[PDF] Maine Farm Families eBook

Author : Kelly Payson-Roopchand
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 251 pages
File Size : 43,66 MB
Release : 2015-06-15
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1608934128

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Once there were no stone walls. For the fiercely idealistic Yankee homesteader, a small family farm was worth fighting for, and the rocky soil yielded far more than walls. Cleared and plowed, it fed a family and provided a living. Oxen gave way to horses, horses to tractors, and still the farm persisted and the family persevered, each generation overcoming the challenges of their day. Two hundred years later, the farm, ever generous in its rewards, has not changed; but society has shifted, forgetting its connection to the land that nourishes us. It is time we remembered. Birth, Death and a Tractor is the story of a small family farm in Somerville, Maine, from its settling in the early 1800s to its perilous transfer to a new farm family in 2008. Chronicling the history of seven generations, it is a reminder of the role small farms have played in our national and family histories, and a challenge to find innovative ways to re-connect our communities to this rich but threatened resource.

Author : Stanley Joseph
Publisher : Random House (NY)
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 40,80 MB
Release : 1991
Category : Country life
ISBN : 9780394584645

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A tribute to the everyday rewards of rural living. The authors record the rhythms of their work and days, along the way providing advice and instruction on dozens of traditional country arts and crafts. 250 full-color photos.

Author : Will Penney
Publisher : Down East Books
Page : 163 pages
File Size : 18,94 MB
Release : 2021-07-21
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1608937674

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Chronicling nearly nine decades of life and work on a Maine farm, this memoir by Will and Minnie Penney presents a wonderful look back at rural life before and during the Depression, in the heady post-war years, and late, as family farms began to give way to larger industrial farms. The Penney's adapted to change by adjusting the way they farmed, focusing on fewer crops, adding dairy cows to their stock, even harvesting trees from the woodlot and cutting them into lumberwith the farm's lumber mill. Through it all the Penney's toughed it out and thrived on their slice of Maine heaven. The Penney Farm in Belgrade, Maine, remained in the family for more than one hundred and fifty years. Eighty-Eighth Years on a Maine Farm is part Will Penney's personal memoir and part Minnie's diary. Together, they show readers just what everyday life on a busy Maine farm was like.

Author : Terry Silber
Publisher : Anchor
Page : 228 pages
File Size : 45,90 MB
Release : 1989
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780385260558

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In the early '70s, Terry and Mark Silber were busy pursuing urban careers. On weekends, they retreated to a farm in Maine. Soon they were selling their produce at the farmer's market. One Monday, they didn't go back, and Hedgehog Hill farm was born. Here is how they were transformed from office dwellers to country folk living off the land.

Author : Atina Diffley
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
Page : 362 pages
File Size : 35,74 MB
Release : 2012-04-04
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1452939179

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When the hail starts to fall, Atina Diffley doesn’t compare it to golf balls. She’s a farmer. It’s “as big as a B-size potato.” As her bombarded land turns white, she and her husband Martin huddle under a blanket and reminisce: the one-hundred-mile-per-hour winds; the eleven-inch rainfall (“that broccoli turned out gorgeous”); the hail disaster of 1977. The romance of farming washed away a long time ago, but the love? Never. In telling her story of working the land, coaxing good food from the fertile soil, Atina Diffley reminds us of an ultimate truth: we live in relationships—with the earth, plants and animals, families and communities. A memoir of making these essential relationships work in the face of challenges as natural as weather and as unnatural as corporate politics, her book is a firsthand history of getting in at the “ground level” of organic farming. One of the first certified organic produce farms in the Midwest, the Diffleys’ Gardens of Eagan helped to usher in a new kind of green revolution in the heart of America’s farmland, supplying their roadside stand and a growing number of local food co-ops. This is a story of a world transformed—and reclaimed—one square acre at a time. And yet, after surviving punishing storms and the devastating loss of fifth-generation Diffley family land to suburban development, the Diffleys faced the ultimate challenge: the threat of eminent domain for a crude oil pipeline proposed by one of the largest privately owned companies in the world, notorious polluters Koch Industries. As Atina Diffley tells her David-versus-Goliath tale, she gives readers everything from expert instruction in organic farming to an entrepreneur’s manual on how to grow a business to a legal thriller about battling corporate arrogance to a love story about a single mother falling for a good, big-hearted man.