Publicity/sound bytes abound these days on: Green living, local food, concerns over climate, water and soil, using more local/renewable resources, alternate transportation, and Green/natural building. Designing/remodeling homes, landscapes and whole communities for lower resource use, more recycling and reuse, less oil-based transportation, and more local businesses, employment, products, and food production are becoming more important to the economy, the environment, and human welfare. Sustainable Strategy efforts are springing up for cities/towns, schools, colleges, open spaces, farms, and neighborhoods.
"I grew up on the South Road. My father was John Bassett. Oh, we had quite a farm. It was at least a hundred acres. It was on both sides of the road. My father had cows, and the sheep, and oxen and the horse. We had ducks. There were turkeys. He used to sell turkeys, ship them off-Island Thanksgiving and Christmas. I remember him crating them up. I suppose Bart Mayhew picked them up and took them to the steamship wharf.
"I go back quite a long ways. I was born in 1903. William Allen was my father’s name, and Sarah Allen was my mother’s name. She was a Hammett. My father’s people, they came over on the Mayflower, and they settled in Chilmark. So I have quite a title to my name.
"My father was a farmer.
Oscar loves his chickens so when he reached under one them — only to find a crushed egg — the eleven year old with bent up wire rimmed glasses + farmer’s hands — flung that bird out of its roo
"And there were plenty of cranberry bogs on the Island when I was younger. There was one, two down by Lake Tashmoo, then the big one, Evan Bodfish’s on the Lambert’s Cove Road. Then the next one around was Howland’s.