Eighty Acres: Elegy for a Family Farm

by Ronald Jager

Jager, formerly a professor of philosophy at Yale, details the Michigan family farm that he grew up on in the 1930s.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir

257 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1990

About the author

Writer and former Yale philosophy professor Ronald Jager grew up on his family’s farm in McBain, Michigan, which he chronicled in his popular memoir Eighty Acres: Elegy for a Family Farm. After graduating from Northern Michigan Christian High School and moving on to Calvin College, Jager earned his Ph.D. at Harvard University.

He left a teaching career to become a writer, penning essays for publications such as Harper’s Magazine, in addition to books on farm life, including The Fate of Family Farming: Variations on an American Idea and Last House on the Road: Excursions Into a Rural Past. A New Hampshire resident for many decades, Jager has written books and essays on that state’s history.

Reviews

[Leah Gritter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading Jager's 80 Acres felt like reading about home. As though I was reading printed word of the many stories I've heard from my own father and his experiences on a small American farm of Dutch immigrants in northwest Iowa. Of course the specifics are different, but the theme of work ethics and how work was done, worship and faith, daily life and practicalities of living so closely connected to the land, education and family, even the shenanigans all have a similar ring from that generation, the culture of the Netherlands in a new land. Jager's writing is lyrical and his storytelling genteel.

[Meggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book about Dutch Calvinist farmers in McBain, Michigan—I knew I had to read this book just by the premise. Each chapter largely stands alone as Jager reflects on his growing up years on a farm. I loved reading about the history of Michigan farming and of the Dutch life that is so familiar to me. It also harkened back to a simpler time; Jager’s writing reminded me a lot of Wendell Berry in his questions about agribusiness and the change in farming. But I much more enjoyed the playful stories of his childhood.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed all aspects of this book except the torturing of the cats, which I found deplorable and typical of unsupervised farm kids whose parents don't teach them empathy for other creatures. I felt the author should have felt and expressed more shame and regret.

I appreciated the family stories and particularly the author's characterization of his dad. The Norwegian farmers I grew up around had similar lovable oddities. I also thought the author perfectly encapsulated how all elements of a farm relied on each other--the crops fed the animals, the animals fed the people, the people planted the crops, etc. In 2018 our closest Farmer neighbor owns 4000 Hogs that live in two buildings. Our air quality is very poor, our water is being polluted, and this farmer doesn't do anything else. Progress.

[Maggie Bowman · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
Kinda slow, but had some nice descriptions of the Michigan countryside. The story of his brother's birth was absolutely hilarious and one of the best I've read.

[Janie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully written memoir of elegant prose. I enjoyed Jager's careful and detailed description of growing up in his Michigan farm family during the 1930s - 1940s. I enjoyed most every chapter, especially "The Long Arm of John Calvin" in which he describes his Dutch Calvinist upbringing.

I marked this one paragraph that was particularly beautiful with simile:
"Historically, farmers are reputed to be a reticent lot; and of course they keep reticent, stoical company. Yet winter stable sounds are comfortable and harmonious, a rustic symphony: horses snorting like snare drums, cats stringing out their meowing, calves bawling and trumpeting for breakfast, cattle stanchions rattling like tambourines. And there is a just-discernible rhythmic background: the steady crunch, crunch of alfalfa hay being methodically ground up into cuds for the cows' late-morning snack. Like many farm boys I found a deep and elemental satisfaction in all this . . . ."

[Christian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my first time reading a memoir. My father suggested it to me, and I believed it to be a nice book. It shows how life on a small family farm differ drastically from family farms today. The many adventures that Ronald Jager and his siblings would go on seem like something parents today would never let their kids do by themselves. He does really well showing how plans can go wrong and not work out. Instead, pick yourself up and try something different that could work.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was expecting a lament and call to go back to the family farm, a trip into nostalgia, but found in this book a memoir of growing up on a western Michigan farm. Having grown up on an Iowa farm 20 years later I enjoyed the memories and brought to mind many of the stories I heard as a boy about farming from my grandparents. Very easy reading.

[Jenny Dohner · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quaint, heart-warming, but slow-moving.....

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thought-provoking. Nostalgic. Mr. Jager talks of his memories, the changes that have come in agriculture and the family traditions. He definitely makes you wonder about "progress." As my friend who recommended the book said, "Maybe you have to have grown up on a farm to really appreciate it," but it seems to me that it would challenge outsiders, too, to question some of what we are now taught.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Our early roots are in farm country. Dad didn't farm himself, but most of my uncles did. Even in moving West in 1962, Dad had a cousin he loved to visit in Ellensberg, Washington. The cousin lived on a farm. Ronald Jager grew up on a family eighty acre farm in Michigan. From what I've learned from the book so far, his experiences are pretty typical of my relatives.

Reading this book was much like sitting down with the author. He reports farm life and the nature of growing up in that kind of family in an engaging way.

Sadly, the kind of farm he, and many in our family, grew up on doesn't exist any more. He reports that when returns to where he grew up, part of the land is in the soil bank, another part in conservation progects and a third in the dairy industry. I think it was a National Geographic piece on North Dakota which says that there the buildings and implements stand in towns and fields like the farmers just walked away from them yesterday.

Profoundly sad. Death by profit motive.

[Scott DeVore · Rating 5 out of 5]

My rating might be purely nostalgic as this is about growing up in the Midwest farm country (specifically Michigan), but there is a subtle wit in the narration and storytelling. There isn't much action and nothing of note really happens. (They learn how to tap syrup out if a tree, if you find that sort of thing exciting). Yet, It's one of those where as soon as I finished a chapter I needed to start immediately on the next.

[Lynn · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a really good, insightful book but I skipped the chapters about the animal abuse which I thought were callous. Each chapter brought back childhood memories but I could not read the animal chapters to my grandchildren.

I reread this book and still could not digest the need to include the animal torture in an otherwise relevant memoir that could be shared with others. It ruined the book for me and makes it kind of creepy. A wonderful author & storyteller but something’s wrong.

[Ignominia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful memoir of rural life
I loved this book! Very well written, is telling of life on a farm in the fifties. Elegiac but not nostalgic, it describes the life as it was before family farms were turned into agribusiness. Detailed, amusing, informative, it sneaked up on me and I could not put it down till the end.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this book off my mom's bookshelf to read aloud to her. I didn't think I would enjoy it nearly as much as I did. The author's use of language sometimes brought me close to tears it is so beautiful.