In this Book
- Out of This World: A Journey of Healing
- Book
- 2008
- Published by: University of Iowa Press
- Series: Bur Oak Books
summary
When a life-threatening allergic illness demanded that she eat only organically grown food, writer and professor Mary Swander built a new life in a former one-room Iowa schoolhouse in the middle of the largest Amish community west of the Mississippi. In this rich and engaging memoir, which follows the course of a farmer’s year, she writes from the well-named Fairview School to share the radical transformation of her life.
From her perch in rural Kalona, Iowa, Swander discovers new strength and self-reliance along with a community of hardworking and hospitable neighbors. Raising goats and poultry, participating in barn raisings and auctions, protecting her garden from a plague of grasshoppers, creating a living crèche at Christmastime, all the while laughing at her attempts to wrestle with the pioneer challenges of midwestern winters and summers, she explores what it means to be a lone physical and spiritual homesteader at the end of the twentieth century.
From her perch in rural Kalona, Iowa, Swander discovers new strength and self-reliance along with a community of hardworking and hospitable neighbors. Raising goats and poultry, participating in barn raisings and auctions, protecting her garden from a plague of grasshoppers, creating a living crèche at Christmastime, all the while laughing at her attempts to wrestle with the pioneer challenges of midwestern winters and summers, she explores what it means to be a lone physical and spiritual homesteader at the end of the twentieth century.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- 1. To Start a Cold Motor
- pp. 1-71
- 2. To Plant from Branches
- pp. 73-135
- 3. To Measure a Circular Stack
- pp. 137-199
- 4. To Breed a Doe
- pp. 201-276
Additional Information
ISBN
9781609380205
Related ISBN(s)
9781587296376
DOI
MARC Record
OCLC
297118093
Pages
288
Launched on MUSE
2012-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No
Copyright
1995