Product Details
Forty Acres and a Fool: How to Live in the Country and Still Keep Your Sanity

Forty Acres and a Fool: How to Live in the Country and Still Keep Your Sanity
By Roger Welsch

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Product Description

At a time when so much manliness is played out on computer keyboards and TV or videogame remote controls, it takes a certain degree of grit and guts and plain pigheadedness to pull up stakes and move to the country. For those brave souls, the backward-looking gentleman farmers of our fast-forward-looking age, Roger Welsch has a few choice words. To homestead in the Old West, the saying went, all you needed was forty acres and a mule. For the 21st century, Welsch contends that instead of a beast of burden one only needs the stubbornness of being a fool.
 
In several hilarious essays, Welsch presents a guy’s guide to leaving modern miracles behind and embracing productive Ludditism. Made famous by his laconic pieces on CBS Sunday Morning (while wearing his signature overalls), Welsch takes on new subjects, and even elaborates the principles of feng shui for the farmhouse, barn, and farmyard. He draws on a lifetime’s worth of experience to counsel prospective migrants to rural America on what precisely not to do. Learn from the mistakes of a master, and laugh harder than you thought possible while doing it. Roger Welsch is in fine fettle in Forty Acres and a Fool, a light-hearted look at rural upstarts that puts the delights of country living—and the occasional advantages of urban life—into rare perspective.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #72747 in Books
  • Published on: 2006-10-01
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 320 pages

Features

  • ISBN13: 9780760322567
  • BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed

Editorial Reviews

Review

St. Paul

Pioneer Press, Nov. 22, 2006

“It provides enough insight into rural living to help anyone decide if they want part of the action, or to stay safely within the confines of a metropolitan beltway.”

                                                                                                                                                                     

Two-Cylinder, November-December 2006

“Learn from the mistakes of a master, and laugh harder than you thought possible while doing it.”



Yankton Daily Press & Democrat

, Dec. 29, 2006
“To miss this book would be just plain foolish.”

From the Inside Flap

Front Flap

            In Forty Acres and a Fool

, Roger Welsch condenses thirty-plus-years of experience learning about country life the hard way into one indispensable volume. In these pages you’ll learn how not to insult the locals the way Rog did. How not to get ripped off the way Rog did. How not to torque off the neighbors the way Rog did. How not to put your house in the wrong place the way Rog did. How not to… well, you get the point.

When Welsch first bought a place near the small town of Dannebrog, Nebraska (pop. 352) in 1975, no one had yet written a book to inform him how not to do things. Hence he ventured forth into this brave new rural world and proceeded to do a whole bunch of things he should not have done.

            But he learned from his mistakes, maybe even more so than if he had done it right the first time. Eventually he developed an expertise at the elusive art of country living that rivals that of his neighbors, people who had lived on the same plats of land their entire lives. In these pages he shares what he learned from his mistakes.

Back Flap

            Roger Welsch can best be described as a cross between Erma Bombeck and Dr. Ruth, except male and living in Nebraska with his wife and dogs. Before turning his talents to canine psychology, Roger was best known as “the fat guy in overalls” on CBS’ Sunday Morning, where he offered up essays on rural and small-town life on the plains.

            Many also know him as the fat guy with the fetish for old tractors, as an advocate for Native American interests, and as the second most prominent citizen of Dannebrog, Nebraska, (pop. 352).

            He’s also an author of numerous books of fiction and folk humor, and writes for publications from Successful Farming to Reader’s Digest.

 

About the Author

            Roger Welsch can best be described as a cross between Erma Bombeck and Dr. Ruth, except male and living in Nebraska with his wife and dogs. Before turning his talents to canine psychology, Roger was best known as “the fat guy in overalls” on CBS’ Sunday Morning

, where he offered up essays on rural and small-town life on the plains.

            Many also know him as the fat guy with the fetish for old tractors, as an advocate for Native American interests, and as the second most prominent citizen of Dannebrog, Nebraska, (pop. 352).

            He’s also an author of numerous books of fiction and folk humor, and writes for publications from Successful Farming to Reader’s Digest.

Customer Reviews

Offers up a light-hearted memoir of country trails pairing humor with solid insights.5
Roger Welsch has lived in Nebraska with his wife and dogs for over thirty years, and here blends humor with rural insights in a blend of memoir and information guide to his years of experience living in the country. From a young farmer's survival process and mistakes to the author's changing ideas over motorized vehicles, FORTY ACRES AND A FOOL: HOW TO LIVE IN THE COUNTRY AND STILL KEEP YOUR SANTIY offers up a light-hearted memoir of country trails pairing humor with solid insights.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch