Fifty Acres and a Poodle: A Story of Love, Livestock, and Finding Myself on a Farm

What a surprise, that this book should jump off the shelves of a second-hand store and into my wife's hands. Back in the late 90s, when Laskas was writing up her transition to farm life in essays for the Washington Post Magazine on Sundays, my then-girlfriend and I would hand them back and forth, commenting on the writing, commenting on the unfolding story. And my girlfriend, a rural Ohioan at heart, would rhapsodize about chucking all our suburban life and getting a farm. And I would say something insensitive like "did you read the part where it says sheep are stupid?"

Flash forward to 2013. My girlfriend is now my wife, and we live on a 2-acre spread in a little town in Ohio. Running into Laskas after all these years, then, was a show more little like running into an old college friend who just happens to have made some very similar choices to your own. No, a 2-acre yard is exactly nothing like a farm, and yet I fear that I recognized some of Laskas's struggles with "what am I going to do with all this space?" Moreso, I found myself shaking my head at her urbanite's missteps in rural culture, and then I found myself remembering the times I've put my foot in my mouth.

By turns funny and sad, this is an honest and well-crafted memoir. It's probably not the kind of thing which would appeal to me if I didn't recognize the author, but let me introduce you to my old friend Jeanne... she has some interesting things to say. show less

Opening Sentence: “…It’s hard to say how a dream forms, especially one like mine, which at first seemed so utterly random…”

I found FIFTY ACRES AND A POODLE to be very slow to start and a bit all over the place, however, very slowly I was sucked into the story and started to care about all of the characters – both human and animal. By the end of the book I discovered I had enjoyed the year of highs and lows that author, Jeanne Marie Laskas, shared with me, and wept buckets of tears over Bob the cat.

Jeanne holds back nothing as she tells us how she and her boyfriend Alex decide to follow a dream to buy a farm and move to the country. Weekends are spent searching the paper to find properties for sale and one day they find the show more place of their dreams, a converted Amish barn on fifty acres. While they are visiting the sellers tell the dream-struck twosome about the complicated well-water filtration system, raccoon invasions and a grisly tale of how they dispatched a rat which entered the house through a hole in an oven. Despite this Jeanne and Alex take one look at the view from the top of the hill behind the house and put in a bid for the property. Very quickly they find themselves living, and adapting to life, in the country and undergoing a steep learning curve as they learn about such helpful hints as wearing orange hats when they go outside so they don’t get shot by the hunters that roamed their land.

The story is just like a friend chatting on the phone telling me what she is up to. In this case Jeanne is up to a lot, moving from city to country with Marley the psycho poodle, her beloved mutt Betty and Bob the terminally ill cat. She and Alex have to face both the impending death of Bob and the fear of a cancer diagnosis; they make friends with the neighbours and carry out whirlwind wedding preparations. Their new country friends help the two learn about ladybugs, sheep, goats, neighbours, mules and horses. All in all it is a busy year. show less

I laughed my way through most of this book. There was a "suspenseful" part in the middle where I didn't know what was going to happen, but other than that, I laughed. Laskas writes about buying a farm, literally, with her husband-to-be in rural Pennsylvania. She and Alex are about as city as people can be. Thankfully, they both had a sense of humor to handle all the ups and downs of being on a farm. I admire the drive to achieve a dream and to stick with it. Great book!

I read this book the same week I read "Hit by a Farm" and when I first started this one, I didn't think I'd enjoy it nearly as much as I did the other one. But I kept going and found that it's a very good story - and very similar to "Hit by...". I don't care much for the author's writing style - it sounds too much like a blonde valley-girl, but the stories are very entertaining. This lady and her boyfriend go "farm shopping" as a date and end up buying 50 acres in rural PA. Of course, they know nothing and I mean NOTHING about rural life at all, so you can see where humorous situations can occur. There is also some real drama in the story in events that happen to the 2 of them. Enjoyable.

I enjoyed this memoir of finding a new life on a farm. I liked Laskas' discovery that what looks like a postcard from a distance is a lot more complicated in real life.

I highly recommend this. A very thoughtful, contemplative, oddly spiritual without intending to be so, sort of book. Very readable. Funny, sad, real.

started off slow, almost didn't keep reading, glad i did. i really liked the author's descriptive, introspective writing. dying cat brought me to tears. i would love to have 50 acres and a poodle, but will gladly exist on my 3 acres. yes, i already have the poodle. a standard poodle. not one of those yappy little ones. :-)