Eggs in the Coffee, Sheep in the Corn: My 17 Years as a Farmwife

by Marjorie M. Douglas

Overview

The world turned upside down for city-bred Marjorie Douglas when, in 1943, her young husband moved her and their baby, Anne, from suburban St. Paul to a western Minnesota stock ranch to help his parents stave off financial disaster. With wit and wisdom Douglas's memoir describes a Midwestern way of life of 50 years ago.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780873512992
Publisher:	Minnesota Historical Society Press
Publication date:	09/15/1994
Series:	Midwest Reflections
Pages:	259
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.80(d)

Editorial Reviews

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.

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