Cummington is an idyllic small town about twenty miles northwest of Northampton up in the foothills of the Berkshires. You take Route 9 to get there. You leave citified liberals behind and get into old Yankee territory, where men are still men and know how to keep their chain saws running without running to the dealer all the time.
The principals in Cummington Farms were mostly "suits" as they are called up there. Real estate people, architects, insurance people, all of them professionals backed up and impeded by consultants. They came from Northampton, Amherst, and Hatfield, places that are not bothered with ledge. You can usually dig a cellar in Northampton without blasting powder. But up in the high bogs and meadows of Cummington it was a different matter. The garden that flourishes in Northampton perishes up in these bony hills. The Northampton and Amherst planning boards were loaded with friends of developers and people who earned their living from development. Up in Plainfield they eat developers for breakfast. Read the full story here.