Delight Wier’s career with Prairie Farmer began simply enough: She mailed a letter.

"I admired the magazine, and I thought I had a story to tell, so I began to send letters," Delight recalled during a 2003 interview with Prairie Farmer. "I was really amazed when they published the first 'Letter from Delight's Farm!'"

Readers took to the Lacon farmwife and her letters immediately, responding to her stories of farm life that spilled across the pages of Prairie Farmer for more than 50 years. Her first column was published in 1951, and "Delight" quickly became a household name on many Illinois and Indiana farms. 

BELOVED: Delight Wier became a household name on many Illinois and Indiana farms, thanks to her column, Letters from Delight’s Farm, which ran for over 50 years.

Over the years, she helped readers rejoice in the simple joys of farm life: canning tomatoes, planting flowers and admiring nature.

And those same readers rallied around her as she sustained the harshest farm life had to offer — the deaths of a little boy in an auger, a little girl in an electric fence and then her husband in a tractor rollover. Readers, and particularly farmwives, marveled at how she kept going. Yet for Delight, it was just "one of those things that happened.”

"Life went on," she reflected. "With children to care for, you don't just stop.”

Her start

Born to schoolteacher parents near Monroeville, Ind., Delight grew up in the heart of farm country. After graduating from Ball State University, she studied opera in Chicago and worked for the Lutheran Church of America. There, she conducted field surveys and taught vacation Bible school in ranch areas of North and South Dakota. On assignment to appraise the mission of the Rural Youth of the U.S., she met her husband-to-be, Ralph.

WRITER: Even in her retirement, Delight knew this to be true: "Once a writer, always a writer," she laughed.

They set up housekeeping on the Wier family's Illinois River farm, and began raising seven children. Along with the typical farm products, they tapped maple trees in late summer and sold maple syrup treats in their sweets shop, and Delight gave private voice and piano lessons.

Over her career, Delight was a sought-after speaker at farm meetings, and she published five books of her columns. Donning her signature hat, she was a perennial favorite at the Farm Progress Show, where readers showed up in droves to meet her and buy her books.

Even at her column-writing retirement, she knew this to be true: "Once a writer, always a writer," she said, laughing.

At her retirement, Delight still lived in the same farmhouse where she and Ralph began their married life. She had family just down the road who stopped in frequently to see Grandma Delight and dip into her candy jar.

Delight passed away this year, on July 13. Her indomitable spirit lives on in her children and grandchildren, to whom Delight was beloved.

BOOKS: Delight was an accomplished author, publishing five books during her tenure as a Prairie Farmer columnist.

Her parting thought in her last interview with Prairie Farmer still rings true as she quoted an old hymn: "Life is worth the living!"