FARMINGTON – Trudy Chambers Price, author of “The Cows Are Out!,” will present a reading and book signing at 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 5, at Devancy Doak and Garrett Booksellers in downtown Farmington.

“The Cows Are Out!” is a tribute to hard-working family farmers and to an important part of Maine’s historical and cultural heritage. Family dairy farms are disappearing in Maine and with them, a way of life. Price has captured the daily joys and struggles of the family farm.

Price and her husband raised two sons and hundreds of cows on Craneland Farm. In the memoir of two decades of dairy farming, Price writes of the daily trials of haying, cow breeding and milking against a backdrop of gentle and entertaining rural life. She introduces kind neighbors, eccentric neighbors, visiting city folk and lovable pets.

Price was born in Island Falls and grew up in Caribou. Her family has lived in “The County” for more than five generations. She was one of three children and, like most county youths, earned money picking potatoes, starting at age 10 and working for 25 cents a barrel.

Price graduated from Caribou High School in 1958 and from the University of Maine at Orono in 1962. She married Ron Price the day she graduated from college. In 1966, they purchased a 150-acre dairy farm in Knox where they lived for the next 23 years while raising their children, Kyle and Travis.

During her time at Craneland Farm, Price also taught third grade at Mt. View Elementary School in Thorndike for two years to help pay the farm bills. She also began to write about her experiences as a dairy farmer. “The Cows Are Out!” is the result of that effort, begun on a typewriter in her old farmhouse on Knox Ridge.