PEORIA HEIGHTS, Ill. — Intended as both a tribute to farming history and a collection of memories of beloved friends, farm workers and relatives, Alan Guebert and daughter Mary Grace Foxwell are celebrating the release of their book The Land of Milk and Uncle Honey: Memories From the Farm of My Youth with “meet-and-greets” at select bookstores in the Midwest.

Their book-signing tour brought the pair to Peoria Heights May 22, where Guebert and Foxwell signed books for a few dozen readers and friends at the independent book store I Know You Like A Book. While there, the syndicated agriculture columnist-father and editor-daughter explained the genesis of their unique collaboration.

“I started my (“Farm and Food File”) column in 1993, and in 1994 or 1995 I decided to write one column about where I grew up. The response was so overwhelmingly positive, I decided to write one or two of those a year, and that’s what I’ve been doing,” explained Guebert.

He was speaking of Indian Farm, the Guebert family dairy farm bordered by the Kaskaskia River amidst the rolling plains of southern Illinois. “My daughter, Gracie, asked me for those columns one day, wanting to know how many there were. To my shock, there were over 60.

“Mary Grace wanted to put a book together, so she took the lead on the project, edited all the columns and published it (through the University of Illinois Press),” he added.

Reviews for The Land of Milk and Uncle Honey describe the collection of essays, which are intertwined with updated notes and observations, as “personal and reflective without being overly sentimental,” “a rare gift to farmers and non-farmers alike” and “the recollections of a farm boy.” Guebert said taken together, the essays provide a snapshot of how farming and food has evolved over several decades.

“The columns reminisce about how things used to be. Things in agriculture change so fast. We went from mixed crop and livestock farms to specialized livestock, to corn and soybean farms, to enormous equipment. People can now do more work in one day than we did all year with three or four employees. I think it’s really important that we remember those (old) days,” he said.

“The book is a roadmap of where agriculture has been and where it may eventually return.”

Many of his family-oriented essays center on family members and the wisdom and misadventures of Indian Farm’s various employees, including Jackie the farmhand and, to a larger degree, Guebert’s Uncle “Honey,” an affable and loving farmhand known for spreading mayhem around the farm in the form of mistreated equipment and flipped wagons.

“Uncle Honey was my great-uncle, and a milkman during the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. His real name was Lawrence, though I didn’t know that until I was 13 years old. He was called Honey because he was a sweet little boy who grew up to be a sweet, nice guy,” he said.

“When Honey retired his milk route, he came to the farm to hang around and help my dad farm. My dad couldn’t say no, because Honey owned just a small chunk of the farm as an investment. Once Honey got on a tractor or other machine, he was a horrifying terror. He’s the only guy I know who plowed over a telephone pole with a tractor.”

Uncle Honey toiled on the family farm for some 20 years. “I guess my father paid him, but I don’t remember,” observed Guebert, chuckling, whose recollections of Uncle Honey are as heartfelt as they are humorous.

Readers of his weekly columns in Farm World and the Peoria Journal Star, including Peorians Charles and Joan Pool and Mary Patton, came to the bookstore to meet Guebert and Foxwell.

“I have read his column ever since he began it,” said Patton. “I learn more about economics from Alan’s column than anywhere else in the newspaper.”

Foxwell, who lives in Madison, Wis., and makes her living as co-owner of a social media advisory firm with her husband, Andrew, said collaborating with her dad to publish the book was something that was personally important to her.

“I wanted these stories to live on, past our family. I really only knew these farmhands and Uncle Honey through Dad’s columns,” she said. “Growing up, my classmates and friends would tell me that their parents would read Dad’s articles and sometimes not understand them. But the articles about growing up on the farm were – though they took Dad the least time to research and write – the articles that always had the most readers.”

For more information about Guebert’s and Foxwell’s book and a schedule of future personal appearances, visit www.farmandfoodfile.com