View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. In Vermont, what did the Nearings NOT use to keep food cold?

2. What did M.B. Kains recommend that farmers serve to their guests when they came for Sunday dinner?

3. What did the Nearings NEVER buy?

4. What level was the kitchen garden in Vermont?

5. What was inserted into the compost pile to help break down matter?

Short Essay Questions

1. What, according to the authors, is the best part of building a building?

2. Why were the music sessions a community success? What was different about them that made people want to stay and visit?

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

4. Describe how the Nearings made fruit juice as a simple process.

5. What was the planting season for the Nearings? How did they plant their gardens?

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

7. When others thought the Nearings were self-punishing, how did they view their life?

8. What happens to flour when it is processed?

9. Why did the American Indians live in Connecticut and not Vermont?

10. How did the cancellation of the mail route in 1945 affect the valley? What did they do? How was this, according to the authors, a positive event for the community?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

How was the farm in Vermont different from the farm in Maine? How were they the same?

Essay Topic 2

Discuss the "four-four-four" formula for life. What is the final four in this formula? Why did the Nearings wait until the end of the book to reveal this formula? Is this formula the key to life for the Nearings?

Essay Topic 3

At the end, the Nearings thought they had only "scratched life's surface." What did they mean by that?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 791 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample