Carrying the Farm on Her Back

Carrying the Farm on Her Back is an intimate portrait of three generations of Croatian women working and celebrating as women have for centuries in the mountain villages of former Yugoslavia.  Anthropologist Eva Sköld Westerlind spent a year with these women and shared their lives at a level most outsiders only glimpse.  Sköld Westerlind’s text, which is woven from the women’s own words, and her photographs, which capture the rhythm of their days, combine to make a moving statement about strength, hope and the bonds of work and tradition.

The story these Croatian women tell is a universal one.  It could come from any part of the world where rapid industrialization threatens the traditional farming culture.  In this story, the men had dropped their hoes to heed the factory whistle.  The women have picked up those hoes and labor to preserve the way of life that has sustained them and their families for centuries.  As they toil within the view of the modern capital of Zagreb, they feel their daughters’ impatience to escape to the city, which the older generation disdains to nothing more than a place “where the air is so thick you can’t breathe it and where you have to buy everything, even potatoes.”

Carrying the Farm on Her Back honors the enduring spirit of women and the struggles and joys of rural life.  It is the unforgettable work of a trained observer whose observations came to be informed by love.

Rainier Books, 1989;  124 pages;  55 black and white photographs; 
ISBN 0-9621934-8-8;  LC 89-91026

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