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"Once you opt out of the conventional paradigm [of public schooling] and find it satisfying, then you begin searching for other paradigms to opt out of," Salatin says. Like the Lehrers, families that homeschool often start looking for ways for fathers to leave their office jobs. "How do I leave my Dilbert cubicle at the end of an expressway," Salatin says, "and instead invest in my family, my kids, my community?"

Salatin says some homeschooling families not only visit but also choose to farm, because it's a business the entire family participates in and is sustainable for generations. "In our culture today, we've got this mentality that you send your kids off to school to get a good enough education, to get a good enough diploma, to get a good enough job, to pay well enough to work a thousand miles away from home, to accumulate enough money so they can put you in a nursing home when you get old. What I'm looking for is for my grandkids to argue over who gets to spend the day with grandpa."

Salatin is getting his wish, something rare among farmers. For decades, farmers have been moving off their land as it takes larger and larger operations to remain profitable. The trend has left rural communities in crisis. For every seven farms that shut down, says Gary Holthaus, author of From the Farm to the Table, the rule of thumb is that one business in town closes.

"It's not a sad thing that just farms are going out of business," says Holthaus. "It's a sad thing that small towns in rural America are going out of business." In Big Rock, where the Lehrers live, they may be the only family to have begun farming in years. Half of the downtown shops are closed.

Advanced machinery, technologically developed seed, petroleum-based fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides are all required on the modern farm, and all are expensive. Traditionally, low commodities prices mean farmers have to till more land to remain profitable. Michael Mangis, professor and director of the Center for Rural Psychology at Wheaton College, says most farming families need jobs off the farm to stay afloat. "They support their family off their jobs," he says. "They keep farming because it's a value of theirs. It's something they believe in."

As rural businesses close, as children leave for jobs in the city, and as fewer resources are directed to rural areas, social problems run rampant. "It used to be urban areas had the highest crime rates, drug-use rates, alcoholism rates, and suicide rates, especially among young people," says Mangis. "Now that's all reversed. Rural rates are higher." Today, Mangis says, rural towns are either being depopulated or are becoming suburbs.

"A significant portion of people who are into organics and agrarianism are basically contemporary hippies," says Mangis. "This is not the kind of people that rural areas are going to welcome." But Christian agrarians reinvigorate rural communities with their traditional approach to agriculture and their entrepreneurial businesses.

Mangis has high hopes for Christians who buy farmland. "Evangelical Christians give a biblical basis for why they're doing what they're doing. I think most rural communities are going to be a lot more open to a Christian family starting a farm and saying we want community, we want a better place for our family, we want better stewardship of the earth because God commanded it. That people can buy."

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October 2007, Vol. 51, No. 10