Putting the Barn Before the House: Women and Family Farming in Early Twentieth-Century New York

Description:

Putting the Barn Before the House features the voices and viewpoints of women born before World War I who lived on family farms in south-central New York. Grey Osterud explores the flexible and varied ways that families shared labor.

Review Quotes:

In this delightful sequel to Bonds of Community, Grey Osterud carries her analysis of family-based agriculture in south-central New York's Nanticoke Valley into the first half of the twentieth century. Osterud masterfully plumbs interviews she conducted with twenty-four women born before 1917, drawing on feminist theory and oral history theory for interpretative insights. Her interviews suggest that concepts of separate spheres and autonomy were foreign to the understandings and experiences of rural women in the earlyt twentieth century.