ALTAMONT — Neither one of them had written a book before. But they figured that, together, they could learn how.

The result is a beautifully designed and well-told memoir of 96-year-old lifelong farmer Everett Rau, “Stand Tall Against the Odds.”

Laura Shore, a retired communications professional who is active as a volunteer with the Altamont Village Archives & Museum, owns, restored, and lives in the Inn of Jacob Crounse in the village and writes a blog called Farm Share Studio.

The idea for the book got its start in June 2014, when Rau gave a talk at the Altamont Village Hall about his life in farming; the talk took the form of a conversation with Shore.

“We just really liked each other,” Shore recalled. Rau asked if she would like to figure out how to write a book, and they got started.

They met, she said recently, every week for a couple of hours, for almost a year. She would bring a tape recorder and would go home and transcribe. Rau would then go over it and make corrections.

“He had a particular story in mind,” Shore said, “about his triumph over adversity.” Rau emerged from a childhood of poverty and living under an abusive father to become a successful subsistence farmer, while working for a time at General Electric, where he helped engineers figure out how to fix their machines, despite never having been to college himself.

He and his wife, Peg Rau, whom he met at G.E., also started and ran a thriving business called Turkeyland, where they sold turkeys and later ran a deli and luncheonette as well. After the business suffered several setbacks and closed, Rau — with his repository of knowledge of old farming machinery and techniques that he believes should be remembered and honored as a link to the past — eventually reinvented himself as a kind of iconic figure in Altamont, an unofficial village elder statesman who often speaks and teaches on preindustrial machinery and techniques.

He is, for example, the backbone of the Antique Farm Machinery Museum at the Altamont Fair each year, helping a small band of dedicated volunteers get an impressive array of old farm machinery up and running, demonstrating its use for visitors

Shore did write along that basic framework, but she was also able to do some genealogical research that helped both Rau and his wife learn things about their own parents that they had never known.

For instance, she helped him understand his father a bit better when she learned that he had worked at General Electric, himself, before his mother-in-law had died, making it necessary for his wife, Rau’s mother, to return home to Altamont to care for her father and the family farm on Settles Hill. So Rau’s father — an artist — left a job as a catalog illustrator at G.E. to go into farming, a job he knew nothing about.

“So the process was one of discovery for them as well,” Shore said.

Shore notes that her own mother died unexpectedly in 2012 and that her father is in the later stages of Alzheimer’s. She and her siblings, she said, “have so many questions that will never be answered.” She wished many times, going through this process with Rau, that she could do it with her own parents.

“With the tools available today it is possible for every family to publish their own story. Having those stories will enliven the collective memory of our community.”            

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Everett Rau and Laura Shore will discuss “Stand Tall Against the Odds” and sign copies at the Altamont Free Library on Thursday, Jan. 28, at 6:30 p.m. This event is free and open to the public.