The Last of the Husbandmen — 2008 ·

A Novel of Farming Life

“In The Last of the Husbandmen—as in everything Gene Logsdon writes — wit is the nurse crop to wisdom. With a conclusion as comical as it is hopeful, this latest book is equal parts entertainment and enlightenment—just what we’ve come to expect from Mr. Logsdon.”

Michael Perry — author of Truck: A Love Story

“Gene Logsdon remains as true–to–form in his fiction as he does in his non–fiction.… this book was maybe as valuable a read as any of his books, not for the instruction, but for scope and perspective on a life lived ‘tied down’ to a place.”

The Englewood Review of Books

“One finds humor, hijinx aplenty, and even romance, but it would be a mistake to overlook the serious implications of The Last of the Husbandmen. Aptly subtitled A Novel of Farming Life, the novel at times reads like a narrative of American agriculture in the decades following World War II.”

Rich Tomsu, Rich Gardens Organic Farm

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“Nan turned to see Ben’s face turn as hard and white as a sauerkraut crock. When he did not respond, Nan figured that he was just going to back off as he usually did, the shy and retiring husbandman. She did not know her history. She did not know that shy and retiring husbandmen have been known to revolt against oppression with pitchforks drawn.”
— The Last of the Husbandmen

In The Last of the Husbandmen, Gene Logsdon looks to his own roots in Ohio farming life to depict the personal triumphs and tragedies, clashes and compromises, and abiding human character of American farming families and communities. From the Great Depression, when farmers tilled the fields with plow horses, to the corporate farms and government subsidy programs of the present, this novel presents the complex transformation of a livelihood and of a way of life.

Two friends, one rich by local standards, and the other of more modest means, grow to manhood in a lifelong contest of will and character. In response to many of the same circumstances—war, love, moonshining, the Klan, weather, the economy—their different approaches and solutions to dealing with their situations put them at odds with each other, but we are left with a deeper understanding of the world that they have inherited and have chosen.

Part morality play and part personal recollection, The Last of the Husbandmen is both a lighthearted look at the past and a profound statement about the present state of farming life. It is also a novel that captures the spirit of those who have chosen to work the land they love.

Gene Logsdon lives and raises sheep in north–central Ohio with his wife, Carol. He has written twenty–five books, most recently a novel, The Lords of Folly; a cultural study, The Mother of All Art: Agrarianism and the Artistic Impulse; three memoirs: You Can Go Home Again, The Contrary Farmer, and The Pond Lover; and a book on experimental ideas in farming, All Flesh Is Grass. Gene blogs at OrganicToBe.org.