Amish girl walking home from school in Unity, Maine (Joel Page/The Boston Globe)
UNITY, Maine -- The land was gorgeous. Pastures bounded by forests and overlooked by the distant Dixmont hills. And that was the problem. As dairy farms in Unity have struggled and died in recent years, town leaders worried the setting would draw developers more interested in erecting neo-Colonials and paving roads than preserving the town’s agricultural heritage. They recruited organic farmers who bought small plots. But vast swaths remained.
Then a little more than a year ago men in banded straw hats and denim suits arrived and started buying big parcels. They built sturdy houses on the hillsides above fields where they planted strawberries and butternut squash, and loosed goats and cows to graze. They started small businesses on their land, turning out metal siding, wind turbines, and furniture, and sold vegetables and baked goods. “The Amish were the solution that we were looking for..." More>>
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