“Between Amherst  {Mass.} and the Connecticut River lies a little bit of Iowa – some of New England’s more favored farmland. The summer and fall of 1982, Judith bicycled, alone and with Jonathan, down narrow roads between fields of asparagus and corn, and she saw the constructed landscape with new eyes, not just looking at houses but searching for ones that might serve as models for her own. She liked the old farmhouses best, their porches and white, clapboarded walls. 'This New England farmhouse thing,’ she called that style.''

--  From Tracy Kidder’s House (1985)