Twenty Acres

About

Sarah Neidhardt was an infant when her parents joined the growing back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s. Uprooting their young family to move from Colorado Springs to an isolated piece of land deep in the Arkansas Ozarks, they built a cabin, grew their own food, and for years strove to escape their former lives and achieve an ideal of agrarian self-sufficiency.

In Twenty Acres: A Seventies Childhood in the Woods, bohemian counterculture meets pioneer homemaking. Neidhardt revisits her childhood with compassion and candor, drawing upon a trove of family letters to retrace her parents’ journey from their affluent youths, to their embrace of rural poverty, to their sudden and wrenching return to conventional society. As she comes to better understand her family and the movement that shaped them, Neidhardt reveals both the treasures and tolls of an unconventional, pastoral life.

Author

Sarah Neidhardt has worked as a bookseller, secretary, paralegal, copyeditor, and stay-at-home mother. She grew up in Arkansas and Northern California and now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and teenage son. She is a graduate of Oberlin College.

Reviews

“Good stories are to be cherished and shared. They also help us understand ourselves and our communities. Sarah Neidhardt has written such a story in Twenty Acres. … Neidhardt shares that magical childhood with us in a deeply personal way. … [H]er story is remarkable in the way she weaves her rich sources together to paint a picture of one family enduring the hardships of living in the Ozarks int eh 1970s. I highly recommend this book.”
—Thomas M. Kersen, Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Winter 2022 (September 2024)

“Dotted with delightful photos and memorable anecdotes, Twenty Acres is a captivating look at one family’s journey into an ‘off-the-grid’ lifestyle and their jarring return to conventional society.”
—Michelle Kicherer, Willamette Week, January 2023

“For those who are granola right down to their toes (and those who survived parents like that). The memoir Twenty Acres from Colorado-born author Sarah Neidhardt recounts her family’s move from Colorado Springs to the isolated wilds of the Arkansas Ozarks, where they pioneered a homestead in bohemian counterculture style. Whether you lived in a yurt or just had to trade chocolate for carob now and then, any child of the ’70s will recognize themselves in this book.”
—Teague Bohlen, Westworld, “Colorado Books for Holiday Gift Giving”

“Disillusioned with the modern world and idealistic about living closer to nature, Sarah Neidhardt’s parents packed up from Colorado—a place that some other back-to-landers would seek out—and moved to small, isolated Fox, Arkansas to attempt living completely self-sufficiently and off-the-grid. In this memoir, Neidhardt examines her memories from that time, and also pinpoints one of the most particularly problematic parts of the back-to-the-land movement, which is that many of its participants were anchored in privilege. … A memoir infused with both empathy and inquiry.”
—Wendy J. Fox, Electric Literature

“By not glorifying the BTTL (back to the land) movement, Twenty Acres will help scholars consider harder questions about the complicated legacy of affluent whites who sought out voluntary simplicity for self-actualization as much as social reform.”
—Jinny Turman, Missouri Historical Review, October 2024

“Twenty Acres is a sensitive, thoughtful, honest book full of details that give this period in the author’s life solidity. … Her book is a gift that shows how her ‘back to the land’ experience unfolded and what was gained or lost as a result. If you are interested in this period and the folks who sought a way of living that was more sustainable (before the term became commonplace), then this is worthwhile. The writing is clear, shorn of cliches and her voice is kind, showing compassion over judgment.”
—Louise Halsey, Fort Smith Historical Society Journal, October 2023

Praise

“Twenty Acres is an engaging, thoughtful memoir of growing up in an off-the-grid cabin as part of the 1970s back-to-the-land movement. Sarah Neidhardt captures her subject beautifully and offers a compelling portrait of a highly specific, historically significant time and place.”
—Kate Daloz, author of We Are As Gods: Back to the Land in the 1970s on the Quest for a New America

“At turns poetic, shocking, terrifying, and nostalgic—and always riveting and real as dirt—Sarah Neidhardt’s meticulously researched memoir gives voice to a generation of back-to-the-landers’ children and to this hidden history of American family life.”
—Ariel Gore, author of The Wayward Writer: Summon Your Power to Take Back Your Story, Liberate Yourself from Capitalism, and Publish Like a Superstar

“Twenty Acres is authentic, clear, and evocative . . . a superb book.”
—David Orr, author of Dangerous Years: Climate Change, the Long Emergency, and the Way Forward

“Weaving together extraordinary research and memories with gorgeously rendered prose, Neidhardt captures the zeitgeist of the back-to-the-land movement in the story of her family’s years in the Ozarks. Equal parts memoir and ethnography, Twenty Acres is lush, haunting, and ultimately elegiac.”
—Megan Kruse, author of Call Me Home

Series

The Ozarks Studies series acknowledges the awakening of a scholarly Ozarks studies movement—one that crosses disciplinary boundaries as it approaches regional study from a variety of vantage points—and positions the University of Arkansas Press as the publisher at the forefront of the movement. As the only university press headquartered within the Ozarks region and as a press with a solid background in the publication of books on the region—Rafferty’s The Ozarks, Land and Life, Morrow’s Shepherd of the Hills Country, Harper’s White Man’s Heaven, Sizemore’s Ozark Vernacular Houses, and many more—the University of Arkansas Press is ideally suited for the first series that will level a scholarly eye on the Ozarks and Ozarkers.

Media

Twenty Acres: A Seventies Childhood in the Woods with author Sarah Neidhardt and her mom Wendy McPhee on KBOO FM (Portland)

Sarah Neidhardt on the WritersCast Podcast.

“How the ’70s Counterculture Shaped My Ozark Childhood” – An excerpt at Barn Raiser

Twenty Acres: An off-the-grid memoir – Amy Wang

“Hidden Gems: Sarah Neidhardt remembers life in the Ozarks in new UA Press book” – Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, May 28, 2023