The family farm is one of America’a most powerful and enduring symbols, and its potency remains undiminished despite well over than a century’s worth of decline and disappearance. This once most common of institutions has been recalled and eulogized in terms ranging from the bitter to the nostalgic, but few commentators, particularly those with actual farming experience, have chosen to describe the family farm ideal the way New Hampshire historian and philosopher Ron Jager does. Humanities reporter Kevin Gardner spoke with Jager about his conception of the “romance” of the family farm.
