"Jerry Nelson's column comes from the true heart of the Midwest. He has the true voice, the slow twang. He knows wheat from barley. He knows hardware, he knows vegetation, he knows people."-Garrison Keillor
In the tradition of Mark Twain and Jean Shepherd, Dave Barry and Garrison Keillor, Jerry Nelson is a humorist whose beat is the American heartland, a small-town world of pickup trucks and Sunday night pancake dinners, dropping in on neighbors and complaining about the county agent.
His depictions of daily life, from the point of view of an ex-dairy farmer and taciturn husband with a twinkle in his eye, are read by 250,000 people a week-and occasionally woven into Prairie Home Companion scripts. These are stories of courtship; childbirth-he offers the delivery room doctor the use of his calf puller; family; neighbors; chores; and the duties of a father-why is it that a man who spends his days in cow manure can't change a baby's diaper? Knee-slappingly funny one moment, poignant the next, it's a very special look at a distinctly American way of life.
A funny, warm, and winning collection of stories about life on a South Dakota dairy farm, from a writer whose voice Garrison Keillor described as coming from "the true heart of the Midwest." Jerry Nelson and his wife, Julie, live in Volga, South Dakota, on the farm that Jerry's great-grandfather homesteaded in the 1880s. In addition to his weekly column, his writing has also appeared in the nation's top agricultural magazines, including Successful Farming, Farm Journal, Progressive Farmer, and Living the Country Life. "Jerry Nelson's column comes from the true heart of the Midwest, the place I try to write about while I'm flying around the country doing one gaudy thing or another, but Jerry actually lives there. He has the true voice, the slow twang. He knows wheat from barley. He knows hardware, he knows vegetation, he knows people. If the Lake Wobegon Herald-Star had a columnist (other than Harold Starr), it would be either Jerry or his cousin." – Garrison Keillor
"funny and heartwarming" – Successful Farming Magazine
"a fun, entertaining read" – Beef Magazine
"The book reads like anecdotes from [Garrison] Keillor's fictional town of Lake Wobegon" – Kansas City Star
