Fields without dreams

America's disappearing family farmer is often portrayed as either a figure of pitiable tragedy or glorified romance. But in one of the most unusual books ever written on farming, farmer and Greek scholar Victor Davis Hanson eloquently explains how neither portrait conveys what really matters about farming. As the family farm all but vanishes in our nation, it is neither food production nor the environment that will most suffer - but rather our nation will lose its last real connection with the virtues and work ethic that our founding fathers had themselves inherited from the wisdom of…