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

Short Answer Questions

1. In Maine, what would an average family of 4 or 5 adults and children require to produce a minimum amount of vegetables?

2. What did the Nearings find about growing pole beans and sweet peas?

3. How many miles did the Nearings move from Vermont to Maine?

4. What, according to the Nearings, did frogs like?

5. How many people visit the farm in Maine?

Short Essay Questions

1. What was the Nearings' attitudes toward doctors?

2. Describe the house in Maine.

3. What was the Nearing's favorite tool?

4. How did the Nearings make applesauce?

5. When the Nearings found a worn-out apple tree near the blueberries, how did they make it grow?

6. When the Nearings visited a farm in Holland, how did the family use compost piles?

7. Why, according to the Nearings, do most people want old buildings?

8. What kinds of visitors did the Nearings have at their farms.

9. How was the homestead in Maine to be different than the one in Vermont? What were the Nearings looking for when they began their search for a new home?

10. In what ways did the Nearings use wood from the forest?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What was the outcome of the Nearings' constant appeal to neighbors to live like them, follow their food choices, and be open-minded about their political views?

Essay Topic 2

What were "cash crops" and what was bread labor? Were they the same? Where they different things? At the farm in Vermont, what was the cash crop?

Essay Topic 3

What kind of people never visited the Nearings? Why do you think that was the case?

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