Review by Booklist Review
Scrutinizing life from a farmhouse in the hills overlooking the Missouri River, Birkby has written a weekly newspaper column for some 60 years. The editor who hired her told her on her first day to always put in a recipe, and she heeded his advice. Gathering from neighbors such down-home dishes as Hay Hand Rolls, she included in her features recipes and the stories of their creators. Daughter of a Methodist minister and wife to a farmer and scoutmaster, Birkby has been immersed most of her adult life in the commonplaces of farm life. Her columns log the daily routines of rural Iowa: dependence on growing cycles, unpredictable weather, family joys and sorrows, and the sense of community that arises when neighbors live acres away but are nonetheless mutually dependent. Unpretentious but never simple-minded, Birkby's columns celebrate midwestern life in the latter half of the twentieth century.--Knoblauch, Mark Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
In 1949, Birkby answered an ad in the Shenandoah Evening Sentinel looking for a farm wife to write a weekly column. The publisher promised to keep printing her column, "Up a Country Lane," as long as people wanted to read it. More than 60 years later, she's still at it. Birkby shares glimpses of family life, her community, and her own evolution as cook, mother, and writer. Practical and unflaggingly optimistic, she discusses the difficulties of canning with children underfoot, the importance of having a signature recipe (hers, shared here, is one for Hay Hand Rolls, guaranteed to please hungry farm workers) and the significance of March 1 in the farming calendar. This sweet collection of musings, recollections, reprinted columns, and, yes, recipes may have more value as a work of social history than a homemaking how-to volume, but it is no less charming for that. VERDICT Fans of Laura Ingalls Wilder or readers with nostalgia, either real or imagined, for rural life or a less technology-driven existence will enjoy this glimpse into Bixby's six decades as an Iowa farm wife.-Stephanie Klose, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
