Down on the Farm: One American Familys Dream
by Sue Glasco
Category: Family & Relationships

Gerald and Sue Glasco wanted to farm and rear their children in the country. Leaving a farm management job at Columbiana Ranch near Eldred, Illinois, they bought a 75-acre farm in partnership with Gerald's brother Keith and wife Barbara in southern Illinois and rented another. Their big old farm house on the rented land had been standing empty except for mice. Sue cleaned, painted, and helped the children adjust to a new community. Gerald rushed to be ready for the arrival of baby pigs and started to install the house's first plumbing. Then there was a fire. Pregnant with their fourth child, Sue recorded their rural adventures and misadventures in the 1960s. Finally they moved even deeper into the country to the hog farm. Down on the Farm, a good story for the young or old, captures the universal struggle of young couples who set out to achieve their dreams. With ambitions to write and raise a large family, Sue Glasco did both when she married an agriculture major who also loved rural life. Their four children provided much subject matter. Sometimes she wrote with a toddler hanging on her neck. Sometimes she wrote with humor and sometimes with tears.