderweb. But it turned out to be one of those fortunate mistakes-one of those fraught-with-peril...
In 1934, in the depths of the Great Depression, Elliott Merrick and his wife, Kate, bought a ramshackle farm on a Vermont hillside for $1,000. Merrick...
