Farmer's Wife Friday--Well-Balanced and Happily Busy

These weekly posts about letters written by farmer's wives during the 1920's have been interesting, educational and often inspiring to me. Sometimes they make me chuckle. 

Today's letter, by a wife on an Indiana farm, did just that with her no-nonsense style of writing that gave me lots of clues to her personality. I kind of saw a mama bear defending her cubs against any perceived attack, real or imagined!
The first block, aptly named "Contrary Wife", was the easiest and quickest of the four to put together.

I looked up contrary in the thesaurus and saw some fun definitions that sum up our farm wife's attitude toward "folks who muss up [her] disposition"especially by extending pity or questioning her lack of the comforts of the city. Here are few of the best ones, I think-
Contrary: cranky; cross; disagreeing; in opposition to; poles apart; vise versa; worlds apart; nose to nose and my favorite of them all: eyeball to eyeball!


I wonder if Mr. Farmer brought her flowers from the meadow to keep her happy. This block, called Bouquet,  is definitely one of my favorites and made me smile when I got it done!

"Good books, good music, and a wealth of flowers and growing things about us" trump the modern conveniences that she doesn't have, and, if she is to be believed, doesn't want.
"We're not very likely to have any great moral problems on our hands, as the children grow up, and we shan't depend upon a social worker or a soap-box orator to save them from sin and poverty." It all sounds as idyllic as this Flower Basket block looks!

 To her, farm life is the only life that could bring her happiness, she's sure: "We know, because we have tried it, that our family life could never have been kept so intact, nor our happiness so secure, if we had lived any place other than on the farm."Here's the last block accompanying this week's biting letter, called Peaceful Hours:

Now, I might be a bit contrary myself and say that perhaps the spelling would have been more appropriate as "Pieceful Hours", because I may or may not have spent a few hours  piecing it! Whew...another tough one! With it's strange-shaped pieces, I was happy to have found an Internet source for paper-piecing this sampler block and took advantage of it or I might have thrown it in the pig trough before I was finished! It wouldn't have ended peacefully, I'm sure. (sorry, couldn't help myself!)

I'm very interested to see Cindy's blocks today and read her thoughts on Mrs. Contrary Wife's letter! Meet you over there............bye, now. 
P.S. Wouldn't it be grand to live peacefully in this farm house I saw in Maine? The color of the house, a light aqua, was so pretty!