A farmwife for 45 years, Rachel Peden believed that the family farm's best crop is a "harvest of the spirit." In Speak to the Earth, she looks at life—domestic and wild, human and critter—through the eyes of someone who witnesses nine seasons of the year rather than the typical four. Peden views the farm as "a place of opportunity simultaneous with obligation, an immaculate fitting-together of plant and animal life." Each year yields an abundance of small, priceless observations. Through her writings, Peden encourages readers to appreciate both the simple pleasures in life as well as the more profound qualities embodied in family and neighbors, mallards and ladybugs, possums and pigs, and the irresistible characteristics of old houses, local history, and changing times.