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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How was the Sunday morning musical events divided?
(a) Into amateur and professional music.
(b) Into instrumental and vocal music.
(c) Into classical and pop music.
(d) Into religious and non-religious music.

2. What did the Nearings store potatoes, carrots, beets turnips, celery root and apples?
(a) In the garden, covered.
(b) In generous layers of leaves in the cellar.
(c) In the greenhouse.
(d) In the refrigerator.

3. When the Nearings started their first garden in Vermont, what caused a quagmire and nearly ruined the garden?
(a) A spring on the high side of the garden.
(b) A sinkhole the size of a large truck.
(c) Deer that kept eating the apples.
(d) The threat of fire.

4. What color did the Nearings paint their roof?
(a) Brown.
(b) Grey.
(c) Moss-green.
(d) Red.

5. Who taught the Nearings to make maple syrup?
(a) Walter Twing.
(b) Harold Field.
(c) Nobody. They researched it and learned from books.
(d) Zoe and Floyd Hurd.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why did the Nearings like stone buildings?

2. How did the Nearings get stones to build their buildings?

3. What did the Nearings do with the spring they found in the back of the cellar-hole?

4. Why did the Nearings NOT join a communal experience?

5. How did the Nearings eat fresh from the garden?

Short Essay Questions

1. How much time did it take for the Nearings to provide food for the year, furnish their house and fuel, and provide needed repairs on the farm? What were the positive outcomes of their system?

2. What, according to the Nearings, was the value of compost and mulch?

3. How did the Nearings plant throughout the winter and continue to eat from the garden?

4. Why did cooperative living fail in the valley for the Nearings?

5. How did the Nearings pick the lettuce in the winter to keep it from wilting?

6. What made the Vermont community shrink even as the Nearings lived there?

7. Why was digging a foundation for a building so very important? How deep did the footings need to be and why?

8. How did the Nearings decorate? What kind of furniture and fireplaces did they use?

9. What was the Nearings' view about old buildings? What was their solution to old buildings?

10. How did the Nearings decide to make maple syrup as their cash crop? How did this decision surprise them?

(see the answer keys)

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