Book Description

Book Description
Life on the farm is nothing like Baltimore!

Anna is so excited when she finds out that she's spending a week on the farm with her aunt and uncle. She promises her mother she'll behave like a lady . . . but it's hard to do when she discovers there's a boy visiting, too. His name is Theodore, and he can't stand "stuck-up city slickers." Anna is determined to get back at him for all his teasing -- and show him a thing or two about what city slickers are really like!

Customer Reviews (1)

A charming book
Hahn has another winner with this gentle and wise novel of a city girl who finds freedom and friendship during a summer visit to her aunt and uncle's farm.Dramatic tension comes from Anna's encounters with Theodore, an orphan boy who has been taken in by the farm family.Theodore and Anna begin as jealous rivals, but are as close as brother and sister by the book's end.Readers will cheer for Anna as she leaves her stuffy, urban life behind (if only for a while) and becomes a scrappy and happy mud-caked farm girl.I was genuinely sorry to see the book end, and hope Ms. Hahn has more books about Anna in the works. ... Read more

Book Description
Endearing memories become more vivid as you page through This Old Barn, a wonderful, heartwarming anthology of stories and artwork--from such favorites as Patricia Penton Leimbach, Justin Isherwood, Grant Wood, Eric Sloane, and others--that celebrates the glorious barns of yesteryear. Whether you grew up on a farm, or wished you did, you'll cherish This Old Barn, which will bring you back to simpler days. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Another Exquisite book by Thomas Locker
My daughter and I can't get enough of Thomas Locker's incredible artwork. His gorgeous paintings in Mare on the Hill, Gray Wolf Country, and Family Farm are museum-quality. Family Farm is a wonderful, poignant story about afamily trying to keep their farm going for another season. Locker writesabout what he knows, and each page is infused with emotion. Any child overthe age of 6 who dreams of living in the country will love this story. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (4)

It's the Real Thing
by Peggy Fallon, author Ice Cream and Frozen Desserts DK Publishing, 2007
This book travels between my nightstand--where I enjoy Terri's thoughtfully written prose and stories of her colorful family--to my kitchen, where I revel in her detailed recipes for fried chicken, grits, and gumbo. Lots of good food here, and I recommend this book to anyone interested in authentic Cajun cuisine.

True Cajun Style
Real Cajun style cooking!It has great recipes along with great stories behind the recipes.A must have for the Cajun Style lovers.

Cajun Like I Grew Up Eating
The opening wording on the flyleaf of this book expresses a couple of points better than I can. 'When most people think of Cajun cooking, they thing of blackened redfish (or blackened nearly anything else) or, maybe, gumbo.'

No, blackened meats and a bunch of other dishes are the creation of New Orleans chefs preparing foods for the tourists. Note, I'm not saying that I don't like these dishes, they just aren't the kinds of foods that I grew up with in the swamps of South Louisiana.

This book talks about the kinds of things we really ate. We had things like etouffee, shrimp boil, jambalaya. Just like she says. But then I do find a few points with which I disagree.

For instance on page 225 she says that they usually use quick grits, which cook in just a few minutes, rather than stone-ground or old-fashioned grits, which take up to an hour to cook. The stone-ground are delicious, but very difficult to find outside of the South.

Terrible, terrible, sacrilege. Go on the web and you can find lots of places that sell 'real' grits. Just substitute them for her recipies that use grits. Incidentally I highly recommend her Baked Spicy Cheese Grits, page 223. Her recipie is a bit different than mine, I put in a bit of spicy sausage. She puts in eggs. You might also want to try varying the types of cheese you use: blue cheese is good, so is Velveeta. Try this at a pot luck, you'll be surprised at the result.

Try some of her Gumbos.

Try a lot of her recipies, you'll be glad you did.

In a Cajun kitchen
Recipes are easy to follow and use ingredients easily found stocked in everyday grocery stores and personal kitchens.An added bonus was the personal angle of the stories about the originators of the recipes.There is gentle humor and good advice on almost every page.Best of all, the several recipes I tried not only looked good, but tasted wonderful.This book is NOT about burning your taste buds with "hot and spicy" but enjoying flavor bursting tastes.The book is everything I hoped for in a Cajun cookbook.I agree with the book reviewers! ... Read more

Book Description
A farmer with an extraordinary gift for language and a writer with the field still fresh on his boots, Justin Isherwood is irresistibly compelling. His writing is possessed by a poetry. As he moves effortlessly from the profound to the practical, he turns the ordinary experiences of farm life into a feast for your senses.

Distributed for Martin Communications and Marketing ... Read more

Book Description

Marx, Lenin and Kautsky all regarded family farming as doomed to be split into capitalist farms and proletarian labour. Most modern economists regard family farming as an archaic form of production organization, destined to give way to agribusiness. Family Farms refutes these notions and analyses the manner in which family farmers have been able to operate with success in both developed and developing countries, using examples wherever these are illuminating.

This book begins by reviewing theoretical arguments about agricultural structures, and defines family farming. This is followed by five vignettes about farming in the first half of the twentieth century. The authors analyse the conditions of access to land and water, labour, livestock, tools and seed and review marketing arrangements and how they have changed since 1900. A three-chapter review of evolving policies in the North Atlantic countries, in the communist states, and in the developing countries, leads to a discussion of the impact of neo-liberalism. New issues of the farmer as steward of the environment are explored, as well as modern ideas about de-agrarianization and a discussion of land reform, tracing the experience of Mexico and Brazil. In two final chapters the more positive approach of pluriactivity is discussed and followed by a review of organic farming as a principal modern innovation. New political organizations representing family farming are described and their demands are discussed with empathy, but in a sceptical manner.

Family farming is an adaptable and resilient form of production organization, and these qualities have allowed it to survive. The future will be no easier than the past, yet family farming continues to flourish in most contexts. This book will be useful for researchers, students and lecturers interested in Development Studies, Rural Studies and Geography and Anthropology, as well as general readers who have an interest in farming.> ... Read more

Book Description
'Myrtlisms' abound in this historical commentary of farm life. Myrtle's love of home and passion for family and friends gathered under her roof comprise the primary source of anecdotes for this chronological narrative.A remarkable life is recorded in the set of a dozen five year diaries she kept. As Myrtle might say regarding well-aged food in the 'icebox', these old diaries 'needed using'. With biographical interpretation by their daughter, Myrtle and her husband Roy's rural reality comes to life, bringing the past to the present for better viewing, smelling, tasting, touching and hearing. It's as if we can just call them on their old wooden phone and exclaim (as Myrtle often has) "Well, you're home!" ... Read more

Amazon.com
Farm lyrically recounts a year in the lives of Tom and Sally Bauer, solid Midwesterners who work the bottomlands of the Missouri River to grow "a harvest few city people could have identified ... the foundation of their diet, the principal food plant of the Western world": corn. The two rise before dawn in all kinds of weather, tending to the hundreds of tasks farmers must master in the face of heavy odds--foreclosures, climbing interest rates, a then-sickening economy, and, always, the uncertainties of the weather and the health of their crops. Richard Rhodes makes it clear that their lives are hard, but the Bauers love to till the soil. Doubtless few urbanites will want to don bib overalls after reading Farm, but anyone who reads the book will appreciate the difficulty of farmers' lives and the courage of those who lead them.Book Description

Customer Reviews (3)

Couldn't even finish it
With the disclaimer that I refused to invest any more of my life in the completion of this book, I have to say that this is among the worst books that I've never read.I was attracted to it because of (i) Rhodes' reputation, and (ii) the legacy of, and current connection to, farming in my own family.My intimate familiarity with farming (see note ii above) might have made me more sympathetic to, or perhaps more critical of, this book - I don't know.Anyway, I found it to be flat and uninspired.Perhaps it is a good read for someone who has never, ever stepped foot on a farm.However, I think that listening to an ag report on the radio would be just as informative, and about as interesting.

A safe antidote for suburban cluelessness
What a damned shame this book is out of print! If it were up to me, this book would be required reading for anyone planning to relocate to the midwest from either the east or west coast, particularly if you grew up in the suburbs.

FARM details the deceptively complicated life of a midwestern farm couple, their 3 kids, two dogs and assorted friends, crops, livestock, farm machinery, etc.Farming is certainly no walk in the park.The further you venture into this book, the more emotionally exhausted you feel as Rhodes brings home in brilliant detail all the pulls, pushes, tugs, restraints and jolts that go into this lifestyle. How do they do it?

Around the biographical data concerning the Bauer family, Rhodes introduces a staggering array of ancillary subjects, summarizing each with deadly accuracy coupled with a comfortable and easy-to-digest writing style. (Even soils and compactor mechanics are rendered comprehensible for those of us who never "tested well" on mechanical reasoning!)

For east/west coast new arrivals to the midwest who couldn't feel more lost if they'd just landed on Jupiter, this book sheds lots of light on many of the onstensibly incomprehensible mores, rhythms, habits and tendencies of midwestern life that persist in the behavioral patterns of even those who are more than a generation removed from the farm or the small town. With Rhodes as your guide, it's easier to understand the positive aspects of why they do what they do and less painful and exasperating to conform yourself to behaviors that will make them accept you more. I'd need a calculator to add up all the dumb mistakes I could have avoided over the past 10 years if I'd been armed with the information contained in Rhodes' book.

However, 1989 was a long time ago. Since then a new breed of "agri-preneurs" led by Ron Macher, Small Farm Today, the various editors of Storey Books and others is slowly guiding America's farmers away from traditional wholesale masochism toward direct marketing of specialty crops and livestock.

Rhodes' FARM and Macher's MAKING YOUR SMALL FARM PROFITABLE form a veritable old and new testament of American farming -- and an important primer for the aging suburban Boomer who wants to replace lifelong cluelessness with a practical body of knowledge with which to become at least a small part of the solution -- the voting booth, perhaps?!!

a pretty good effort for a city boy
As an american farmer,I was curious as to how a non-farmer would depict a way of life so diffrent from his own.I think Richard did a fine job in showing just how tough things can be sometimes and also the humor that goesalong with this way of life.I did find a few technical errors that wouldnot be noticeable to any one unfamilar with farming or its equipment. Overall this is a very good book for any one curious about "life downon the farm" or any one just looking for a good light read.I haveread and reread this book several times and will probably do so again inthe future.So there you have it, an endorsement from a farmer for a bookabout a farmer. ... Read more

Book Description
Farming, as it is practiced in market industrialized countries, is predominantly a family business. The central message of this book is that the nature of the farm business cannot be properly understood without reference to the family that operates it. The authors focus not so much on the farm family or the farm business separately, but on the interaction between the two. While many of their illustrations relate to the United Kingdom, examples are also drawn from North America, European Community countries, Scandinavia, Australia and New Zealand. The general approach is a multidisciplinary one, and the book is aimed at senior students, researchers and policy makers concerned with agricultural economics, policy and management as well as rural sociology, geography and other rural studies. ... Read more

Book Description
Historians have long asserted that during and after the Hannibalic War, the Roman Republic's need to conscript men for long-term military service helped bring about the demise of Italy's small farms and that the misery of impoverished citizens then became fuel for the social and political conflagrations of the late republic. Nathan Rosenstein challenges this claim, showing how Rome reconciled the needs of war and agriculture throughout the middle republic.

The key, Rosenstein argues, lies in recognizing the critical role of family formation. By analyzing models of families' needs for agricultural labor over their life cycles, he shows that families often had a surplus of manpower to meet the demands of military conscription. Did, then, Roman imperialism play any role in the social crisis of the later second century B.C.? Rosenstein argues that Roman warfare had critical demographic consequences that have gone unrecognized by previous historians: heavy military mortality paradoxically helped sustain a dramatic increase in the birthrate, ultimately leading to overpopulation and landlessness. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

No concessions to the readers
If you're an expert on the Roman empire you will probably appreciate the fact that Rosenstein gets right to the heart of his subject with no unnecessary explanations.If you're not an expert, he doesn't make it easy to read this book.For example, he doesn't give us many dates, assuming we know when the Punic Wars ended and Sulla and Tiberius ruled Rome.(My level of expertise is that I can guess within about 20 years when these events occured.)Background and context in this book are minimized.

The subject is interesting.What impact did the frequent Roman wars between about 200 and 50 BC have on Roman agriculture?Was there an increase in the number of slaves and large landowners? Were small farms impoverished during this period as a result of Roman wars. How many Roman soldiers died in war?In 190 pages of related essays and 150 pages of appendices, notes, and a vast bibliography the author takes on these subjects.Whew!It was all a bit much.I need a little more background, more of a concession to my ignorance. Suffice it to say that this is not a book for the casual reader.

If you are an expert, however, you will probably find Rosenstein's exhaustive arguments and questioning of the conventional wisdom to be stimulating. Essentially, the author finds that the growth of slavery and the the destruction of the small landowners of Rome was less important during this period than believed by previous scholars.Along the way are some interesting facts such as (Table 2) a list of Roman battles and battle deaths between 200 and 168 BC.If that sounds like your cup of tea read this book.

Smallchief

The internal dynamics of an empire
The home front is always one of the less popular subjects of war histories.Not as heroic, bloody or grand, but just as important, the way families handle the pressures of war economically, politically and socially is often as important in determining the outcome of a war as does battlefield bravery and brinksmanship.This book goes one step deeper and examines how birth rates and death rates in the Italian countryside affected the ability of the nation to war with its neighbors.

Previous accounts of the Roman Empire have viewed Rome's territorial growth in the following lens.Roman armies took men of their farms for service in foreign quarters.This led to untended farms that needed labor.Subsequently, Rome was more willing than many of its neighbors to take men of their farms for military service.This gave Rome a manpower advantage on the battlefield, and Rome's military conquests were used to supply slaves and refugee labor to work its own farms.

This book turns this argument on its head by introducing another factor; high birthrates.The conscription of some portion of Roman men into the armies was compensated by high birthrates which proved enough people on the farms to keep them fully functional.Therefore, Roman farms had enough labor to feed its armies year-round, and its armies were fully manned to fight year round.But this process survived as long as Roman soldiers were constantly marching outwards to conquer new lands, and lose some of its men in the process.Eventually, enough kingdoms bowed willingly to Roman rule without minimal bloodshed that overpopulation became the problem.Specifically, there were too many Romans without land, and these would crowd into the cities and fall prey to the wiles of rival politicians who began fielding these landless souls as their own armies to settle contests outside of the legislative arena.Hence the transformation from Republic to Empire was fueled at its base by overpopulation.

All in all a very important book in the study of a very important subject.The work is well referenced and thorough; but alas it is quite boring and academic in writing style.I do not recommend it for the armchair historian.

Outstanding book.Absolutely essential to understanding the Roman Republic
This book has taken the majority of preconceived notions about the time of the Hannibalic War in Rome and it's affects on the Italian peasantry and turned them on their head.The agrarian crisis which was addressed during the Tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus was always explained as a by product of the turbulent Hannibalic War and the adverse effects the citizenry of the Italian peninsula suffered during these times.However, Nathan Rosenstein, using every single piece of evidence available to him, from the ancient sources to archaeology, genetic testing to demographic studies, shows that not only would the Italian people have been able to generally deal with their current conditions but that their population as a whole was skyrocketing.This, he argues, was the reason for the agrarian crisis, not a large rise in slave staffed estates(which he shows, by ancient evidence that the number of slaves was much lower than generally thought, and the near total lack of archaeological remains of large estates from that time period, never reached the number historians have traditionally believed.).This book has made me look at this time period in a completely different light. I hope Mr. Rosenstein continues to put out books if their quality and research is even half as high as this work. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Top Producer, published by Farm Journal Media on December 1, 2002. The length of the article is 1372 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Oh, Brother: stay put or split up: No partnership is perfect, but some can be almost unbearable. There are strategies for improvement.(family farm Partnerships)
Author: Laura Sands
Publication: Top Producer (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 1, 2002
Publisher: Farm Journal Media
Page: 38

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