Country Women: A Handbook for the New Farmer

Tetrault, Jean and Sherry Thomas. Country Women: A Handbook for the New Farmer. Anchor Books, 1976. Softbound. Cover design by Hideo Ietaka. Illustrated by Leona Walden. An anthology of beautifully presented skill-share features contributed by readers to Country Women magazine, a periodical that ran from 1972 to 1979 and at one point boasted more subscribers than Ms. magazine. Founded as a small newsletter to enable networking between women-centered farms, collectives, and communes, much of its content was generated by subscribers, as seen here in pieces on topics ranging from tree felling to fighting fires, from cheesemaking to raising a weaner pig. Tetrault also wrote The Woman's Carpentry Book: Building Your Home from the Ground Up (1980), and Leona Walden, who contributed the charming drawings here, illustrated the similarly themed Dwellling: On Making Your Own (1974), a counterculture classic on strategies for skirting code while hand-building houses.