Description
In this historical memoir, Janet Holasek Worrall traces several generations of her ancestors leaving Bohemia in the 1850s and settling on farmland in Minnesota. It details daily life from the mid-1920s to the 1960s on Richard and Evelyn Holasek’s farm, where the author and her sister Dorothy grew up. For decades, the Holaseks made a living having dairy cows, growing strawberries and raspberries, and raising chickens for eggs. In addition to being a wife and a mother, Evelyn worked side by side with her husband, pitching hay, husking corn, picking berries, and tending her large vegetable garden.
Gradually the Holasek farm lost out to an interstate highway and encroaching housing developments. What had been an agricultural community became a suburb of the Twin Cities. What had been a family farm was replaced with a health club.
While the Holasek farm is now erased from the physical landscape, Janet Holasek Worrall documents its place in history for future generations. She draws upon personal letters, diaries, newspaper articles, official documents, and her mother’s records. Enriched with numerous photos, A Czech Farm in Minnesota is a compelling historical exploration of immigration, women, agriculture, and family.
“This insightful account is part of the mosaic of history that adds to our understanding of our immigrant past [and] adds a dash of color to the literature.” —David G. McComb, Emeritus Professor, Colorado State University
About the Author: Janet E. Holasek Worrall grew up on a farm in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, then a rural area southwest of the Twin Cities. She received her B.A. from Hamline University and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Indiana University where she specialized in Latin American history. She was a professor of history at the University of Northern Colorado, teaching for over 30 years. Her research and publications focused on Latin America, Immigration, Italian and German Prisoners of War, and Italian immigration in the Denver area. Janet lived in Fort Collins, Colorado, with her husband Arthur and their three children. In 2015, she and Arthur moved to Parker, Colorado, to be closer to their children and grandchildren. Janet presently volunteers at History Colorado and enjoys working on its Italian American Preservation collection. In her spare time, she participates in two book clubs, a choir, and continues her lifetime hobby of gardening, growing tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and more, and tending her twenty African violets.
