Pull the pin money

Southern women had cooked and canned for centuries before the advent of the Progressive Era, but—in most cases—it took the Cooperative Extension Service’s home demonstration program to prod them into turning their domestic skills into income sources. That development is the subject of a 2025 book by Kathryn L. Beasley, who dove into the archives to discover how farmwomen in Alabama and Florida cultivated financial independence in the years leading up the Great Depression. 

The Food Section recently spoke with Beasley about The Proof is in the Dough: Rural Southern Women, Extension, and Making Money, published by University of Georgia Press.