A Good Day's Work: An Iowa Farm in the Great Depression | 
 enlarge | Author: Dwight W. Hoover
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher
Category: Book
List Price: $26.00
Buy New: $17.16
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Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 87075
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.6 x 1
ISBN: 1566637023
Dewey Decimal Number: 977.784033092
EAN: 9781566637022
ASIN: 1566637023
Publication Date: June 25, 2007
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Product Description
Despite beautiful landscapes and bountiful harvests, farming is hard work and always has been. The Great Depression in rural America, which began in the 1920s and lasted until World War II, made it still harder. At a time when tractors were replacing horses and the family farm was giving way to the large, single-crop enterprise, the struggle to survive and modernize in a period of economic scarcity was especially sharp. In A Good Day's Work, Dwight Hoover, who grew up on an Iowa farm in this era, recalls the events of day-to-day life on a single farm, offering detailed descriptions of daily work in each of the year's four seasons. A Good Day's Work is a fascinating if grim reminder of what it was like to be a child with adult responsibilities. Mr. Hoover's unusual memoir recalls the rough edges as well as the happy moments of rural life. It is an honest re-creation of a world that was vanishing.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
An ok but not brilliant view of life on the farm July 20, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Dwight W. Hoover describes his boyhood on a 100-acre Iowa family farm in the 1930s. I grew up on a 100-acre dairy farm in Wisconsin a few years later, and to some extent his account resonated with me.
Our family, like his, tried and failed to come to grips with the "get big or get out" realities of American agriculture. The Iowa Highway Commission delivered a major blow with its decision to "construct a state highway through my father's farm," destroying the family's orchard.
Our family, like his, moved from horse power (mule power in our case) to tractors. It was important to grow more cash crops and re-fence to allow "full utilization of the tractor's potential." His chapter on the factors involved in this conversion is one of the most interesting and insightful of the entire book: the increase in the need for cash, changes in crops, the elimination of work stock, the arrangement of fences and fields, and the use of farm buildings.
He hated many of the farm chores: manure hauling, castration and the killing. But, "pumping water was no more boring than working out in a gym, and at least the exercise was outdoors in clean air." He writes with some pleasure of the 4-H and Future Farmers of America programs, and his competitions at the local fairs.
At the end of the day, he leaves farming as a teenager. There's a bit of regret in his telling of his story, but he clearly enjoyed his professor's life more. This is a useful book for anyone interested in the conversion from animal to tractor power on mid-western farms.
The "Wall Street Journal" reviewed this book with Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression (I purchased them both because of the coincidence of my own upbringing). Mildred Armstrong Kalish describes a warmer, perhaps happier culture, but the two books describe a similar life style. Perhaps, most revealing, both authors left the farm when they were able to do so as teenagers.
Robert C. Ross 2008
 Not what I expected..... July 13, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
If you are looking for a book about what it was like (sometimes in mind-numbing great detail) living on a farm during the depression years, this is the book for you. I was hoping for more of a "housewife" approach of life during the Depression years, and this book is clearly about FARMING.
If you are interested in the minute details of harrowing, plowing, cultivating, and the sizes of such farm implements back then, then you may really enjoy this book. I know my late father would have devoured every page! However, maybe I should have realized that memoirs written from a male's recollection would not have dwelt overmuch on the housewife's responsibilites on the farm. The author touched upon her duties here and there throughout his book, with the majority of his memories concentrating on the his family's daily field and farm work.
Like I said before, if you're looking for a book written almost strictly about the fieldwork during the Depression, you'd probably love this book.
 CITY PERSON CONNECTS WITH IOWA FARM STORY March 11, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Dwight Hoover has written an engrossing story of farm life during the Depression in Iowa. What I found especially fascinating was learning of the gradual phasing out of work horses over many years--it wasn't a sudden conversion to gas-powered vehicles. As a person raised in a big city (Chicago) that made sense as I thought about it. I remember as a little girl in the late'40s/early 50s a horse and cart parked on our street in the city. The book takes us through typical days and especially, typical seasons of farm life, describing in detail planting, cultivation and harvesting of crops. Using vivid details and choosing carefully what stories to tell, the author gives us a complete picture of what life was like when he was growing up.
good read January 11, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
I grew up in a small town in Iowa during the 60s & 70s. Lately I have read several books on growing up in Iowa and found this one to be one of the best. The author explains in great detail of what Iowa farm life was like during the Great Depression. Hard work, isolation and the dependence on the entire family just to get by is just some of what the author covers. A good read for anyone interested in early farm life.
Boring October 10, 2007
3 out of 9 found this review helpful
This memoir was written by a college professor and it reads just like it. I have read a few memoirs that took place during the Depression and all of them managed to inject a sense of fun and humor in spite of the hard work and difficulties. This one is written with scrupulous detail but is just plain boring.
Lorraine Haven
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