cover image Century Farm: One Hundred Years on a Family Farm

Century Farm: One Hundred Years on a Family Farm

Cris Peterson. Boyds Mills Press, $17.95 (32pp) ISBN 978-1-56397-710-7

Peterson assumes the likable voice of her husband, Gary, fashioning a folksy, lyrical portrait of the farm his great-grandfather started in the 1890s. ""I grew up in the middle of the century in the middle of America on this middle-sized, Midwestern farm,"" says the conversational farmer. Throughout, the text emphasizes the many constants over decades that concurrently brought major developments. Visually, too, this warm volume is a pleasing mixture of old and new: Upitis's (who collaborated with Peterson on Horsepower) informal, contemporary shots of modern life are cogently paired with flashbacks, provided by sepia-toned photographs from family albums (e.g., Grandpa's tractor and Gary's share a spread, with a caption that contrasts the acre a day Grandpa could plow with the 25 acres his grandson plows today). Upitis's photos, taken over a period of a decade or so, allow youngsters to see Gary's children grow up and reinforce the sense of the farm's continuity. Peterson's theme is as clear as the Wisconsin sky in Upitis's photographs: though farming techniques and machinery, household appliances and fashions have changed radically in a century, the Petersons still catch fish in the same lake, all hands still pitch in to help birth a calf and, after the annual planting in the same plot of land, the corn ""still reaches for the sun and whispers in the wind."" Perhaps most valuable is the silent underscoring of the immeasurable rewards of strong family bonds and the fruits of hard work--a message worth carrying into the next century. Ages 7-up. (Feb.)