How to Shovel Manure and Other Life Lessons for the Country Woman - Hardcover

Petersen, Gwen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0760328625 ISBN 13: 9780760328620

Publisher: Voyageur Pr, 2007

Synopsis

It’s not a job you want to take on without a sense of humor. Oops--it’s not a job at all. It’s an all-encompassing life, being a country woman on the ranch or farm, and with wit and equanimity like Gwen Petersen’s, it can be survived. In fact, with Petersen’s help, it can be drop-dead hilarious. A much-loved cowgirl scribe in rare form, Petersen eases us through the rigors of country living, from raising chickens to shoveling manure to cooking Rocky Mountain oysters. You’d think midwifing a calf was no laughing matter--until Gwen steps in with her expert advice. She has wise counsel for sharing the yard with a gaggle of ill-tempered geese; step-by-step instructions for harvesting pig manure; and sound advice for staying cool through haying season and coping with the chaos of Christmas on the ranch or farm.

For good measure, the book includes poems and recipes that will transport you to a country state of mind--whether you hail from the city’s busiest streets or the ranch’s quietest gravel roads. Equal parts handy how-to advice, rural humor, philosophy, and fond farm nostalgia, How to Shovel Manure and Other Life Lessons for the Country Woman is all good.

About this title

About the Author

For Gwen Petersen, the seeds of country living were planted during youthful summertime visits to her grandparents’ Illinois farm and hours helping her mother raise chickens in their city backyard. When Gwen married a rancher, her background as an occupational therapist for the bothered and bewildered helped her some in figuring out how to cope with country life. After thirty-five years of muddling through--and living with an assortment of cattle, pigs, sheep, chickens, cats, dogs, horses, and a gaggle of particularly nasty-tempered geese--she’s starting to catch on. Today Gwen lives on a small place in Montana where she raises miniature horses and works on her attitude. Her humorous writings on barnyard foibles include magazine columns, cowboy and -girl poetry, and her book, The Greenhorn’s Guide to the Woolly West.

From the Back Cover

When you contemplate country life, do you imagine sipping lemonade on the front porch and spending quiet Sunday afternoons watching the corn grow? Think again, and let Gwen Petersen set you straight.

Gwen is the Erma Bombeck of the farmhouse and the Ann Landers of the barnyard. In How to Shovel Manure and Other Life Lessons for the Country Woman, she shares her hard-won wisdom on surviving real rural life through tales of her own hilarious successes and failures. From raising chickens to cooking Rocky Mountain oysters to tackling the never-ending task of shoveling manure, Gwen has done it all.

This essential book is equal parts handy how-to advice, rural humor and philosophy, and fond farm and ranch nostalgia. With a sampling of recipes and cowgirl poetry thrown in for good measure, How to Shovel Manure and Other Life Lessons for the Country Woman is sure to put you in a country state of mind.

[About the Author]

For Gwen Petersen, the seeds of country living were planted during summertime visits to her grandparents Illinois farm and by her mother who saw to it that they raised chickens in their city backyard. When Gwen married a rancher, her background as an occupational therapist for the bothered and bewildered helped her some in figuring out how to cope with country life. After thirty-five years of muddling through, she s starting to catch on. Today Gwen lives in Big Timber, Montana, where she raises miniature horses and works on her attitude.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Preface Over the decades of rural living, Country Women have been helpmeets to their men. With remarkable courage, incredible stamina, and splendid insouciance to the rawer facts of nature, the Country Woman has shaped the nest surrounding that hardworkin', cow-wrasslin', bull-throwin' son-of-a-farmer. Take away the Country Woman and it's like throwing away the keys to the pickup: Nothing gets going. This book is a handy guide and aid to those choosing to spend their lives as Country Women. It contains really helpful, practical, useful tips and hints to keep the Country Woman from going berserk. (Reserve going berserk for special occasions.) Because farm and ranch life is necessarily divided and marked by the seasons of the year, the manual will attempt to follow a similar pattern. Our hope is to provide an understanding reference volume for the dauntless Country Woman, couched in language developed in secret women's conclaves* (see footnote), not necessarily comprehensible to men.

Any Country Woman could write a book about country life. It has all the elements of good fiction: excitement (you hope that young colt won't dump you), tension (if you do get dumped, you hope nothing on your personal self breaks), danger (is that a rattlesnake curled under the tractor?), heroes and heroines (that would be your Dearly Beloved, yourself, your family, and your favorite sheepdog), and villains (that would be government regulations, mean roosters, wolves, coyotes, other uninvited varmints, and sometimes the plumbing).

But country life isn't fiction. It's as real as the sun rising each morning, as genuine as snow on mountaintops, as basic as breathing. Country life is the story of land.

Nurturing the earth is the heart of country life. In a rural culture, ranchers and farmers are the first stewards of land that produces the food and fiber that feed and clothe the nation. As you watch and work with the magic of changing seasons, your creed as a Country Woman is simple and true: Take care of the land and the land will take care of you.

Edition details

• Publisher: Voyageur Pr
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0760328625
• ISBN 13: 9780760328620
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224