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Books > Professional & Technical > Agriculture & farming > General
Fresh from receiving a doctorate from Cornell University in 1933,
but unable to find work, Charles M. Wiltse joined his parents on
the small farm they had recently purchased in southern Ohio. There,
the Wiltses scratched out a living selling eggs, corn, and other
farm goods at prices that were barely enough to keep the farm
intact.
In wry and often affecting prose, Wiltse recorded a year in the
life of this quintessentially American place during the Great
Depression. He describes the family's daily routine, occasional
light moments, and their ongoing frustrations, small and
large--from a neighbor's hog that continually broke into the
cornfields to the ongoing struggle with their finances. Franklin
Roosevelt's New Deal had little to offer small farmers, and despite
repeated requests, the family could not secure loans from local
banks to help them through the hard economic times. Wiltse spoke
the bitter truth when he told his diary, "We are not a lucky
family." In this he represented millions of others caught in the
maw of a national disaster.
The diary is introduced and edited by Michael J. Birkner, Wiltse's
former colleague at the Papers of Daniel Webster Project at
Dartmouth College, and coeditor, with Wiltse, of the final volume
of Webster's correspondence.
Novelist and nature writer Richard Horan embarked on an
adventure across America to reveal that farming is still the
vibrant beating heart of our nation. Horan went from coast to
coast, visiting organic family farms and working the harvests of
more than a dozen essential or unusual food crops--from Kansas
wheat and Michigan wild rice to Maine potatoes, California walnuts,
and Cape Cod cranberries--in search of connections with the
farmers, the soil, the seasons, and the lifeblood of America.
Sparkling with lively prose and a winning blend of profound
seriousness and delightful humor, Harvest carries the reader on an
eyeopening and transformational journey across the length and
breadth of this remarkable land, offering a powerful national
portrait of challenge and diligence, and an inspiring message of
hope.
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