reading rainbow meets ms magazine

As Long as There Are Mountains is a young adult fiction book about all the horrible things that can happen to you as a farmer, and why you would want to farm anyway. The main character is Iris, who is probably 13. She lives on a dairy farm in Vermont with her parents and her older brother, Lucas, although he is away at college when the book starts.

1) Grandpa gets crushed when the tractor rolls over (this actually happens before the book starts, but there are some references to it).
2) Barn burns down, most of the cows die.
3) While out cutting trees to build a new barn, one kicks back and injures Pa's leg. Iris and Lucas save him but the leg has to be amputated.

Aiya.

All Iris wants is to be a farmer and feels jealous that it's assumed that Lucas will take over the farm. Her narration describes her love for the cows and for the work, despite the lack of huge financial gains. She also describes her desire to be seen as worthy to farm, even though she is a girl. Lucas, however, wants to be a writer. His description of the frustration he feels at getting slapped in the face with a shitty tail while milking is so right on.

I thought the family in this book was really well written and I especially identified with Iris' frustrations at being overlooked because she's a female. (Happening in real life at about that time: My husband's grandmother wasn't allowed to watch cows being bred when they started doing AI breedings at the farm. It was thought that women were too delicate to watch that. My husband's grandmother is a bad ass, FYI.) I feel like that still happens some now, too, in a time 50 years after this book takes place. Aside from people who come to the farm where I work and ask for my husband (he's at home making dinner) there is also the example of the otherwise great book The Town that Food Saved which profiles the work of a new group of agricultural entrepreneurs who are all men.

I wonder if there are writings or interviews with women out there from that time who were farmers, not just farmers' wives (not to say that they didn't do just as much work) and what their experiences were.