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| Category: Autobiography | |
| About the Book | |
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When LeAnn R.
Ralph was growing up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin forty years ago,
she didn't now she was making history. Or rather, she didn't know
that the small family dairy farm homesteaded by her Norwegian great-grandfather
in the late 1800s was making history. And why would she? Forty years
ago, small family dairy farms were as plentiful as the bales of
hay which came out of her father's alfalfa fields.
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| Reviews | |
Your book is a book of history. You weave in stories about farming and polio and Norwegian cooking and other tidbits of the time ... you've done a nice job of capturing some of the day-to-day things that have changed in farming life. Your stories also take me back to feelings that I recall as a child ... those feelings of youthful exuberance and pangs of guilt and other family interactions (written in) such wonderful detail. I started reading your book right away and it was hard to put down from cover to cover. There's soooo many things that reminded me of my childhood when I was growing up on a cotton farm down here in Texas where my dad was a share cropper. You brought me back to a time of udder(LOL) enjoyment. To a time I still long for but will never see again. The valley was full of farms and everyone would see each other at the creamery where Dad and I would drop our milk cans off. Then it was off to 'The New's Room' or 'Emily's' for ice cream or hot chocolate. I love farming just as you describe it. Thank you for taking me back to yesteryear. I am enjoying your book. It brings back memories when I was a girl at home and my mom was making lefse. At that time, it was baked on top of the wood range in the kitchen ... I hope the people that read your book and didn't grow up on a farm can get a glimpse of how wonderful a life it was growing up with a warm, loving family. For the ones that did grow up on a farm, it will bring back a lot of memories. Just a note to let you know how much we enjoyed your book. It was heartwarming to read it during the actual Christmas season. The mention of date-filled cookies made my husband want me to make some this year. His mother use to send us some when she was alive. So I used your recipe. They were delicious. Thanks for the memories. Even though Wisconsin is still known as America's Dairyland, life on a family homestead is fast being replaced by corporate agribusiness, and the memories treasured in Christmas In Dairyland are quickly becoming unique milestones of an era needing to be preserved in thought and print for the sake of future generations. Christmas In Dairyland is simply wonderful reading and is a "must" for all Wisconsin public library collections.
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| About the Author | |
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LeAnn R. Ralph earned a bachelor's and a master's degree in English from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. She has taught English at a boys' boarding school and also has worked as a newspaper reporter. She is the editor of the Wisconsin Regional Writers' Assoc. quarterly publication, The Wisconsin Regional Writer. |