CASS COUNTY – Members of the Cass County Library Association told the Cass County Board of Supervisors on Wednesday that they plan to hold another book event again next year after holding one this year which involved programs related to the book around the county.
The program is known as “One Book, One County,” and library staff ordered copies for patrons to read, and also hosted different programs about books, including one with the author.
This year’s book -”Bet the Farm” was written by Beth Hoffman, a food and agriculture reporter, about her experiences of coming back to own and operate a farm without ever doing that before.
“My husband was from (Iowa),” Hoffman said. “We met and he told me he was going to move to Iowa when his kids were grown.I didn’t think much of it. We weren’t even dating at the time. We ended up getting married. The kids grew. And it was time to move back. I never grew up (in Iowa). Never lived in the midwest. Never farmed. Never lived in a rural community, but I had been covering food and agriculture as a reporter for probably 25 years at that time.”
She said she and her husband John knew what they wanted to do as farmers when they returned.
“We knew a lot about what we didn’t want to do,” she said. “My husband’s dad had one of the first hog confinements (in Iowa). We didn’t want to do any confinement. We didn’t want to be in the commodity game. We knew we were going to buy the cattle from John’s dad, and we didn’t want to take the cattle to the sale barn. We wanted to do direct marketing.”
Hoffman said while she and her husband knew what they wanted to do, they didn’t know a lot about the economics of farming, and that made her want to write a book about the experience titled “Bet The Farm.”
“I felt there were a lot of other books that have been written about the environmental aspects of farming,” she said. “(And books about) why we need really high yields, why we need (things like) fertilizer, pesticides.I didn’t feel like there was a book that really told the story about how and why farmers made these decisions, and how they got caught up in a system that doesn’t value what they did.”
Next year’s book is titled “The Overnight Guest” by Heather Gudenkauf. A Google search found a synopsis of the book, which is as follows: “True crime writer Wylie Lark doesn’t mind being snowed in at the isolated farmhouse where she’s retreated to write her new book. A cozy fire, complete silence. It would be perfect, if not for the fact that decades earlier, at this very house, two people were murdered in cold blood and a girl disappeared without a trace. As the storm worsens, Wylie finds herself trapped inside the house, haunted by the secrets contained within its walls — haunted by secrets of her own. Then she discovers a small child in the snow just outside. Bringing the child inside for warmth and safety, she begins to search for answers. But soon it becomes clear that the farmhouse isn’t as isolated as she thought, and someone is willing to do anything to find them.”
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