R. F. D.

<div> <p>This book the author tells us in his preface is intended to be a picture of life on a farm in Southern Ohio in the 1930s. It is a faithful portrait of farm life as thousands of men and women experienced it from one end of the country to the other and from pioneering times to the present century.</p> <p>Originally published in 1938 to enthusiastic reviews and commercial success RFD is the story of one couple's trials with leaving the comforts of city life for a chance to get back to the land.</p> <p>From his farm near Chillicothe Ohio Charles Allen Smart gives a realistic rendering of what it meant to farm in the 1930s. It is part of the book's intrinsic honesty that it could not be as good as <i>Walden</i>. Thoreau had worked out a philosophy that suited him and that he was ready to recommend to others. Mr. Smart had no prescription for the general ailments beyond a belief that creating things is important and that owning buying and selling things are unimportant.</p> <p>What he tells us throughout this unusual book is that for him life on this particular farm in this particular house with this particular set-up of friends neighbors dogs sheep hens cattle trees corn vegetables grass and weather costs less in human values than life in New York City-or in Chillicothe.</p> <p>Ohio University Press is especially pleased to reissue this midwestern classic with a new foreword by noted farm writer Gene Logsdon.</p> </div>