See you in a hundred years....

Dorothy knows I have latent country tendencies so she passed on a book to me that she just finished. See You in a Hundred Years: Four Seasons in Forgotten America by Logan Ward. I think this is my favorite genre...and now that I reflect back to the early days at PPL, I believe it was always the favorite. I remember we could choose books off the shelf in Acquisitions and we would read them and then write short reviews. Branch librarians then would gather in Ms. Donaldson's (?) office once a month and all around the table would be stacks of books. Then each would pitch the books sharing what they loved about it (or not!) I always grabbed the homesteading books as well as the home arts...some things never change.

Logan and Heather Ward and their young son Luther decided to escape from the urban life in Manhattan with all its stress and liveliness to retreat to a life committed to 1900...no indoor plumbing, wood stoves for cooking their meals and warming their homes...determined to live off the land for one year. Logan's story is filled with the challenges and joys of their daily lives as farmers in the Shenandoah Valley. These city slickers have much to learn as they begin to learn the old ways... chickens, goats, a workhorse named Belle all bring challenges...as do the weather and their integration into the social fabric of the town in which they live.

Very fun book...especially for those of us to long for a different way of living!

Mary Ann
p.s. Refers to Horses, mules and ponies and how to keep them. 1859.
The House behind the cedars by Charles Waddell.
Carla Emery's Encyclopedia of Country Living.

pp.227
"Those who don't care about the past are disoriented, he says, showing little regard for the land, for humanity for themselves...The past may be easy to forget, but it is not dead. It lives in us all. The point is not to return to another time but to enrich the experience of our own time. By respecting the past, we can live a more meaningful present--and future. ...This project is not about escape. It's about exploring those inalienable realities facing humanity since the dawn of time--food, water, nature, community. It about finding our place in the continuum of history."