Friday, February 10, 2012

Farmer's Wife Friday: I Lost My Heart to a Farmer

I recently finished reading Black Heels to Tire Wheels by Ree Drummond, of Pioneer Woman fame. This week's farmer's wife, from Morgan County, Alabama, reminded me of Ree. "Pioneer Woman" was all set to move to Chicago for her career. But during a visit home, she met and "lost her heart to a farmer" and now she works cattle. Okay, and then she started a blog. And became famous. And wrote some books and has a show on the Food Network. Anyway...

This week's wife was determined to have a life other than farming. She "pursued an education ...and became well established in a large city." And then fell in love with a farmer. She hated everything about farm life, except her husband.

#12 Broken Sugar Bowl.

But then she made a list of pros and cons, and together they tackled the items on the cons list. I'm sure it was somewhat of a puzzle trying to tackle some of the items on her list: mud, inconvenience, lack of money, water, society, beauty, monotonous diet, etc.

#33 Farmer's Puzzle. This block presented some problems to me, and because I never learn my lesson of starting to work on these blocks earlier in the week, I kept looking at the clock and getting frustrated. It's a teensy shy of 6 1/2 inches. And I could almost guarantee that Carla came up with an easier way of making this block, probably involving something simple like rectangles and squares, rather than my parallelogram and triangle piecing. But it's done and I'm moving on.

So this farmer's wife and her husband tackled the "cons" with a definite plan. They added hens, cream, asparagus and fruit as "side lines to give some monthly income to supplement the main crops," which also gave variety to their diet.

#45 Grape Basket. My basket has green grapes rather than red.

Instead of dwelling on all the negative aspects of farm life that she despised, this wife did what she could to make her life happy, and in the end she could "wish no greater blessing for my daughter than the love of a farmer like 'Dad.'" Her letter is a testament to the power of positive thinking.

#57 Morning
Don't forget to see what Carla has to say about this week's farmer's wife.
And we have completed 64 blocks by now!


9 comments:

05 08
Carla said... #

Wow! I've now done 20. I won't try to catch up but I sure love your blocks : )

quirky granola girl said... #

your blocks look great! and that is a good lesson about how a marriage should work.

amy smart said... #

I LOVE your FW blocks! They look so pretty all together. I loved that Pioneer Woman book too. :)

Terriaw said... #

Ree the Pioneer Woman sure has a following, doesn't she. Your blocks for this week so quite complicated. Love 'em! So amazing to see all of them together so far.

CitricSugar said... #

Your farmer's wife blocks are just so beautiful. I love the puzzle block....

Mama Pea said... #

Again....more perfection!

felicity said... #

Love love these blocks - are you finding that working with the shot cottons ups the difficulty factor? They're so delicate....but they sure do look fabulous!

Katy Cameron said... #

Wow, that's an amazing collection. I don't think I'd know where to begin o.O

Letterpress said... #

Bravo to you--off of a sick bed and full steam into block-making. I'm completely impressed. The basket is my favorite. Did I tell you one of my fantasies is to make a basket quilt? Yep, right up on that interminably long list of Quilts I Want To Make. OK, back to the grading.

E.