An ok but not brilliant view of life on the farm
Customer Rating: 
Dwight W. Hoover describes his boyhood on a 100-acre Iowa family farm in the 1930s. I grew up on a 100-acre dairy farm in Wisconsin a few years later, and to some extent his account resonated with me.
Our family, like his, tried and failed to come to grips with the "get big or get out" realities of American agriculture. The Iowa Highway Commission delivered a major blow with its decision to "construct a state highway through my father's farm," destroying the family's orchard.
Our family, like his, moved from horse power (mule power in our case) to tractors. It was important to grow more cash crops and re-fence to allow "full utilization of the tractor's potential." His chapter on the factors involved in this conversion is one of the most interesting and insightful of the entire book: the increase in the need for cash, changes in crops, the elimination of work stock, the arrangement of fences and fields, and the use of farm buildings.
He hated many of the farm chores: manure hauling, castration and the killing. But, "pumping water was no more boring than working out in a gym, and at least the exercise was outdoors in clean air." He writes with some pleasure of the 4-H and Future Farmers of America programs, and his competitions at the local fairs.
At the end of the day, he leaves farming as a teenager. There's a bit of regret in his telling of his story, but he clearly enjoyed his professor's life more. This is a useful book for anyone interested in the conversion from animal to tractor power on mid-western farms.
The "Wall Street Journal" reviewed this book with Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression (I purchased them both because of the coincidence of my own upbringing). Mildred Armstrong Kalish describes a warmer, perhaps happier culture, but the two books describe a similar life style. Perhaps, most revealing, both authors left the farm when they were able to do so as teenagers.
Robert C. Ross 2008
Not what I expected.....
Customer Rating: If you are looking for a book about what it was like (sometimes in mind-numbing great detail) living on a farm during the depression years, this is the book for you. I was hoping for more of a "housewife" approach of life during the Depression years, and this book is clearly about FARMING.
If you are interested in the minute details of harrowing, plowing, cultivating, and the sizes of such farm implements back then, then you may really enjoy this book. I know my late father would have devoured every page! However, maybe I should have realized that memoirs written from a male's recollection would not have dwelt overmuch on the housewife's responsibilites on the farm. The author touched upon her duties here and there throughout his book, with the majority of his memories concentrating on the his family's daily field and farm work.
Like I said before, if you're looking for a book written almost strictly about the fieldwork during the Depression, you'd probably love this book.
