As a Farm Woman Thinks: Life and Land on the Texas High Plains, 1890-1960

In twenty-fi ve years of syndicated columns in small-town Texas newspapers between1930 and 1960, Nellie Witt Spikes described her life on the High Plains, harking back toearlier times and reminiscing about pioneer settlement, farm and small-town culture,women’s work, and the natural history of the fl atlands and canyons. Spikes’s life spannedthe arrival of Euro-American settlers, the transition from ranching to farming, the droughtand dust storms of the 1930s, and the irrigation revolution of the 1940s. Engaging andeloquent, her As a Farm Woman Thinks columns today conjure up a vivid portrait of a bygone era. Spikes’s best pieces, organized topically and then chronologically by Geoff Cunfer, are illuminated by black-and-white historical photographs featuring the people, landscapes, small towns, farms, and ranches that populated the caprock-and-canyoncountry of West Texas. Cunfer’s introduction and editorial commentary provide context.As a Farm Woman Thinks enlarges our understanding of a wide land and its culture and captures the spirit of the Plains.