The Farmstead: The Making of the Rural Home and the Lay-out of the Farm

Man is made partly by heredity, partly by environment; both may be controlled and modified to a far greater extent than is generally supposed. In speaking of farm life, its disadvantages are frequently emphasized, while its possible advantages as an environment for the development of the finest quality of human nature are as often ignored or overlooked.

Nature, with her ever-varying form and color, beauty and symmetry, is forgotten in the city; the shady forest, the meadow brook, the waving fields, are unknown. There, instead, is incessant noise, the clang and clash of trade, towering and ugly buildings, skies darkened by the smoke of factories, children who never saw a tree or played elsewhere than upon a hard and filthy pavement; and worst of all is the nerve-destroying haste and unequal competition, wearing out body and soul. In rural life, however tame and lonely, the home is not merely a few square feet hedged in by brick walls, but the whole wide countryside: the barns, the fields, the woods, the orchards, the animals wild and domesticated, the outlook over hill and valley—these all constitute the farmer’s home.

The manufacturer locates his factory in some by-street or suburb where land is cheap, and as far as possible from the residence part of the city; his home is far removed from these unsightly surroundings. But the farmer must live within a few hundred feet of his barns and outbuildings, and if these be ugly and dirty, the beauty and comfort of the home are sadly marred. If the farmer, then, has the whole landscape as a background for his home, he must on the other hand modify his immediate surroundings so as to overcome their almost inevitable unsightliness.

Besides the ever-present beauties of nature, country life has certain other advantages over the city: it is the place to develop the strong health-physique. The luxury of rich and populous communities tends to produce puny and enervated citizens; the excessive toil, bad air, limited space and scant food of the poor tend to degrade and destroy body and soul; but the comfortable simplicity, space, air, sunlight and abundant food of the open country give opportunity for the finest development of the human animal. It is true that even on the farm there are sometimes overwork and privation; but, at the worst, these cannot be so severe as in cities so long as the sun shines, the wind blows, and green things grow for the worker out of doors. Here the child may be born right and nourished by pure food and air. It is surrounded by animals whose life and motion become an incentive to action, and who become its companions without danger of moral contamination. The lamb, the calf, the colt, are far safer playmates than the city urchin precociously wise in evil ways.