Rural Free: A Farmwife's Almanac of Country Living

by Rachel Peden, Sidonie Coryn (Illustrator)

This is a nature book, a country book, a farm book, a book of living things for all people who rejoice in the rural virtues and in the spiritual freedom of the country life. In a time when the complexities of urban life are hurling thousands into the suburbs and country, this book is like a breath of fragrant country air redolent with sweet clover and timothy. Rachel Peden is a writer of surpassing insight who deeply senses the appeal of "people and other farm things" to those who have left the city for the country life, to those city exiles from a country past, and to those, as well, who have always lived in rural U.S.A.Rural Free is divided into twelve eventful chapters, one for each month of the country year. It is a book knee-deep in life, in the endless variety, richness, motion, and events of the four seasons on a farm. It is also Americana in the deepest sense, preserving the habits of mind, the talk, the pungent figures of speech which arise so spontaneously from rural life and which thin out so in a generation of city living. The book is too true to be folksy, for folksiness is a product of an alien view of life in the country. It is too real to be sentimental, too much engaged with the richness of life, now, this month, to be nostalgic, yet it is evocative of all the things the generations remember from the simpler life. It is filled with the doings of a farm and a family, for Mrs. Peden is a wife, mother, and neighbor who, fortunately for her readers, has also found the time to share her multitudinous activities. Reading about it from Rachel Peden is next best to picking the "goodies" out of a black walnut cracked on the bottom of a flatiron on a winter's night.[From the inside jacket]

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir

382 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1961

Reviews

[ladydusk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really lovely read seeing the intermingling of life in nature and their junctions on an Indiana farm. Similar climate to Ohio made this a lovely 2023 read. She has some stunningly beautiful passages. Great nature lore read for a mom.

[Michelle Gourley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adore this book. Granted, I share the author’s interests, alma mater, and residence in a 1930s Indiana farmhouse and freely concede this is the majority of the book’s charm for me; it lives on my nightstand and I read it with the seasons. The gist: a 1950s Indiana farmwife, college grad, and freelance writer with a naturalist’s eye chronicles 12 months on her farm circa 1960.

The seasonal focus gives the writing an almost luxurious pace and simplicity. Just a pleasure. It increases my love and attentiveness to nature and the rhythms of life. I picture our own little farmhouse, land, and the surrounding farmland and town as the setting. Adore.

[Emily C · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's hard to find a book both interesting and calming. I love this book for that, and the warm nostalgia it puts me in, as someone from Indiana who is living in a very different place.

She's a beautiful writer, giving you sensory rich descriptions and an intimacy with the farm life that you won't gather by visiting the county fair.

Besides a few moments of rural patriotism and a passing mention of a "little person" event at the county fair, I have comparatively few complaints for a book written in the 60s. This was a perfect audiobook when I was sick and a perfect gift for someone stuck in a hospital bed, in need of some happy distraction.

[Susan Kendrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a love letter to living and working on a farm in Indiana in the 1950’s. The author writes beautiful descriptions of her surroundings with such tenderness and wonder! I would recommend this book to anyone who loves slow, contemplative descriptions of nature and humanity’s engagement with it.

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

A neat book we read as a family that went through a year of change throughout life on a farm

[Janie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed vicariously living Rachel Peden's days on the farm. Descriptively written

Interesting:
A common fact, but miraculous still, is the fact that the colt born into a winter world had, during her prenatal life, been furred for winter living. A spring colt would have been born with short hair.

Interesting simile (and so characteristic of Peden's style:
Montie is instinctively generous and loving, also forthright and practical as a broom handle.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rachel Peden's "Rural Free: A Farmwife's Almanac of Country Living" is, like a pot of stew slow simmering on the stove all day, a book that cannot be rushed. Consisting of 12 chapters over a modest 382 pages, I had envisioned completing the book in a not-so-ambitious two weeks thereby giving me time left in the year to tick off another book or two, or to simply enter the holidays unencumbered by literature. But Rachel Peden had other ideas, and so rather than completing the book over a leisurely couple of weeks I instead glacially ambled to the end of it nearly four months later.

Three factors were at play here. First, the book’s month-by-month structure practically demands that the reader keep pace with the actual passage of time. Second, while Ms. Peden’s writings are chronicled by month, there is no other narrative continuity tying each observation — some pages long, others a mere few lines — together. The end result is something I’ll call “anecdote fatigue,” and it often meant that after finishing a chapter I needed a break before I was ready to move on to the next. Finally, there’s the distance from where I am in my life and where Rachel Peden was in hers. I don’t exactly long to live on a rural farm in the 1960s, but I do want to get away and live a much quieter, much simpler, much smaller life. Rather than experiencing the joy of living vicariously through her words, the fact that I’m not yet there made reading “Rural Free” not quite the pleasure I imagine it one day will be.

[Joan Colby · Rating 3 out of 5]

A charming and evocative month by month description of farm life in the 1950's/early 60's (this book was published in 1961) culled from columns Peden wrote for a local newspaper in Indiana. Her views are poetic and detailed especially observations of nature and creatures that I found very interesting. This may be a way of life that is vanishing and if so that is sad. Peden does not sugarcoat the natural happenings--death of a foal, a possum breaking into the henhouse, etc--but her views are in the main positive.

[Anna · Rating 1 out of 5]

I got this book because it was on the "local" shelf at my library, written by someone pretty close to my hometown. I was pumped - a local book, about country living, and an old time tale of farm life in Indiana.

But I couldn't make it through the first chapter. I am pretty sure the author had a special thesaurus just to look up colors to describe crap in nature. She also took at least 5 paragraphs too many to say most anything.

I skipped through a few chapters and still couldn't do it.

[Robyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. Each little essay is like a self-contained meditation. I checked this out of the library, but then went out and bought it because it's a book I want to own. It's organized by seasons, so I plan on reading each month over the course of the year. Peden is full of wisdom and reminded me of the simple pleasures we can find in nature everywhere.

[Susan Y, · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is arranged as an Almanac, so I have been delving into it each month. as the seasons change. It reminds me of the days when the small town in which I live and grew up was the heart of a farming community.

[Carrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you've ever wanted to live on a farm, this collection of newspaper columns written by a 1950s farm wife will make you go on zillow.com to see how much land is per acre. Comforting, charming, beautifully written. Perfect for a hammock on a Sunday afternoon.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful, lyrical almanac of a year on an Indiana farm from the viewpoint of a farm wife.