A folksy look at farm life in rugged Putnam Valley just as it was being transformed by industrialization and mechanization.

Its 1894 and Rose Wilder and her parents are settling into life in Missouri. Soon the school year will start, and Rose wonders if she will like her new classmates and teacher as much as she did in her old town?

When he first envisioned becoming a farmer, author Emmet Van Driesche never imagined his main crop would be Christmas trees, nor that such a tree farm could be more of a managed forest than the conventional grid of perfectly sheared trees. Carving Out a Living on the Land tells the story of how Van Driesche navigated changing life circumstances, took advantage of unexpected opportunities, and leveraged new and old skills to piece together an economically viable living, while at the same time respecting the land's complex ecological relationships. From spoon carving to scything, coppicing to wreath-making, Carving Out a Living on the Land proves that you don't need acres of expensive bottomland to start your land-based venture, but rather the creativity and vision to see what might be done with that rocky section or ditch or patch of trees too small to log. You can lease instead of buy; build flexible, temporary structures rather than sink money into permanent ones; and take over an existing operation rather than start from scratch. What matters are your unique circumstances, talents, and interests, which when combined with what the land is capable of producing, can create a fulfilling and meaningful farming life.

NAUTILUS BOOK AWARD WINNER "A heartfelt meditation on farm, food, and family…a love story of the land and a life spent caring for it." —HANNAH NORDHAUS, author of The Beekeeper's Lament In this love story of land and family, Kayann Short explores her farm roots from her grandparents' North Dakota homesteads to her own Stonebridge Farm, an organic, community–supported farm on the Colorado Front Range where small–scale, local agriculture borrows lessons of the past to cultivate sustainable communities for the future.

JAMES BEARD AWARD WINNER IACP Cookbook Award finalist In the face of apocalyptic climate change, a former fisherman shares a bold and hopeful new vision for saving the planet: farming the ocean. Here Bren Smith—pioneer of regenerative ocean agriculture—introduces the world to a groundbreaking solution to the global climate crisis. A genre-defining “climate memoir,” Eat Like a Fish interweaves Smith’s own life—from sailing the high seas aboard commercial fishing trawlers to developing new forms of ocean farming to surfing the frontiers of the food movement—with actionable food policy and practical advice on ocean farming. Written with the humor and swagger of a fisherman telling a late-night tale, it is a powerful story of environmental renewal, and a must-read guide to saving our oceans, feeding the world, and—by creating new jobs up and down the coasts—putting working class Americans back to work.

**First Place Winner in the 2021 Feathered Quill Book Awards for Memoir/Biography** A city girl is uprooted and moved to the farm, where she must overcome her fears and learn to live life in a rougher way. Once Bobbi Phelps married an Idaho rancher, she discovered what it was like to live in rural America. The contrast between her suburban background and her farming life created challenging yet rewarding differences. Sky Ranch tells of Bobbi Phelps’s Idaho ranch experiences between 1980 and 1996, the adventures in a past time before camera phones, GPS technology, and social media. Throughout this memoir, she shares frightening tales of: - Dangerous white-outs during Rocky Mountain blizzards. - A terrifying flooded road crossing in pitch blackness. - A near drowning while fishing Henry’s Lake. - Losing her young son among huge harvesting machines. Sky Ranch is a memoir about a naïve suburban woman who struggled to navigate an industrial farm and its commercial cattle enterprise. Her life on the ranch meant grocery shopping once every two weeks, driving through harsh winter storms and swollen streams, and rescuing her horse in a full-blown blizzard. Living in the Rocky Mountains allowed her to fish, hunt, and camp on a regular basis. She also discovered different aspects of the Mormon religion, coyotes hunting her dog, industrial farming, and environmental conservation. Sky Ranch will appeal to readers interested in Western culture, cattle and row-crop farmers, hunters, anglers, and those who only dream of living on a ranch. It takes the reader on an exciting ride of terror, drama, and humor, giving us a look at what goes on behind the scenes at a rural ranch, many miles from civilization.

Reflections on feeding body and spirit in a world of change Animal scientists have long considered domestic livestock to be too dumb to know how to eat right, but the lifetime research of animal behaviorist Fred Provenza and his colleagues has debunked this myth. Their work shows that when given a choice of natural foods, livestock have an astoundingly refined palate, nibbling through the day on as many as fifty kinds of grasses, forbs, and shrubs to meet their nutritional needs with remarkable precision. In Nourishment Provenza presents his thesis of the wisdom body, a wisdom that links flavor-feedback relationships at a cellular level with biochemically rich foods to meet the body's nutritional and medicinal needs. Provenza explores the fascinating complexity of these relationships as he raises and answers thought-provoking questions about what we can learn from animals about nutritional wisdom. What kinds of memories form the basis for how herbivores, and humans, recognize foods? Can a body develop nutritional and medicinal memories in utero and early in life? Do humans still possess the wisdom to select nourishing diets? Or, has that ability been hijacked by nutritional "authorities"? Consumers eager for a "quick fix" have empowered the multibillion-dollar-a-year supplement industry, but is taking supplements and enriching and fortifying foods helping us, or is it hurting us? On a broader scale Provenza explores the relationships among facets of complex, poorly understood, ever-changing ecological, social, and economic systems in light of an unpredictable future. To what degree do we lose contact with life-sustaining energies when the foods we eat come from anywhere but where we live? To what degree do we lose the mythological relationship that links us physically and spiritually with Mother Earth who nurtures our lives? Provenza's paradigm-changing exploration of these questions has implications that could vastly improve our health through a simple change in the way we view our relationships with the plants and animals we eat. Our health could be improved by eating biochemically rich foods and by creating cultures that know how to combine foods into meals that nourish and satiate. Provenza contends the voices of "authority" disconnect most people from a personal search to discover the inner wisdom that can nourish body and spirit. That journey means embracing wonder and uncertainty and avoiding illusions of stability and control as we dine on a planet in a universe bent on consuming itself.

"Fields of Plenty is the memoir of respected farmer, writer, and photographer Michael Ableman as he and his son travel from his own farm in British Columbia across the United States in search of innovative and passionate farmers who are making a difference in what we eat and how we experience food. From California to New York, this story captures the essence of each farmer's vision, the spirit of the land that they work, and the beauty and flavors of the foods that they lovingly produce. Ableman's odyssey takes him to a melon grower who is "militant about flavor," sheep-cheese producers who have built their own culturing caves, an urban farmer growing heirloom tomatoes for market on abandoned lots, and others who are trying to answer the complex questions of sustenance philosophically and, most important, practically." "Fields of Plenty is a hopeful memoir that reveals the larger issues of food in a modern world. Illustrated with Ableman's photographs and flavored with recipes that feature each farmer's bounty, Fields of Plenty is an intimate portrait of food and agriculture at a critical crossroads."--BOOK JACKET.

Bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver returns with her first nonfiction narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat. "As the U.S. population made an unprecedented mad dash for the Sun Belt, one carload of us paddled against the tide, heading for the Promised Land where water falls from the sky and green stuff grows all around. We were about to begin the adventure of realigning our lives with our food chain. "Naturally, our first stop was to buy junk food and fossil fuel. . . ." Hang on for the ride: With characteristic poetry and pluck, Barbara Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Their good-humored search yields surprising discoveries about turkey sex life and overly zealous zucchini plants, en route to a food culture that's better for the neighborhood and also better on the table. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet. "This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air." Includes an excerpt from Flight Behavior.

With humor and pathos, Forrest Pritchard recounts his ambitious and often hilarious endeavors to save his family’s seventh-generation farm in the Shenandoah Valley. Through many a trial and error, he not only saves Smith Meadows from insolvency but turns it into a leading light in the sustainable, grass-fed, organic farm-to-market community. There is nothing young Farmer Pritchard won’t try. Whether he’s selling firewood and straw, raising free-range chickens and hogs, or acquiring a flock of Barbados Blackbelly sheep, his learning curve is steep and always entertaining. Pritchard’s world crackles with colorful local characters—farm hands, butchers, market managers, customers, fellow vendors, pet goats, policemen—bringing the story to warm, communal life. His most important ally, however, is his renegade father, who initially questions his son's career choice and eschews organic foods for the generic kinds that wreak havoc on his health. Soon after his father’s death, the farm becomes a recognized success and Pritchard must make a vital decision: to continue serving the local community or answer the exploding demand for his wares with lucrative Internet sales and shipping deals. More than a charming story of honest food cultivation and farmers’ markets, Gaining Ground tugs on the heartstrings, reconnecting us to the land and the many lives that feed us.