Best Person Rural: Essays of a Sometime Farmer

by Noel Perrin, Terry Osborne (Foreword)

In 1963, Noel Perrin, a 35-year-old professor of English at Dartmouth College, bought an 85-acre farm in Thetford Center, Vermont. For the next forty years he spent half his time teaching, half writing, and half farming. “That this adds up to three halves I am all too aware,” he said, sounding a characteristic, self-deprecating note of bittersweet amusement at the chalk on his coat, the sweat on his brow, and the mud (and worse) on his boots.
“I love this farm,” he wrote shortly before his death in 2004, “every acre of it. The maples, the apple trees, the cattle, the wild turkeys. I love the brick farmhouse, which I believe to be about 190 years old … and the two barns. I love the view from the kitchen window … and the grander view to be had if you climb Bill Hill, the farm’s in-house mini-mountain. The thing that delights me most, though, is that the farm really is a farm. It produces a little food every year, and most years a little fuel as well.” It also produced four volumes of essays, beginning with First Person Rural (1978). Some of Perrin’s pieces are practical (how to build a stone wall), others philosophical (why to build a stone wall). One pretends to be about amateur sugar making, but it is really a metaphor for reality and illusion. Another pretends to be about the country as a retreat, but is really about the country as a place to meet the world head-on. One is a dangerous character sketch of a sow – dangerous, because as Roy Blount said after reading it, “It almost made me decide to go ahead and get pigs.”
In short, these essays are as good as the literature of farming gets. Best Person Rural is a harvest feast, bringing together twenty of Perrin’s best-loved pieces and five previously uncollected items, including his moving “Farewell to a Thetford Farm.”

175 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2006

About the author

Noel Perrin was a professor of English literature, an essayist for the Washington Post, a hobbyist farmer, and a Korean War veteran.

Reviews

[Kirsten · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reminded me a little of E B White, for valuing country life and pursuits and being so energetically curious about everything. Also made me want to make maple sugar candy. Lovely to see where I live described so well, too:

"The central truth about our landscape is that it's introverted. It's curled and coiled and full of turns and corners. Not open, not public; private and reserved. Most of the best views are little and hidden."

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I initially picked up this series of essays because I wanted to learn more about my newly adopted town of Thetford, VT. Perrin's home in Thetford is just a few houses up the hill from our place. Reading his work helps me feel more rooted to our small town.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book collects essays from Noel Perrin's series of essay collections about rural New England. Basically, he's a scholarly city man who decided to move out to the country and earnestly try to live like and understand the natives. Most of the essays in this collection focus on things like making maple sugar, using a peavey while lumberjacking, or understanding the unspoken rules of who gets to speak in an encounter of three or more people. Perrin is a witty, insightful, and balanced writer. The only slip-ups in this volume are a few later pieces ("Nuclear Disobedience" and "A Vermont Christmas") which are a bit too indulgent. My only major complaint about the collection is that it's too short! With four volumes to pull from, why stop at 172 pages? I'm curious what drove the editor to want to keep the book so slim...

But in any case, I'd recommend you pick up any Noel Perrin books you can get your hands on. Very good subway material.

[LuAnn · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I read this due to Perrin’s connection to the Lindberg‘s, he was married to Anne (Ansy) Lindbergh, eldest daughter of Charles and Anne Morrow. I greatly enjoyed his essays, mostly about farming, but also covering other topics. His essay about meeting and was especially bittersweet given that she they were only together for about five years before she dies of cancer.
His love of his farm and of working his farm and his concern for the land is moving. Who’s ever thought reading about making fence posts or heating with wood would be so compelling?!

[Nathaniel Klein · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting collection of essays from a writer who blended the line between two worlds. My favorite story was the about heating the house entirely with wood and rigging up solutions far more time consuming than turning in the furnace. He’s a crotchety New Englander that reminds me of many loved ones.

[Gary · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most enjoyable books that I've read in a long, long time.

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found these essays about life on a Vermont farm well-written and thoroughly enjoyable.

[Faye · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book contains the short stories of farmer and Dartmouth professor, Noel Perrin. Reading this book brought back fond memories of growing up on a small farm in Western Massachusetts near the border town of Guilford, Vermont. I have been thinking about moving back to the country and so maybe it will have something to do with my future as well. I made a copy of th sugaring stories for a gentleman at work who makes maple syrup every year. I also gave my sister a copy of anoter book of essays put together and published by the author prior to his death a few years ago.

[Godine Publisher & Black Sparrow Press · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Perrin lets the language break down into little fragments, hard stones left by a receding glacier. It isn't easy to talk about the soul, and New Englanders have as hard a time as anyone. Perrin's writing mirrors that difficulty, that ingrained reticence."
-Alex Hanson, Valley News

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

good reading for every farmgirl and farmboy!

[Gary Turner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just love Noel Perrin's writing. His stories are a treasure. Sad to read about the ill health. Maybe if i am lucky my wife and i can have a sometime farm ourselves.