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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. Who occupied one of the guest cabins in Maine for years?

2. What are cloches?

3. What percentage of the food they ate did the Nearings produce?

4. How long could the Nearings harvest their fall garden?

5. What did the Nearings build in the corner of the walled-in vegetable garden?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. Why did the Nearings build their first greenhouse?

3. Describe the house in Maine.

4. What point do the Nearings make about personal style in a home?

5. 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?

6. How was building the pond an exercise in patience?

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

8. How did the Nearings make applesauce?

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

10. Why did the Nearings believe homesteaders should record everything?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Why did the Nearings leave New York? What was the political climate in 1932? What was happening in the nation? What did the Nearings do before they moved to Vermont?

Essay Topic 2

As others viewed life as meaningless and looked for forms of escape after the war, how did the Nearings view life? What did they mean by "urgent?"

Essay Topic 3

How important was documentation? How did the Nearings document their farming experiment?

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