The Ames Farm of Woolwich, Maine

It was a very different time, and I want to tell the story about what it was like then, before it is forgotten. In her memoir, Roberta Ames tells of the family farm at its best-houses and sheds and barns in a landscape of rivers and fields, meadows and woodlots; the glorious interdependence between animals and the people who cared for them; the vital reciprocity within an agricultural community-a way of life long gone. This book is the real deal. -Deborah Gould, author of The Eastern: The Early Years and The Eastern: Later On Roberta Ames's engaging memoir is a vivid account of the rural Maine experience from the Great Depression to the years after World War II. Growing up on an ancestral farm in Woolwich, she learned of the hard work and self-reliance required to live on the land. In this clearly written and handsomely produced book, Roberta tells a story both personal and universal. It is a valuable record of a time now passed. -Earle G. Shettleworth, Jr., Maine State Historian This is a remarkable and vivid recollection of life on a Maine farm in the 1930s and '40s, lovingly and proudly shared. A thorough and useful source, and a special trip down memory lane for those of us who also grew up in that first half of the 20th century. -Alan Baker, former long-time publisher of the Ellsworth American and the Mount Desert Islander This wonderful reminiscence, rich with detail, concerns life on a small Maine dairy farm of the mid-1900s, one of many thousands of which would not survive as a sustainable economic entity beyond the next generation or two. The children of these vanished farms, however, such as the author, early experienced a traditional way of life which would remain embedded within them throughout their lives. -W. H. Bunting, author of A Day's Work, The Camera's Coast, Sea Struck, Live Yankees, and more