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| Tillamook County, Oregon |
The American Spectator "Every month, my work takes me driving on country roads through the Amish country of eastern Ohio in Holmes, Coshocton, and Tuscarawas Counties. I look forward to it, except if the weather is bad and those roads pose a challenge. It is beautiful in a very specific way. The country vistas soothe the eye wherever one might be. But the way that the people inhabit the land is a part of the beauty that is so consistently present for me when I am there.
"One my way east from my home in southwestern Ohio, I see the great corn and bean farms on the flat expanses mid-state, far away from the bluffs that lead down to the Ohio River along its long course and away from the edges of Appalachia in the south and the mid- and southeast.
"In those prairie lands, the farms are on a giant scale, the farmhouses far apart, and the machinery that works the land is huge and costs hundreds of thousands to buy. The country roads are quiet, and few people are to be seen, save those zipping somewhere enclosed in their vehicles.
"These farms are awesome. They are efficient and competitive and have fed and continue to feed far more than doomsaying economists ever believed possible, and have led the way in making the world less plagued by famine than at any time in history. And yet, there is a beauty that once was present in these lands that is now gone.
"That beauty has to do with scale. The scale in Holmes is of a different order. Farmhouses are not so far away from each other that a short walk or a loud shout can reach a neighbor." . . .
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