Overview
Using stories, anecdotes, history, and even veterinary science, Jacqueline Dougan Jackson recreates life on the Dougan Guernsey Farm Dairy, founded in 1911 by W.J. Dougan near Beloit, Wisconsin. A fascinating mix of biography, oral history, and creative nonfiction, STORIES FROM THE ROUND BARN is a moving tribute to the legacy of generations past. 53 photos and line drawings .Synopsis
Using stories, anecdotes, history, and even veterinary science, Jackson braids together a series of dramatic fragments and episodes to vividly recreate life on the Dougan dairy farm. Founded in 1911 by W.J. Dougan near Beloit, Wisconsin, the Dougan farm, with its unusual round barn, is symbolic of a vanishing era. A renowned farm which was among the first to introduce many aspects of modern dairying to its operation, the Dougan farm eventually became a victim of agribusiness-style dairying and was closed. As Jackson recreates the texture and tone of life on the farm, larger themes emerge: the constant balancing between material life and spirit, the quest for humane values within a hard world of business and labor, the difficult lessons fundamental to childhood.
Publishers Weekly
In 1911, the stalwart, deaf, one-time minister, W.J. Dougan, founded the Dougan Guernsey Farm Dairy in Wisconsin. Although his neighbors were skeptical, he kept with it until his death some 40 years later. In this memoir, rich in human warmth and rural detail, his granddaughter describes the kind, life-wise man who dominated her past. Grandpa Dougan could be pedantic but also laugh "until his eyes disappear." The story of how, as a young man, he asked God for some direction, is charming. Deciphering the letters "PC" in the clouds, he decided it meant "Preach Christ" but after going to college and becoming a minister, he loses his hearing and asks again. He receives the same empyreal answer, but this time he decides it means, and always meant, "Plant Corn." Jackson follows the Depression and WWII decades as Grandpa and Grama develop their farm and children alike. She speaks of the essentials of farm life, of detasseling corn, dehorning calves, churning butter and how to milk a cow (a perfect introduction for city folk), and includes a sweet, wholly fitting chapter on her own sexual awakening. Jackson chose to write of her past as a present-tense third-person narrative, which can be difficult to sustain, but she manages to carry it off with aplomb. When he'd founded the farm, Dougan painted his cement silo with five "Aims of This Farm." The last aim was "Life as Well as a Living." In this heartfelt memoir, Jackson makes us see just what he meant. Fifty-three photographs and line drawings. (Oct.)
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
In 1911, the stalwart, deaf, one-time minister, W.J. Dougan, founded the Dougan Guernsey Farm Dairy in Wisconsin. Although his neighbors were skeptical, he kept with it until his death some 40 years later. In this memoir, rich in human warmth and rural detail, his granddaughter describes the kind, life-wise man who dominated her past. Grandpa Dougan could be pedantic but also laugh "until his eyes disappear." The story of how, as a young man, he asked God for some direction, is charming. Deciphering the letters "PC" in the clouds, he decided it meant "Preach Christ" but after going to college and becoming a minister, he loses his hearing and asks again. He receives the same empyreal answer, but this time he decides it means, and always meant, "Plant Corn." Jackson follows the Depression and WWII decades as Grandpa and Grama develop their farm and children alike. She speaks of the essentials of farm life, of detasseling corn, dehorning calves, churning butter and how to milk a cow a perfect introduction for city folk, and includes a sweet, wholly fitting chapter on her own sexual awakening. Jackson chose to write of her past as a present-tense third-person narrative, which can be difficult to sustain, but she manages to carry it off with aplomb. When he'd founded the farm, Dougan painted his cement silo with five "Aims of This Farm." The last aim was "Life as Well as a Living." In this heartfelt memoir, Jackson makes us see just what he meant. Fifty-three photographs and line drawings. Oct.Library Journal
This is a book of reminiscences about life on the Dougan Guernsey Dairy Farm near Beloit, Wisconsin, in the early part of the century. Jackson's grandparents "Grampa" and "Grama" established the prosperous farm with a round barn before World War I, and her father went into partnership with Grampa after his marriage. Born in 1928, children's book author Jackson Sangamon State Univ., Ill. was involved in farm life until Grampa's death in 1948. Grampa's values helped shape Jackson's world view; her autobiographical stories relate experiences with milking and tending the herd, caring for sick cows and calves, assisting with difficult births, and other aspects of daily life in the round barn. She remembers the milk deliveries, the quirks of the hired help, the day she spent traveling with the local veterinarian. Jackson's delightful recollections will arouse readers' curiosity about Midwestern life in a bygone era. Recommended for agricultural history and regional collections.Irwin Weintraub, Rutgers Univ. Lib., New Brunswick, N.J.Kirkus Reviews
Delicately filigreed vignettes of a Wisconsin farm life from children's-book author Jackson.In 1906, when his hearing failed, Jackson's grandfather abandoned his ministry and bought a dairy farm. By 1907, he was delivering milk, the bottles stoppered with a cap imprinted "W.J. Dougan, The Babies' Milkman." He was a conscientious farmer who ran a tight and good ship, experimented intelligently, and treated his employees with respect. He prospered. Jackson grew up on the spread, and here she paints its days. There are profiles of farmhands, loony and saintlike and otherwise; conjurings of the odor, light, and aura of tucked-away places on the farm—a dim passageway between cow barn and side building, secret venues in the big house where Jackson could pick away at the wallpaper unseen. Many of the 47 short chapters recount everyday events: milking and detasseling and delivery runs in the dead of night, Grampa's first tax return (it set him back 13 cents), the ebb and flow of depression years and boom times, and the kind of stuff that stays fixed in a young mind (a rail-walking hobo cut in half by a train). And there are not a few episodes written with startling beauty; in one, she tells of an early infatuation, her first, with a young fellow working at the farm. It was during WW II, he enlisted, and his plane went down over Europe. A green star was placed by the MIA's name on the church honor roll. Years later Jackson finds the honor roll in a storeroom of the church, presses a gold star ("the kind her piano teacher used to put on a piece when it was finished") of ultimate sacrifice atop the green one and closes the man's short life.
Elegant and polished. Jackson finds little gems in the muck and toil of farming life.