While the farming landscape has gone through a lot of changes since Hildebrand wrote this book a quarter of a century ago--the rise of organic farming, the viability (in some places) of smaller artisanal farms, the rising popularity of co-ops and farmers' markets, and a niche for some farmers in partnerships with farm-to-table restaurants--the core dilemmas inherent in farming and its US historical trajectory has not shifted that much. Americans are more out of touch with where their food comes from than ever, small and mid-size family farms operate at the edge of viability, and large agribusiness operates over an ailing food system (extraordinary yields and productivity at the producer end, and widespread hunger and unhealthy food options at the other). Hildebrand captures both the nitty-gritty of daily farm work as well as the broad changes that have swept through a single Minnesota region, reshaping land-use practices and livelihoods.

The narrative is filled with memorable vignettes but suffers from an overall murkiness of purpose. The title, for example, doesn't really capture what is going on here. Hildebrand wants to provide an alternative to the typical ways in which land is mapped (aerial surveys, land-use maps, etc.) by making us see the people on the land and the texture of the land itself. As he notes at one point, most of us see farmland only as we blast past it on a freeway, and "The anonymity of farmland is what makes it so easily converted to other purposes" (chiefly strip malls and butt-ugly housing developments. But the story here is scattered, the various members of the family sometimes hard to keep straight (a basic family tree would have been an enormous help), and the overall intent of this project isn't clear. It isn't really a re-mapping in even a metaphorical sense. He seems to want to avoid an elegiac tone, and yet that is probably the best characterization of the book. Maps are fundamentally tools designed to help us do something but it isn't clear what either Hildebrand or we are supposed to do with this remapped map. ( )

An intimate and affectionate history of a family farm in Minnesota, belonging to the author’s father- and mother-in-law, is also the history of The American Family Farm writ small. It was interesting enough to keep a reader’s attention from the early days of homesteading in the 19th century through the uncertainty of passing the farm down to a new generation in the 21st century. I had trouble keeping all the characters in the saga straight, and searched in vain for a family tree to look up the names and relationships. The dust jacket, brilliantly, unfolds into maps and illustrations which supplement the photos in the book – but that effect is so subtle that I didn’t realize until after I finished the book. No family tree is hiding in the dust jacket either. ( )

Beautiful, a quiet pleasure. More of an homage than a polemic. though it is often sad because families like this one are losing their farms to the corporations. Recommended by [a:Michael Perry|2772479|Michael Perry|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1231631186p2/2772479.jpg] (iirc, in [b:Truck: A Love Story|73967|Truck A Love Story|Michael Perry|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347489750s/73967.jpg|71564]) and worthy (but not as poetic as Perry's writing, nor does it include humor as Perry's works do). ( )

Interesting, although like many farming books all of the interesting observations are in the first chapter. Still a good book to read.

"Place names on farms are often shorthand versions of stories for who owned what or how it was used. To know the stories is to understand where you are in the world, and to know that is to understand who you are."

"...the land could not be explained apart from the people who farmed it." ( )

2803 Mapping the Farm: The Chronicle of a Family, by John Hildebrand (read 25 Nov 1995) This is about the author's wife's family and the family farm near Rochester, Minnesota. It sounds true and is very poignant at times. I was really amazed, however, that the author, a teacher at the University of Wisconsin, apparently is unfamiliar with simple English words like excrement, defecate, urine, urinate, and fouled-up, and had to resort to gutter language to express himself. The blurb says the book is in the tradition of such American classics as Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac and Wallace Stegner's Wolf Willow--books I have not read but would like to. ( )