Description

Published 1966: First Edition / Hardcover / Very Good Condition

Original green cloth with gilt titles on the spine and original pictorial dust jacket. 178 very clean and bright pages. Slight shelf wear on the dust jacket consistent with age. (RB505)

Postage €6.95 including any additional books ordered.
An Post prepaid postage envelopes within the Republic of Ireland, with no weight restrictions from €6.95.

Reviews:
The author lived on a farm in Ireland and wrote what it was like farming in the forties and fifties, how their farm gradually changed from using old methods of harvesting by hand, with horses and simple implements, to modern equipment and technology- and why they made that shift. She said she wrote the book so her grandchildren would know what farming used to be like- and the book is mostly just about the farm, how it was run and maintained, very little about the family interactions or characters of neighbors, etc- although a few little sketches and incidents are mentioned. Interestingly enough, it’s also about why this family farm shifted from being one that raised a variety of livestock and crops, to becoming very specialized- mainly for the profit margin. They simply could not make a success of it, otherwise. They quit raising pigs, chickens and sheep for various practical reasons, eventually gravitating to dairy cattle. (A very amusing but exasperating- sounding incident with one of their last pigs was related: the pig had rooted into a very large stack of stored straw and wound up against a wall, they heard it grunting when they called it to come feed, but the pig wouldn’t back out, so they had to climb the straw pile and dig down to get it free). It was a different kind of focus for a book about farm life- compared to others I’ve read- and I found I liked it very much. I think if I knew these people I would like them very much, too.

https://dogeardiary.com/2021/03/seven-fat-kine/