Fun on the Farm 3: True Tales of Farm Life!
Compiled and edited by Deana J. Driver
$17.95 ISBN 9781927570630
Growing up on a farm on the Canadian prairies is a unique experience, especially in the days before cellphones and GPS. In Fun on the Farm 3, 20 prairie writers, including Mary Harelkin Bishop and Deanna Driver, share some of their treasured memories.
The book is full of all kinds of fascinating stories. There are tales of pet calves, malevolent bulls and piglets like Arnold, who was pushed around in a doll carriage. Laurie Lynn Muirhead shares the story of her brother plucking the feathers off the turkeys’ butts to make wings so he could fly. There are stories of learning to drive, usually before the driver could see over the dashboard, and the annual spring ritual of picking rocks in the fields before and after seeding. As Brad Hauber puts it, “This job was made specifically with farm kids in mind.”
Mary Harelkin Bishop tells of the time her three-year-old brother got stuck in the mud – literally – in the middle of the soggy, muddy garden very wet spring, and Marilyn Frey relates the fascinating way her three-year-old son Adam used to take his dog for a walk around the farmyard, complete with the cat perched on the dog’s back.
The book is filled with country wedding calamities, harvest mishaps, hairdressing hilarities, tales of little brothers – and big brothers – and recollections of happy Sundays spent playing baseball and snow soccer and playing inside and on top of snow drifts and in sloughs and culverts.
I think one of my favourite stories is the poem Whiskers, which tells of a visit to a barber shop. The author sets the story up beautifully. The barber comes up with a clever way to shave his customers who have more than one wrinkle or two. I honestly didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the end. I think I did both.
Fun on the Farm 3: True Tales of Farm Life is the third and final volume of this popular series. The original anthology of 48 short stories and poems was published in 2016 as a tribute to the late Al Driver, co-publisher of DriverWorks Ink, whose idea it was to share fun stories of farm life. Fun on the Farm Too was published in 2018.
A donation from books sold will be made to the Lung Association.
This book is available at your local bookstore or from www.skbooks.com
