296 HOW TO LIVE IN THE COUNTRY 



as soon as they are harvested? Is it after all a per- 

 manent necessity that each and every country home 

 shall have its own separate barns and storage cellars? 

 When grain is threshed cooperatively and marketed 

 cooperatively; when all of our homes have swift mo- 

 tors, adjusted to farm work, why may there not be 

 grain elevators for an associated group of homes 

 and fruit storage houses for a whole group of fami- 

 lies? I am not so sure but that the future country 

 home will lose its barns, as I have suggested it may 

 also lose its kitchen and its cellars. This would cer- 

 tainly contribute greatly to the esthetic side, as well 

 as to the sanitary side of country home making. 

 There would be no lack of individualism if social 

 life should go even farther. 



One thing is assured: the dream of the farmer 

 has greatly changed of late. His vision is no longer 

 that of an isolated house, quite distinctly severed 

 from association with its neighbors, and while in one 

 sense complete by itself, seriously lacking in its power 

 to move with the world's evolution. He begins to 

 think of a parked farm community, raying out from a 

 central school and library and closely associated in 

 almost all conceivable ways through miles of extent. 

 The vision does not as yet go beyond the rural free 

 delivery of mail and the use of automobiles for mar- 

 ket purposes and for tillage, but he has an enthusi- 

 asm over something that is to make country life 

 marvelously beautiful and rob it of its most severe 

 features of isolation and toil. 



