Farm: A Year in the Life of an American Farmer - Softcover

Rhodes, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803289650 ISBN 13: 9780803289659

Publisher: Bison Books, 1997

Synopsis

Richly textured and deeply moving, Farm chronicles a year in the life of Tom and Sally Bauer of Crevecoeur County, Missouri, who cultivate nearly two square miles of the surface of the earth. They struggle to build up their farm, harvesting corn, birthing calves, planting wheat, coping with the vagaries of nature and government regulations. Required of them are ancient skills (an attunement to the weather, animals, crops, and land) as well as a mastery of modern technology, from high-tech machinery to genetics and sophisticated chemicals.

About this title

Review:

Farm lyrically recounts a year in the lives of Tom and Sally Bauer, solid Midwesterners who work the bottomlands of the Missouri River to grow "a harvest few city people could have identified ... the foundation of their diet, the principal food plant of the Western world": corn. The two rise before dawn in all kinds of weather, tending to the hundreds of tasks farmers must master in the face of heavy odds--foreclosures, climbing interest rates, a then-sickening economy, and, always, the uncertainties of the weather and the health of their crops. Richard Rhodes makes it clear that their lives are hard, but the Bauers love to till the soil. Doubtless few urbanites will want to don bib overalls after reading Farm, but anyone who reads the book will appreciate the difficulty of farmers' lives and the courage of those who lead them.

About the Author:

Richard Rhodes spent nearly a year on the Bauers’ farm, observing the duties and drama of the changing seasons. He is the author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1988 and, most recently, of Deadly Feasts: Tracking the Secrets of a Terrifying New Plague.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bison Books
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0803289650
• ISBN 13: 9780803289659
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336
• Illustrator: Greer Bill