First published in 1956, Leonard Hall’s affectionate chronicle of the round of the seasons on a working farm in the eastern Missouri Ozarks is now available in a quality paperback reprint. These beautifully written essays on country sights, sounds, customs, animals, and people will have great appeal to a new generation of readers who are discovering the joys of rural self-sufficiency. Older readers will rejoice at the opportunity to renew their acquaintance with Len and Ginnie Hall and their adventures on Possum Trot Farm.
Hall, a naturalist and a newspaperman, describes such homely farm chores as dehorning a calf so clearly that one paragraph teaches just how the work is done. His accounts of the events that mark the changing seasons—migrating geese, budding trees, hunting, fishing, butchering, and simply walking through fields and woods—are remarkable for their unpretentious nostalgic beauty.
“Leonard Hall is a mid-Twentieth Century Thoreau…There is nothing ponderous or pontifical in his writing. It is direct and clear as befits the surroundings in which he works and writes. When his musings lead him to express opinion about farm policy, or man’s relation to the land, he doesn’t labor the point but gives it to you short and sharp. It comes on you like a pepper-ball in a mouthful of the country sausage he temptingly describes.”—Chester C. Davis, foreword, first edition, Country Year
