1934 was a hard year in the Great Depression. Dale and Helen were beginner farmers in their mid-twenties, struggling to make a go of it east of Osceola, in south-central Iowa. They use a battery-powered radio, so they had no electricity and they must also have used kerosene lanterns for light. Dale travels around Clarke County on foot, on horseback, with a horse-drawn wagon, and sometimes in someone’s car – he didn’t own one. People trade goods; barter was a common way to buy/sell items. Family ties are close; people would get together almost every day for “dinner” – the mid-day meal. Supper was the evening meal. The daily entries are terse, but they still convey little vignettes of what life was like every day for a lot of people. I have dropped a number of entries that add little or nothing to his story.