A Family Farm: Life on an Illinois Dairy Farm
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.84 (575 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1935195344 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 254 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-05-18 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
A Family Farm ends with an elegiac description of death and of the winter auction at which the accumulation of seventy-five years of hard work and frugal living is sold to the highest bidder. Richly illustrated with art work, photographs, and documents, and set within the context of current trends in agricultural economics and rural life, A Family Farm offers an intimate and historical perspective on a now vanished way of life.. The family attempts to modernize the old farm and introduce up-to-date agricultural techniques, but their sons, the author and his brother, leave the farm after high school and unwittingly doom it to failure. During the past century two-thirds of all family-operated farms in America disappeared. Their daughter, the author’s mother, loses her hopes for a scholarly life during the Great Depression, and—though bookish and unsuited to farm life—returns to the farm with her husband, who describes in his own words his youthful years on a poor Illinois farm and as a rural schoolteac
"News release and video about the book is available" according to DDY. There is no sentimentality in Robert Switzer's modestly titled new book, "A Family Farm: Life on an Illinois Dairy Farm." Switzer, an emeritus professor of biochemistry at the University of Illinois, begins with a quote (from Victor Davis Hanson's own book on farming) that "the American yeoman farmer is doomed," and describes the internal and external forces that led to the decline and demise of his family's farm in northwest Illinois.The story of the Allison-Switzer farm (named for Switzer's m. "Midwest farming" according to BarbR. I loved this book from the beginning to the poignant ending. What a great summer read--that's not fiction. It's hard to believe that Robert Switzer, a biochemist at the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana, has previously only written scientific articles and books. In A Family Farm he has written a personal, yet informational book about farming in Illinois from 1910-1991. He does this by telling the story of his family side-by-side with the history and sociology of farming in Illinois and. "Revisiting the Past" according to Mary E. Baim. I found A Family Farm, Life on an Illinois Dairy Farm to be sensitive, well written and informative. I think the author, while giving us the framework of small farming in the midwest, also gave us a rich portrait of ancestors, parents and children. The inclusion of artwork by both his wife and son as well as the voices of his children made it personal and real in a very thoughtful way. This book is much more than a story of life on a dairy farm in Illinois. I would highly recommend this book to
About the AuthorRobert Switzer is professor emeritus of biochemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Robert Switzer is professor emeritus of biochemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.