plenty to taste. Plus, workshops on beekeeping, raising chickens and making compost jump-start participants eager to live the good life.

The Farm/Art DTour combines art, live performances, educational exhibits and breath-taking scenery. On the DTour are Farm Forms, captivating art installations by farmers, artists and community groups, as well as unique artist-made Roadside Culture Stands selling fresh, locally grown produce. There are also Field Notes, rural culture education sites where hayfields, dairy farms, wetlands or cornfields are interpreted for visitors. Pasture performances of music, dance and theatre are scheduled on Saturdays and Sundays of the Fest. Visitors never know what to expect around the next bend, hill, turn or town.avoid hiring people by taking advantage of technology,” Ford says.

An ordinary entrepreneur might simply have welcomed the cost savings. But something nagged at Ford: He wondered how a consumer economy – and 70 percent of the U.S. economy consists of consumer spending – could function if machines kept dislodging the workers who did the vast majority of the spending.

“At some point you simply will have too few viable consumers to power a healthy economy,” he says.

So in 2009 he thought through what would happen to the economy if machines kept replacing human workers. The result was his book, “The Lights in the Tunnel.”

Ford, 49, describes a nightmare scenario. Machines leave 75 percent of American workers unemployed by 2089. Consumer spending collapses. Even those who are still working slash