As the remodel here comes close(r) to completion and the "What's next?" question grows louder, one of my persistent fantasies, to live on acreage, pops up. Which is why I love these old farming magazines. In the 1930s there were a bunch of them, including two or three, like "Farmer's Wife", that were just for the women in the house. By 1944, two of the bigger mags had blended. Here's the September issue.

I love that truck (I want that truck), love the bushels of apples in the back, which remind me of summers I spent on a fruit farm when I was a kid. It was hundreds of acres of trees and hills and streams and buildings and, all around the edges of the place, wilderness.

Anyway, here are a few pages from our rural past, a familiar mix of fact and advertising fantasy.

What are the chances that the family farms this magazine was sent to still exist?

Farm Journal and Farmer's Wife:

Selling them fruit trees:

Sewing, and visiting Mrs. Dewey.

You didn't buy your jelly and jam:

Farm life:

I'm a farmer's wife.