Cream of the Crop

Cream Of The Crop: More True Stories Form A Wisconsin Farm is the third anthology of biographical and anecdotal stories by LeAnn Ralph about growing up on a Wisconsin dairy farm. In the 1960s there were more than 60,000 dairy farms in Wisconsin, in May of 2004 the Wisconsin Agricultural Statistics Service recorded the number of surviving dairy farms in the state at 15,591. The number has dropped even lower since then. That dairy farming reality is what helps to give LeAnn's deftly told stories their nostalgia for a rural lifestyle that is not-so-slowly disappearing in the Badger state. There are twenty short but immensely entertaining stories in this simply superb anthology. They range from "What's in a Name", to "She'll Be Comin' Round the Cornfield", to "Gertrude and Heathcliff", to the title story "cream Of The Crop". LeAnn continues to write with a remarkable knack for making people and events come alive in the reader's imagination. Also very highly recommended are LeAnn's two earlier anthologies about life on the family farm in Wisconsin: Give Me A Home Where The Dairy Cows Roam (1591135923, $13.95) and Christmas In Dairyland: True Stories From A Wisconsin Farm (1591133661, $13.95).