Eggs in the Coffee Sheep in the Corn: My 17 Years as a Farmwife (Midwest Reflections)
In 1943, Douglas and her husband gave up a suburban lifestyle to help her in-laws avoid the loss of the family farm. Written 50 years later, her account captures a time when farming was in transition: the house had no indoor plumbing, and women spent most of their time preparing food for numerous hired hands. Yet the farmers were beginning to use scientific husbandry and market analysis, and the acquisition of a first combine presaged the coming decline in manual labor. What was planned as a stay of a year or two grew to be nearly two decades, and Douglas describes both the gradual building of community ties and the tasks and trials of farm life. She arrived with no illusions of a rural Eden and had to adjust to grinding physical labor and stand up to an autocratic father-in-law. Douglas's "warts-and-all" account reveals that some neighbors rustled livestock and cheated one another. A valuable addition to regional collections or where interest in farm life is high.Cheryl Childress, Collegiate Sch. Lib., Richmond, Va.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.