Farm: A Year in the Life of an American Farmer [Paperback]

Richard Rhodes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 28, 1997

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com 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.

From Publishers Weekly

To write this book, Rhodes, whose The Making of the Atomic Bomb won the NBA, NBCC and Pulitzer prizes, spent almost a year on the family farm in central Missouri owned by the pseudonymous 46-year-old Tom Bauer. Meticulous, exhaustive, at times excessive descriptions illumine the planting and harvesting of corn, soybeans and wheat; the mechanics of farm machinery and finances; hog and cattle breeding and castration; the farmer's battles with government controls, imperatives of grain companies and nature; and farmer camaraderie (mostly male, the female farmer is a rarity in Missouri). Rhodes generally affects the no-nonsense, unadorned tone of the farmers, but his occasional lyricisms are not inappropriate, even when portraying the bustle of a farrowing house, the farm's financial core. "There were pigs everywhere, pigs standing on their mothers' backs, pigs' heads lined up along a row of teats, pigs squealing and scratching, and more to come, into a dimly lit world where the air was mellow night and day with country-Western songs." Readers will not fail to appreciate the monumental achievement of the independent farmer, but they will remain curious about the experiences of the author who masks himself behind a third-person narration. BOMC featured alternate.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 333 pages
• Publisher: Bison Books (November 28, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803289650
• ISBN-13: 978-0803289659
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #837,548 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a pretty good effort for a city boy, April 22, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Iowa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Farm: A Year in the Life of an American Farmer (Paperback)

As an american farmer, I was curious as to how a non-farmer would depict a way of life so diffrent from his own. I think Richard did a fine job in showing just how tough things can be sometimes and also the humor that goes along with this way of life. I did find a few technical errors that would not be noticeable to any one unfamilar with farming or its equipment. Overall this is a very good book for any one curious about "life down on the farm" or any one just looking for a good light read. I have read and reread this book several times and will probably do so again in the future. So there you have it, an endorsement from a farmer for a book about a farmer.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A safe antidote for suburban cluelessness, September 1, 2002

By 

Cortland Kirkeby (Oakland, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Farm: A Year in the Life of an American Farmer (Hardcover)

What a damned shame this book is out of print! If it were up to me, this book would be required reading for anyone planning to relocate to the midwest from either the east or west coast, particularly if you grew up in the suburbs.

FARM details the deceptively complicated life of a midwestern farm couple, their 3 kids, two dogs and assorted friends, crops, livestock, farm machinery, etc. Farming is certainly no walk in the park. The further you venture into this book, the more emotionally exhausted you feel as Rhodes brings home in brilliant detail all the pulls, pushes, tugs, restraints and jolts that go into this lifestyle. How do they do it?

Around the biographical data concerning the Bauer family, Rhodes introduces a staggering array of ancillary subjects, summarizing each with deadly accuracy coupled with a comfortable and easy-to-digest writing style. (Even soils and compactor mechanics are rendered comprehensible for those of us who never "tested well" on mechanical reasoning!)

For east/west coast new arrivals to the midwest who couldn't feel more lost if they'd just landed on Jupiter, this book sheds lots of light on many of the onstensibly incomprehensible mores, rhythms, habits and tendencies of midwestern life that persist in the behavioral patterns of even those who are more than a generation removed from the farm or the small town. With Rhodes as your guide, it's easier to understand the positive aspects of why they do what they do and less painful and exasperating to conform yourself to behaviors that will make them accept you more. I'd need a calculator to add up all the dumb mistakes I could have avoided over the past 10 years if I'd been armed with the information contained in Rhodes' book.

However, 1989 was a long time ago. Since then a new breed of "agri-preneurs" led by Ron Macher, Small Farm Today, the various editors of Storey Books and others is slowly guiding America's farmers away from traditional wholesale masochism toward direct marketing of specialty crops and livestock.

Rhodes' FARM and Macher's MAKING YOUR SMALL FARM PROFITABLE form a veritable old and new testament of American farming -- and an important primer for the aging suburban Boomer who wants to replace lifelong cluelessness with a practical body of knowledge with which to become at least a small part of the solution -- the voting booth, perhaps?!!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Story, March 3, 2010

By 

M. J. Mier "Phantom LVR" (Redmond WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Farm: A Year in the Life of an American Farmer (Paperback)

Having grown up in Wisconsin and worked on a farm I found this book to be a fine example of farm life. I've read the other reviews and found it interesting that someone couldn't finish this book because of the mundane and the boring side of this story. Farm life is slow going and the day to day life of a farmer isn't as glamourous as a jet fighter pilot, but I still find a way to come back home when I read this book. To a farmer this may be a boring book, especially since a farmer may do the things depicted in this book on a regular basis and the last thing he would want to do is read about it. To someone who used to work on a farm years ago or someone who has never worked on one this book puts you up close and personal with the daily life of what it's like to farm.

The other aspect of this review is the farm is fast disappearing from our landscape. Commercial farms are becoming the norm, and the family farm and the support it needs to survive are fast becoming ancient history. This book will put you back into those good old days when farmers were an important part of American life and helped shape Americana.

There are too few books like this and when I find myself longing for home I'll pull it out and read a few chapters and I'm back home helping fix the tractor or hoping a thunderstorm will pass by in order to drive the combine over to one of the fields to harvest some corn.

If you like farming, buy this book, you won't be disappointed.