Christmas in Dairyland: True Stories from a Wisconsin Farm by Leann R. Ralph
BUY IT NEW
- $13.95 Online Price$12.55 Member price(Save 10%)Limited Time Offer! Everyone receives the Member Price on books.
See Details
(Paperback)
- Pub. Date: July 2003
- 156pp
- Sales Rank: 360,512
Buy it Used: 6 copies from $7.85 See All Available
Customers who bought this also bought
Product Details
- Pub. Date: July 2003
- Publisher: Booklocker.com, Incorporated
- Format: Paperback, 156pp
- Sales Rank: 360,512
- ISBN-13: 9781591133667
- ISBN: 1591133661
Synopsis
When LeAnn R. Ralph was growing up on a dairy farm in
Wisconsin forty years ago, she didn’t know she was making history. Or rather,
she didn’t know that the small family dairy farm homesteaded by her Norwegian
great-grandfather in the late 1800s was making history. And why would
she?
Forty years ago, small family dairy farms were as plentiful
as the bales of hay which came out of her father’s alfalfa
fields.
Today, small family dairy farms have all but vanished.
Wisconsin is still known as America’s Dairyland, but most of the farms that
remain milk hundreds of dairy cows—and sometimes a thousand or more—instead of
only twenty or thirty.
Join LeAnn and her mother, Norma (stricken with polio at
the age of twenty-six and paralyzed in both legs), her father, Roy (never too
busy to cut a Christmas tree), her brother, Ingman (named for their Norwegian
grandmother, Inga), and her sister, Loretta (always full of surprises), as they
celebrate the Christmas season during a simpler time when happiness was baking
cookies, decorating the Christmas tree, or even just getting out of wearing snow
boots to school.
Story titles include “The Lefse Connection,” “Milkweed Pods and Poinsettias,” “Wintergreen,” “The Christmas Dress,” “White Christmas,” “Good Things Come in Small Packages,” “Jeg Er Sa Glad Hver Julekveld” (“I Am So Glad Each Christmas Eve”), “A Miracle of Sorts,” “A Candle for Christmas,” and “A New Year Unlike Any Other.” Christmas In Dairyland also includes 14 pages of recipes for family favorites such as lefse, julekake, Christmas bread and sugar cookies, as well as instructions for making candles out of old crayons.
Customer Reviews
My favorite Christmas book of all time!!by Holly_Snowe
Reader Rating:
See Detailed Ratings
December 16, 2009: I can't even remember how I heard about this book, but as soon as I did I knew I had to have it. It was August, and I was pregnant. I'm not sure why my nesting urge manifests into holiday cheer, but my Christmas spirit comes on strong and with months to spare whenever I'm in the family way. I had been raised in North Dakota, which is much like Wisconsin but with more wheat and fewer cows. Homesteaders from Germany and Norway had flocked to both areas in the early 20th century and anyone from that area can tell you that not much has changed. For fans of the Golden Girls, remember Betty White's character 'Rose' from St. Olaf, Minnesota? It wasn't much of an exaggeration.
The only way to get a copy of this book was to order it directly from the author, something I had never done before. I figured if I was personally putting her through the trouble of sending one, I might as well get two, so I ordered a copy for my mother as well and asked Ms. Ralph to inscribe it "To Cassia, From one Norwegian farm girl to another". The books came in the mail a week later and I dove right in and gobbled it up. Dairyland is filled with short stories about chewing wintergreen with her father the day they chopped down the Christmas tree, memories of her mother resting an arm on the countertop while she cooked with one hand because her polio didn't leave her strong enough to fully stand on two legs without assistance, and the secret to why the now classic holiday ballad White Christmas was so unwelcome in her family home. The final pages are filled with recipes that had been passed down in her family from generation to generation. When my mother opened her present that Christmas eve, she was a little puzzled at first. I told her the story of how I had gotten the book, and as she scanned over it she actually started to cry. The room fell silent as she told memory after memory of her own mother, and her grandmother, making those very recipes in their kitchens when she was a child. Some were holiday traditions that had been lost after her parents died a year a part when she was a teenager. I read Christmas in Dairyland toward the end of every year, whenever I crave a little holiday cheer, or just when I want to think of my mother. In the bustle of the season I had forgotten to send my check to the author, who graciously waited four months for me to realize my mistake before pointing it out to me herself! I promptly mailed her my payment, along with a letter of apology and the very first photograph of my 7lb 4oz excuse.
loading...
loading...
loading...