With each passing year, the number of family farms in the United States diminishes. Fewer people have the persistence and ingenuity to wrest a livelihood from the land in an era of corporate ownership and mass production. yet some family farms survive.

Through words and photographs, this book documents the long lives of five of the oldest farms in Massachusetts. Each has remained in the same family for more than two, sometimes three, centuries and each has a distinctive history. The devotion to land and family heritage is palpable in the stories these five families tell.

Stan Sherer's...