EIGHTY ACRES: Elegy for a Family Farm...
EIGHTY ACRES: Elegy for a Family Farm by Ronald Jager (Beacon Press: $9; 257 pp.). Jager, who grew up in rural southern Michigan, mixes first-person recollections with an essay on the demise of family farming in this nostalgic volume. The farm he remembers was an enterprise that made heavy demands on parents and children, but the Jagers (and thousands of other families) didn’t abandon rural life because they tired of the often backbreaking labor or the low cash returns. Changes in American agriculture forced them to leave when small-scale farming ceased to be economically viable during the ‘70s and ‘80s. Jager’s reminiscences put a personal face on the continuing decline of the family farm.
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