In 1949, Iowa farm wife Evelyn Birkby began to write a weekly column entitled ""Up a Country Lane"" for the Shenandoah Evening Sentinel. Sixty-three years, one Royal typewriter, and five computers later, she is still creating a weekly record of the lives and interests of her family, friends, and neighbours. Her perceptive, closely observed columns provide a multigenerational biography of rural and small-town life in the Midwest over decades of change. Now she has sifted through thousands of columns to give us her favourites.