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COVER STORIES: BACK TO THE LAND...STILL
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| Photo
by Josh Lipton |
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Merri Swid Morgan, J66
Living off the land in rural West Virginia reflects a version
of the American dream
Back to Back
to the Land...Still
The “back to the land” movement was “the
lunatic fringe” of society when Merri Swid Morgan,
then in graduate school at Harvard, joined a commune. “The
idea was to spend a year learning the basics of farming and
then move to a really remote place,” she says. “We
shared the house with an old farmer who taught us how to
milk a cow, make butter and cottage cheese, kill and clean
a chicken—it was a lifestyle change that I wanted.”
Morgan has stayed true to her calling. For nearly three decades
she has lived in rural West Virginia, where she grows nearly
all of her own organic produce, bakes most of her own bread,
and enjoys her neighbors’ farm-fresh eggs and “wonderful
unpasteurized Jersey milk and cream.” She makes a spare
living writing a gardening column, teaching writing and gardening,
and selling overflow garden produce to a few select customers.
She lives in a trailer, but looks forward to converting an
old granary into a wood-heated home. Living this close to
the essentials of food and shelter, she says, reflects her
version of the American dream. “Being able to raise
a vegetable garden and buy good, locally raised meat, to
have pure water gravity fed from the mountain, to feel a
sense of
community—that
has more value to me than making a lot of money.”
A native of New Jersey, Morgan cultivated a love for
nature during idyllic summer vacations in rural upstate
New York. In 1972 she was drawn to West Virginia,
where $11,000 bought 120 acres and a log house with
no electricity or indoor plumbing. In 1984, she left
West Virginia to accept a teaching post at SUNY Cortland.
Eight years later she was back. “I was
so homesick that I gave up the best job I ever had,” says
Morgan, who resettled on a 35-acre steep, wooded area in the
state’s southeastern corner.
Looking back, she says her impulse for rural living sprang
from wanting “something much realer” than society
offered. “I am so grateful for this beautiful place,” she
says. “Yet however much I value the beauty and rural
lifestyle, it is the community of friends and neighbors
that really graces my life. Thirty years ago, West Virginians
whose roots go back to the 1700s welcomed us newcomers
with open hearts, and the other young people who, like
me, moved into this area, have become family. No one else
I have ever met has been blessed with the richness I have
found in these West Virginia hills.”
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