I knew that Peter Hurd was a famous artist and that he had married into the Wyeth family. I loved his paintings, especially The Dry River (1938). That’s about all I knew about him. I was just at the beginning of my notion to write a book about Andrew Wyeth, and when I learned that Peter Hurd was his good friend besides being his brother-in-law, I thought: What better place to start? I was naive enough to think that all I had to do was contact him and, because at that time I was working for one of the foremost farm magazines in the country, he would fall all over himself to grant me an interview.

Actually, against all odds, it happened sort of that way. When I would think back later with the perspective of one who has learned a little more about the difficulties of inverviewing famous people, I believe that Hurd granted the interview because I really did work for a farm magazine. Peter Hurd was a farmer, or, more accurately, a rancher, and because he took his ranching seriously, he was willing ot give a little time to a farm magazine.

- Gene Logsdon, The Mother of All Arts (p. 41)

I decided to ask Gene Logsdon for an interview, mostly on a whim. I had some pretty meager writing credentials, and no connections. I knew he lived in my home state of Ohio, and not more than 100 miles from me, and I had met him and chatted with him at a conference. But he just seemed like the kind of person who might agree to an interview with an underqualified, inexperienced interviewer. Especially since he had three new books hitting the shelves that summer.

I first read Logsdon’s The Pond Lovers because at the time, we were looking at buying a rural property with a pond. As I was reading it, I could tell that this was the kind of author I wanted to read more from. At that point, I didn’t know he’d also written extensively about small-scale farming, something else I had a budding interest in. (more…)