Grace Firth (1922–2004)

I received this book as a library discard, picking it out since it looked like one of those books that my conservative Christian high school curriculum would have lauded as the "Little House" lifestyle, containing the skills that a woman needed to run a household, the odd sort of "back to basics" topics that the fundamentalists believe we need to survive. The summary reads, "When Grace Firth and her husband built their cabin on fifty acres of land in suburban Virginia, they rediscovered the joys of living a natural life." It's not often these days you hear the words "suburban" and "natural life" in the same sentence. In reading the first chapter, key words and phrases that are so beloved by hipsters and readers of thekitchn.com flourish -- home-raised meat, canning, drying, preserving, home brewed-beer, bread-making, and a good dose of Christian self-preservation.

Written nearly forty years ago, this is the equivalent of the farmwife's blog -- the woman who raises and homeschools children while growing vegetables, canning and preserving fruit, raising chickens and gathering eggs -- all neatly presented on a Wordpress blog with beautifully lit photographs of the products of her labor. It's hard to believe this book was written so recently -- one almost envisions it as written by some pioneer wife a la Laura Ingalls. While I appreciate the hard work and labor of the pioneer and farming women, I feel it has been cheapened by the advent of trends in country living, held up as some pristine standard to which those hoping to live a green, sustainable life must aspire to attain. However, the details of food procurement, preservation, and presentation are wonderful, though they do serve as a further reminder just how detached and unaware we are presently of the processing of our food.… (mais)