See You in a Hundred Years: Four Seasons in Forgotten America [Hardcover]

Logan Ward (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 11, 2007

To save their marriage and their sanity, the author and his wife sold their belongings, packed up their two-year-old son, and moved to a rundown farmhouse in the country without any plans past surviving the year. Living as though it were the year 1900, they struggled with recalcitrant livestock, garden-destroying bugs, rain that would not come, and their own insecurities, to ultimately discover a sense of community and a sense of themselves that changed not only their marriage, but the entire Swoope, Virginia community. Lyrically told and powerfully evocative, this memoir for the modern age deals with the  growing sense of disassociation and yearning to escape the frenetic pace of daily life in today’s society.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Manhattan freelance writer Ward and his wife, Heather, faced a steep learning curve when they abandoned harried, technology-driven lives for a year not just in the country but in the country as it was a century ago. Their mantra was, If it didn't exist in 1900, we will do without, and they did—no electricity, no telephone, no computer. This breezy account of their stubbornly quixotic odyssey begins in June 2000, with Logan exhausted pumping water from a well, ineptly milking cantankerous goats and confronting his fear of a 2,000-pound Percheron, while Heather coped with the cooking stove's suffocating heat, her fear of snakes and hand-scrubbing two-year-old Luther's cloth diapers. Their garden, planted late, was soon parched by drought and plagued by pests, the most severe of several crises, since it was their winter food. Ward writes candidly about how tempers flared and sexual intimacy vanished in the early months of their adventure, but the stress of a daunting new experience soon settled into the comfort of routine, as the couple canned dozens of quarts of produce once the rains returned and forged friendships with curious, ultimately supportive country neighbors. This lyrical account of keeping the 21st century at bay is more real, and more rewarding, than any survival TV show. (June)
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Review

"It is difficult to imagine any library, public or academic, that would not want to purchase this book, informed throughout by Ward's wry sense of humor, passion, and objectivity."  —Library Journal, starred review

"Lucid and insightful."  —Idaho Statesman

"[A] carefully detailed narrative."  —TimesCommunity.com

"Rich with insights into the struggles and rewards he countered by turning the clock back one full century."  —Isthmus: The Daily Page

"A lively tale, told with admirable honesty."  —Raleigh News & Observer

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 245 pages
• Publisher: BenBella Books; 1 edition (May 11, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933771151
• ISBN-13: 978-1933771151
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #961,552 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Engrossing, Entertaining Chronicle of 1900 Rural Living Experiment, December 30, 2008

By 

David Kinchen - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: See You in a Hundred Years: Discover One Young Family's Search for a Simpler Life . . . Four Seasons of Living in the Year 1900 (Paperback)

'See You In A Hundred Years'

Engrossing, Entertaining Chronicle of 1900 Rural Living Experiment

By David M. Kinchen

Could you give up your car, electricity and all the conveniences of modern living in order to get back to the basics circa 1900?

Logan and Heather Ward decided in 2000 to do just that, leaving their comfortable home in New York City, where they had lived for about 10 years, buying a farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and deciding to try to live as much as possible like a typical farm family in 1900. Logan Ward writes about their experiences in "See You In A Hundred Years" (Delta Trade Paperback, 272 pages, $13.00).

Very few people are going to follow the example of the Ward family -- which included their toddler son Luther -- seeking a simpler life that would remove the urban rat race aspect from their life, but just about everybody will enjoy this book -- and learn many valuable lessons about conservation and consumption in our consumer-driven society.

Reading this book, I was reminded of a 1945 book and 1947 movie, "The Egg and I," starring Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert as an urban couple buying a chicken farm in rural Washington state. The movie introduced Ma and Pa Kettle, played by Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride, to an eager movie-going audience. About the same time as the Betty MacDonald book and subsequent movie came out, I was growing up on a similar farm in southwest Michigan, probably longing for a more civilized existence that would eliminate the use of an outhouse in snowbelt winters when our septic tank froze up.

When they bought their farm near Swoope, VA, the Wards decided to remove all the modern conveniences that had been added through the generations. No more electric pump at the well, no more Volvo to go to go shopping, no more electricity, a phone unplugged (although they kept the phone service current in case of a medical emergency). And yes, no more indoor toilet! Logan had to shave with a cut-throat straight razor -- ouch! -- because King Gillette's safety razor didn't come along until 1903. No more shaving of Heather's legs and underarms, either. She wasn't about to use a straight razor.

As the months piled up from their year-long experiment, marital and family stresses emerged and were illuminated, Ward writes. They had experienced a different kind of stress in their life in Brooklyn, with Logan Ward constantly on the go around the world and writing free-lance travel and home oriented stories (he has written for many publications, including The New York Times, Men's Journal, National Geographic Adventure and Popular Mechanics) and Heather with an absorbing -- and time consuming -- job.

Both Logan and Heather had Southern roots -- Logan from South Carolina, Heather from Alabama -- so the choice of a farm in rural Virginia seemed to make sense. It reminds me of a similar back-to-the-land movement in the 1960s and 1970s that brought urbanites from the Northeast and elsewhere to rural West Virginia, especially Summers, Greenbrier and Monroe counties.

Swoope is also home to Polyface Farms, which Michael Pollan discusses in his book "The Omnivore's Dilemma" (for my Dec. 16, 2007 review, see: http://www.huntingtonnews.net/columns/071216-kinchen-columnsbookreview.html). I wish Logan Ward's book had included an index, something I consider vital to any nonfiction book. Ward writes about his contact with Polyface, an organic farm, in this book, but you'll have to page through the book to find the reference, in the absence of an index.

Logan and Heather and Luther learned about living with basic transportation that existed in 1900. They bought a horse, Belle, a 2,000-pound Percheron draft horse, and found a buggy in nearby West Virginia. Logan Ward's learning curve with Belle and his experiences driving a one-horsepower vehicle are worth the price of the book. They also used bicycles and that old reliable, walking. People walked a lot more a century ago. Our Michigan farm made use of draft horses, but we also had John Deere, International Harvestor and Ford tractors.

How did their neighbors react to the city slickers and their back-to-the past experiment? Surprisingly well, although many were perplexed at what the Wards were doing. Some applauded their efforts and helped them with the basics of country living. Just about everybody helped them with canning and supplying them with food and advice.

In an interview included with the publicity materials included with the review copy, Logan Ward says he "learned a big lesson about the importance of community. We never could survive the year without the friendship, encouragement and help of our neighbors. They shared what they knew about gardening, driving draft horses, chickens. They loaned us wash basins and walnut crackers that had been gathering dust in their garages. They brought us news of 9/11 -- and offered comfort and security in its terrible aftermath."

No more modern kitchen appliances for Heather Ward: she had to learn how to cook and bake on a wood-fired range and wash clothes the old-fashioned way. Occasionally they would switch chores, with Logan doing the cooking and Heather providing the firewood and water. They learned that they alone were responsible for the food they ate, the water they obtained by a hand pump from the well, Ward writes. There was no TV and radio in 1900, so the Wards did without. They read a lot by lamplight.

These lessons were transferred to the home they bought a few years later in Staunton, VA, not far from Swoope. Logan Ward: "Even though we rely once again on electric appliances and inexpensive manufactured goods and packaged food, it's in our bones not to be wasteful...Like many people, we do our part to limit unnecessary consumption, to practice the three Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle), shop locally, buy raw foods at the farmers market (and use a canvas bag rather than plastic), turn lights off in unoccupied rooms....And we walk places whenever we can!"

So, read Logan Wards book, delight in his family's experiences and learn how to practice the three Rs in your own life.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Step Back in Time, May 24, 2007

By 

Clifford Garstang (Staunton, Virginia USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: See You in a Hundred Years: Four Seasons in Forgotten America (Hardcover)

Logan and Heather Ward and their son Luther moved from New York to Swoope, Virginia in the Spring of 2001. Their plan was to move not only in space but also in time as they began their "1900 Project"--a year in which they would live as if the year were 1900. No car, no electricity, no phone. You get the picture. Except you probably can't really get the picture because the hardships are these days almost unimaginable. This book tells their fascinating story. It's a rewarding (and surprisingly compelling) read of how Heather and Logan rediscover each other and in the process learn so much, far more I'm sure than Ward was able to fit into the book: how they de-snaked the hen house, how Logan learned to drive the wagon hitched to a horse, how they learned to cook on the wood stove, how they learned to can a year's worth of food and store it in the cellar. It must have been an amazing experience for them.

"For two days now, the wind has howled through our little corner of the Valley like a ghost train, snapping maple branches, rattling the tin roof, spooking the animals, whistling through gaps in the house. It hectors us, tugging hair and crowding the mind with sound. I'm in the kitchen when I hear a crash from the wasroom. I rush in to find shards of glass strewn across the floor. The wind has ripped the windwo out of its frame."

23 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Back to 1900 is not the way back to the land, March 2, 2009

By 

Curtis Seltzer - See all my reviews
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This review is from: See You in a Hundred Years: Discover One Young Family's Search for a Simpler Life . . . Four Seasons of Living in the Year 1900 (Paperback)

Country Real Estate, #74: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, February 19, 2009

Back to 1900 is not the way back to the land

By Curtis Seltzer

BLUE GRASS, Va.--Every once in a while you read a memoir of folks doing something so colossally pointless that you root for them to succeed. Like a one-legged man of 102 hopping up Mount Everest backward and blindfolded in a flip-flop, holding his breath to avoid breathing oxygen-thin air.

I picked up Logan Ward's See You in a Hundred Years: Four Seasons in Forgotten America last Friday. It turned out to be one of those entertaining clueless-urban-writer-moves-to-farm-and-writes-heartfelt-account-of-finally-mastering-the-rural-skill-of-spitting-into-a-cup.

Ward and his willing wife, Heather, along with their young son, followed that well-written path, but took it one giant step into the vapors. They chose to live poor, as they imagined it was in 1900. No electricity, indoor plumbing, gas engines, computers or phones, with exceptions for emergencies and well-drilling in a drought. They spent a year trying to live "the life of dirt farmers from the era of our great-grandparents."

Why would anyone do this? Ward's answer: He felt stressed by modern urban life, burned out with keeping up and disconnected from the Milky Way.

The Wards hoped to free themselves, as Thoreau tried, from lives of "quiet desperation" and "self-imposed bondage." Nothing wrong with that. They shared Thoreau's interest in "individual simplicity," and, like Thoreau, Ward "posed for himself" to study himself as both artist and model, in E. B. White's words.

So they bumbled around for a couple of weeks until they found an old brick house with a root cellar on 40 acres in Swoope (rhymes with hope), a rural community of come-heres and been-heres near Staunton, Virginia, about an hour's drive from my place. They had no farm experience, no knowledge of what they were doing and no one to help them learn the ropes. They brought the presumptuousness of their ignorance, a silent brashness they didn't know they had but certainly needed.

Similarly equipped, the first English at Jamestown 400 years ago mainly starved. The natives saved them, and later the clueless Pilgrims who followed on Cape Cod. The Swoopians, too, befriended the time-colonists who had landed amongst them, offering acceptance, advice, food and cold beer.

The Wards ate what they could coax out of two goats, a handful of chickens and a garden that mainly fed several dozen other species. They bought some staples, like coffee and flours, and left their lifestyle hibernacula only by foot, bicycle or one-horse wagon.

Like Thoreau, the Wards spent their year thinking about themselves, feeding themselves and heating themselves. They realize early on that piling up enough food to survive a year was as stressful as hunting and gathering assignments from Manhattan editorial offices.

Did Ward find what he sought? He writes: "It's the same story all over again. Just like in New York, here I am nervous, preoccupied, unable to focus my energy. ...I fret over the weather and insects, feeling frustrated, angry, and inadequate." Issues like his generally travel well, even backwards.

Millions of farm families survived 1900 because they had the intellectual tools, field-tested know-how, infrastructure and equipment to make a go of it. What seems so impenetrably challenging to the Wards would have been a routine chore to a 13-year-old farm kid 100 years ago.

Milking a goat would not have led to carpal tunnel syndrome. Killing a barn rat would not have occasioned a treatise on the right to life. Every Tom, Dick and Harriet would have known how to pick a hoof, open a flue damper and hatchet a chicken so that it did not run around with its head cut off.

After reading one Ward flub-a-dub after another, I felt myself wincing in anticipation of the next page. I was watching "America's Funniest Home Videos" from 1900.

Thousands of young people "dropped out" and went "back to the land" in the 60s and 70s. Some chucked modernity as the Wards did until poverty, disease, boredom or survival instinct brought them back. The excursion left many roughed up.

Having watched some contemporaries reject indoor plumbing once, I didn't find Ward's second sitting any more ennobling or enlightening.

Others back then blended modern technology with boots and banjos. The axis around which this group spun was The Whole Earth Catalog (WEC), which Apple's Steven Jobs described as "Google in paperback." It was an oversized encyclopedia of tools, from hand-made hoes to the sharpest of technology's cutting edges, packaged with ideas for being and doing in an environmentally responsible way.

The WEC was a vehicle for helping back-to-the-land metros become competent and share their knowledge.

A Hundred Years is not that kind of book. It's not intended to be useful, and it's not--though it is funny in spots and earnest everywhere else.

Chucking modern life -- with all of its stress and excess -- is the prescription of Islamic ideologues who want to drag everybody back 1,000 years and seal up the tomb. Going back isn't an option, even if had been nicer back then, which it wasn't. And neither is staying put.

When it comes to modernity, I guess I'm a half-chuck guy. Simplifying makes sense as does living light; rejection doesn't.

Memoirs, of course, are always about the memoirist. I found the Wards' struggles and befuddlements a nice weekend read. But the premise of their year is essentially silly. I didn't take much away from Ward's triumph over garden bugs by popping each one between his gut-stained fingers or his losing tussles with a 2000-pound, mind-of-her-own, Percheron mare.

I, too, have a mare, though considerably smaller. And though I've whispered in her ears hundreds of times, she continues to bare her perfect teeth at my most sensible instructions with the warning: "Stay out of my beeswax, Jack." I fear she, too, is not trainable.

The Wards made it to the end, which I did not believe likely when they started their survival garden in June. They began with the idea that, maybe, they'd continue their little goat-cheese business. But after serving their sentence, he decided that he hated goats, and she decided that she hated making goat-milk cheese.

What I most liked about this book is that Ward knew he was a doofus and does not flinch from showing us the evidence. That's more than self-deprecating humor, that's being an honest writer.

Ward can be reached at http://www.loganward.com/. A paperback version with a new Afterword appeared in December.

Both the hardback and paperback were printed with computer technology and were not distributed by farm wagons pulled by Percherons.

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