<TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textcase="02">Putting the Barn Before the House</TitleText> <Subtitle textcase="02">Women and Family Farming in Early Twentieth-Century New York</Subtitle>

Cornell University Press cornell@onixsuite.com 20130523 eng

COM.ONIXSUITE.9780801478109 03 01 Cornell University Press 01 GCOI 80140100276930 02 0801478103 03 9780801478109 15 9780801478109 59 BC <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText textcase="02">Putting the Barn Before the House</TitleText> <Subtitle textcase="02">Women and Family Farming in Early Twentieth-Century New York</Subtitle> 1 A01 Osterud, Grey Grey Osterud Grey Osterud, an independent scholar and editor, is the author of Bonds of Community: The Lives of Rural Women in Nineteenth-Century New York and Putting the Barn Before the House: Women and Family Farming in Early Twentieth-Century New York. 01 eng 296 00 296 03 14 03 12 14 2 HIS036080 HBJK 10 HIS036060 10 SOC028000 24 Internet Gender and Sexuality Studies 24 Internet History / U.S. and Canada 24 Internet New York State and City 01 01 01 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. As she did in her previous book, Bonds of Community, for an earlier period in history, Grey Osterud explores the flexible and varied ways that families shared labor and highlights the strategies of mutuality that women adopted to ensure they had a say in family decision making. Sharing and exchanging work also linked neighboring households and knit the community together. Indeed, the culture of cooperation that women espoused laid the basis for the formation of cooperatives that enabled these dairy farmers to contest the power of agribusiness and obtain better returns for their labor. Osterud recounts this story through the words of the women and men who lived it and carefully explores their views about gender, labor, and power, which offered an alternative to the ideas that prevailed in American society. Most women saw "putting the barn before the house"—investing capital and labor in productive operations rather than spending money on consumer goods or devoting time to mere housework—as a necessary and rational course for families who were determined to make a living on the land and, if possible, to pass on viable farms to the next generation. Some women preferred working outdoors to what seemed to them the thankless tasks of urban housewives, while others worked off the farm to support the family. Husbands and wives, as well as parents and children, debated what was best and negotiated over how to allocate their limited labor and capital and plan for an uncertain future. Osterud tells the story of an agricultural community in transition amid an industrializing age with care and skill. 02 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. 04 Introduction: The Nanticoke Valley in the Early Twentieth Century Part I: Gender, Power, and Labor 1. Putting the Barn Before the House 2. Women's Place on the Land Part II: Farming and Wage-Earning 3. "Buying a Farm on a Small Capital" 4. The Transformation of Agriculture and the Rural Economy Part III: The Division of Labor and Relations Of Power 5. Sharing and Dividing Farm Work 6. Intergenerational and Marital Partnerships 7. Wage-Earning and Farming Families 8. Negotiating Working Relationships Part IV: Organizing the Rural Community 9. Forming Cooperatives and Taking Collective Action 10. Home Economics and Farm Family Economies Conclusion: Gender, Mutuality, and Community in Retrospect Notes Index 08 "Thoroughly researched and skillfully organized, the well-crafted narrative provides readers with both a sense of place and a sense of history."—Choice (1 November 2012) 08 "Putting the Barn Before the House is the very fruitful result of years of research and thought. It is an essential addition to our understanding of how the strands of gender, economy, and community intertwine in American history. Grey Osterud combines vivid oral histories with a thoughtful presentation of the transformation of one agricultural area, the Nanticoke Valley of New York. Osterud maintains a clear focus on the changes in gender relations that accompanied alternating eras of crisis and stability. This book illuminates women's interest in farms as business enterprises and how their work adapted accordingly, the changes in gender relations within the family that resulted, and the development of cooperative alternatives to capital-intensive agricultural production."—Joan M. Jensen, New Mexico State University, author of Loosening the Bonds: Mid-Atlantic Farm Women, 1750–1850 and Calling This Place Home: Women on the Wisconsin Frontier, 1850–1925 08 "Grey Osterud has written an account of American rural life that is suffused with empathy and insight. Elegantly written and deftly researched, this book enriches our understanding of rural society by focusing on the 'women's story' and by allowing several generations of women to be 'the authors of their own lives.' This is a book that rises out of an intimacy with the community of the Nanticoke Valley, which, allied with skillful oral history research and an unromantic eye, results in a compelling story of change and renewal."—Lynn Abrams, University of Glasgow, author of Oral History Theory 08 "Putting the Barn before the House is an intimate and compelling look at the changing roles of rural women and their families during the first half of the twentieth century. Grey Osterud has conducted a remarkable series of oral history interviews and uses them along with a wide array of other sources to craft a masterful and insightful community study that speaks volumes about the critical issues shaping the modern American countryside."—Hal S. Barron, Louisa and Robert Miller Professor of Humanities and Professor of History, Department of Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts, Harvey Mudd College, Graduate History Faculty, Claremont Graduate University, author of Mixed Harvest: The Second Great Transformation in the Rural North, 1870–1930 08 "In this exquisite book, Grey Osterud draws on women's first-person narratives, together with a wealth of other evidence, for a fresh and convincing interpretation of gender relations, agency, mutuality, and resistance in rural women’s lives. Among this book’s many pleasures is the artful way in which the author attends to the form as well as the content of oral history interviews, carefully distinguishing her analysis from her subjects’ perspectives and allowing meaning to emerge from the poignant stories women tell."—Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Julia Cherry Spruill Professor of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, coauthor of Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World 04 03 72 01 http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/resources/titles/80140100276930/images/80140100276930L.jpg 07 03 72 01 http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/resources/titles/80140100276930/images/80140100276930S.jpg http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100276930 Cornell University Press 01 02 2021862 Cornell University Press Ithaca US 04 20120417 01 WORLD 01 9.25 in 02 6.13 in 08 15 oz 07 2021862 CUP Services http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu 02 CA MX US BV AL AD AM AU AT AZ BY BA BG HR CY CZ DK EE FO FI GE DE GI GR HM HU IS IE MK IT PS KZ LV LI LT LU UM MT MC ME NL NZ NO PG PL PT RO RU SM AX SK SI ES SJ SE CH TR UA GB VA 02 Y 11 22 01 02 s 26.95 USD 06 5013546051314 NBN International http://www.nbninternational.com 02 BV AL AD AM AT AZ BY BE BA BG HR CY CZ DK EE FO FI FR GE DE GI GR HM HU IS IE MK IT PS KZ LV LI LT UM MT MD MC ME NL NO PL PT RO RU SM AX SK SI ES SJ SE CH TR UA GB VA AU CA JP MX US NZ PG 02 Y 20 20120417 22 01 02 s 02 16.50 GBP