For John Keefe, like thousands of other farmers across the Island, potato 
     
     production offered a glimmer of hope in what was otherwise a declining 
     
     agriculture industry. Island farmers had been losing ground economically 
     
     since the early 1900s. Except for an interlude during World War One, the 
     
     costs of production were rising faster than returns to farmers. The result 
     
     was inevitable: the number of farms on the Island continued to decline. 
     
     Fortunately, the Keefe farm held on and remained in the family. 
     
    
   
   
    
     The 1920s also heralded the arrival of the radio, the expansion of 
     
     telephone lines and the increased proliferation of automobiles. 
     
    

    
     Gradually, as they could afford it, Islanders were embracing the new 
     
     technologies which were inexorably transforming life in the small, insular 
     
     communities. This was the world into which Kathleen Keefe arrived, 
     
     innocently unaware of the major cataclysms which would affect her life 
     
     and the lives of her generation. 
     
    
   
   
    
     48 KATHLEEN MURPHY, MAITRIARC