The Farm Summer 1942
By Donald Hall, Illustrated by Barry Moser (Dial Books)
In the summer of 1942, nine-year-old Peter is sent to New Hampshire to live on his grandparents’ farm while his father fights in the war and his mother helps with the war effort. From San Francisco, Peter has never experienced farm life before; milking cows, cutting hay, collecting eggs. Initially, he is timid about performing these chores, but it isn’t long before he takes pride in doing the hard farm work alongside his grandfather. He also begins to relish the warmth and comfort of sitting by the radio in the evenings with his grandparents, drinking fresh milk and eating homemade gingersnaps. Hall expertly describes what life was like on a small New England farm; the full-page illustrations by Moser beautifully highlight the 1940s time frame. Children will get a taste of the hard work and satisfaction of operating a family farm, an art which sadly has become almost non-existent and yet seems to be making a comeback in the form of homesteading.
This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Summer 2024
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