Most people may think of ranchers and cowboys as men. But although they are under-chronicled, ranch women work from dark to dark, keeping step with hired hands, brothers, fathers and husbands. They blaze trails through unforgiving scrub. They cook supper and feed bulls. At any given time, they wear the hats--and the gloves--of geologist, veterinarian, lawyer and mechanic. They are fierce and feminine and powerful. Photojournalist and writer Alyssa Banta spent over a year following more than a dozen Texas women through their grueling daily routines, from the messy confines of the working chute to the sprawling reaches of the back pasture. The result of this unprecedented access is an intimate portrait of the challenges and achievements of the ranch women of the Lone Star State, along with the land and livestock that sustain them.

The author of Texas Dames shares a new collection of profiles featuring the incredible women who helped build the Lone Star State. Texas would not be Texas without the formidable women of its past. Beneath the sunbonnets and Stetsons, the women of the Lone Star State carved out ranches and breathed new life into arid spreads of land. When husbands, sons and fathers fell, bold Texas women were there to take the reins. Throughout the centuries, the women of Texas's ranches defended home and hearth with cannon and shot. They rescued hostages. They nurtured livestock through hard winters and long droughts and drove them up the cattle trails. They built communities and saw to it that faith and education prevailed for their children and their communities. Join author Carmen Goldthwaite in an inspiring survey of fierce Lone Star ladies.

Helen Tiegs didn't take to driving a tractor when she became a farmer's wife, but after fifty years she considers herself the hub of the family operation. Lila Hill taught piano, then ultimately took a job off the farm to augment the family income during a period of rising costs. From Montana's cattle pastures to New Mexico's sagebrush mesas, women on today's ranches and farms have played a crucial role in a way of life that is slowly disappearing from the western landscape. Recalling her own family-farm ties, Sandra Schackel set out to learn how these women's lives have changed over the second half of the twentieth century. In Working the Land, she collects oral histories from more than forty women—in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Oregon, and Texas—recalling their experiences as ranchers and farmers in a modernizing West. Through this diverse group of women—white and Hispanic, rich and poor, ranging in age from 24 to 83—we gain a new perspective on their ties to the land. Although western ranch and farm women have often been portrayed as secondary figures who devoted themselves to housekeeping in support of their husbands' labors, Schackel's interviews reveal that these women have had a much more active role in defining what we know as the modern American West. As Schackel listened to their stories, she found several currents running through their recollections, such as the satisfaction found in living the rural lifestyle and the flexibility of gender roles. She also learned how resourceful women developed new ways to make their farms work—by including tourism, summer camps, and bed-and-breakfast operations—and how many have become activists for land-based issues. And while some like Lila made the difficult decision to work off the farm, such sacrifices have enabled families to hold onto their beloved land. Rich with memory and insight into what makes America's family farms and ranches tick, Working the Land provides a deeper understanding of the West's development over the last fifty years along with new perspectives on shifting attitudes toward women in the workforce. It is both a long-overdue documentation of the lives of hard-working farm women and a celebration of their contributions to a truly American way of life.

"Selected weekly columns by Nellie Witt Spikes, published in small-town Texas newspapers from 1930-1960, describe farm life on the Texas Panhandle, along with the region's culture and natural history. Organized topically and then chronologically, with commentary by the editor; contains historical photographs"--Provided by publisher.

Terugblik op de reis die de Amerikaanse fotograaf in 1979 door het westen van de V.S. maakte, en die leidde tot de fototentoonstelling 'In the American West' in 1985.

The women who kept the farms going while the soldiers were Over There

Women's Roles in the Texas Beef Cattle Industry.

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In 1846, James Boyd Hawkins, his wife Ariella, and their young children left North Carolina to establish a sugar plantation in Matagorda County, in the Texas coastal bend. In The Hawkins Ranch in Texas: From Plantation Times to the Present, Margaret Lewis Furse, a great-granddaughter of James B. and Ariella Hawkins and an active partner in today’s Hawkins Ranch, has mined public records, family archives, and her own childhood memories to compose this sweeping portrait of more than 160 years of plantation, ranch, and small-town life. Letters sent by the Hawkinses from the Texas plantation to their North Carolina family in the mid-nineteenth century describe sugar making, the perils of cholera and fevers, the activities of children, and the “management” of slaves. Public records and personal papers reveal the experience of the Hawkins family during the Civil War, when J. B. Hawkins sold goods to the Confederacy and helped with Confederate coastal defenses near his plantation. In the 1930s, the death of their parents left the ranch in the hands of four sisters, at a time when few women owned and ran cattle operations. The Hawkins Ranch in Texas: From Plantation Times to the Present offers a panoramic view of agrarian lifeways and how they must adapt to changing times.