Eggs in the Coffee Sheep in the Corn: My 17 Years as a Farmwife (Midwest Reflections) [Paperback]

Marjorie M. Douglas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 1994 | Series: Midwest Reflections

Tears of frustration and loneliness more than once filled the eyes of Marjorie Myers Douglas as she valiantly coped with her new status as a farmwife. Life on a western Minnesota stock ranch in the years during and after World War II was, after all, a far cry from growing up in her parents' Minneapolis home community of academics and her years as a medical social worker in New York City and St. Paul. It all began in 1943 as a two-year plan to help Don's ill father avoid losing the 1,200-acre farm. With World War II pulling able-bodied men into the military, it was nearly impossible to find good farmhands, and Don felt an obligation to contribute to his father's physical and economic recovery from a severe heart attack. Leaving their modern suburban house behind, Marjorie, Don, and baby Anne moved their worldly goods to the simple farmhouse some three miles from the little town of Appleton. For Marjorie it was more a challenge than just a change - a challenge that stretched far beyond the two years into seventeen! In Eggs in the Coffee, Sheep in the Corn Marjorie Douglas tells how she faced the challenge and came out on top: raising three babies in a house with no running water; learning to understand and live with a demanding father-in-law; providing an ever-ready supply of coffee to go with endless lunches, dinners, and suppers; nurturing peonies for the touch of beauty she needed; making new friends and playing whist; establishing working relationships with the farm animals; finding some satisfaction in her own PTA and church work; keeping the sheep out of the raspberries; canning fifty quarts of rhubarb sauce; getting acquainted with German prisoners of war; butchering eighty-fivechickens. With sharp wit and quiet wisdom, Douglas offers a candid view of life in rural Minnesota from 1943 to 1960. Her stories will ring true to anyone who has ever experienced farm life and will pleasantly bring understanding to anyone who hasn't.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

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.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"What makes this book particularly worth reading, and refreshing, is its outlook. This is a relentlessly honest account of farm life." -- The Annals of Iowa, Fall 1995, No. 54

Product Details

• Paperback: 259 pages
• Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press; Trade Paperback Edition edition (September 15, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0873512995
• ISBN-13: 978-0873512992
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #151,846 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A long, weary, happy, sad life, November 26, 2004

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Eggs in the Coffee Sheep in the Corn: My 17 Years as a Farmwife (Midwest Reflections) (Paperback)

Marjorie Myers never guessed she'd be spending the next 17 years of her life on an out of the way farm way the heck out in Western Minnesota; she'd been happy and content living the urban lifetsyle of busy, bustling St. Paul. But then she fell in love and got married, in the middle of World War II, and the next thing you know she was living among her in-laws, a mixed blessing at best. This is her memoir of her years in what amounted to another country for her, a time when she learned a lot about a simpler life and a more arduous one as well. For if America changed a lot between 1943 and the beginning of the "New Frontier," it never changed as much as for people living on stock ranches like Marjorie. She never thought she'd be killing animals, much less ones she had gotten to love as pets and friends, but the hard way of the farm got her used to it. At bottom she remained the same endearing, enchanting woman she had started out with, and you know what?

She came out of her experience a whole lot smarter and with more of a natuve wisdom about the way things work, not only on the farm but in the secret chambers of the human heart. If you like Mary Gaskell's novels of 19th century farm life, you will enjoy this true account, s beautifully written, of one'woman's farm wife experience, and you will grow to love her husband, "Don," and understand why a man like that could make a woman leave her former home and follow him even unto a farm not much removed from the famous COLD COMFORT FARM. Highly recommended for both city and country folk.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome!, November 22, 2006

By 

Cheryl Ferguson "Cheryl" (Missouri) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Eggs in the Coffee Sheep in the Corn: My 17 Years as a Farmwife (Midwest Reflections) (Paperback)

I absolutely loved this book. I'm a city girl who at the time I read this book had been transplanted to a hobby farm in Kansas. I always recommend this book to any "newcomers" to the country. I was sad to see the book end! Definitely a must read!

5.0 out of 5 stars Could not put it down, May 17, 2011

By 

Sheepish - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Eggs in the Coffee Sheep in the Corn: My 17 Years as a Farmwife (Midwest Reflections) (Paperback)

I loved this book, I'm on a farm in Australia and found this beautifully written book informative both about the period and this part of America on the land. I had to read it cover to cover despite it being made up of discrete essays.
The story still flows through in a most satisfying way.