Preparations are underway for the Rosehill summer fête. Every year prizes are awarded for the best home-made produce, and on the farm Mrs Evans has been busy with her speciality jams and marmalades, cheeses and chutneys, cakes and pies and pickles. The Evanses are also hoping to win a prize in the pet show – Fluffy the rabbit, Tiddles the cat and Sarah the duck are all entered. But Fluffy still doesn't know what happened to his father after the poachers took him away, and for Fluffy the best prize of all would be to be reunited with his missing family.
A beautiful story highlighting a sunny day visit to the farm. The reader is invited into a whimsical tale with animals and children enjoying their adventures. What makes this story unique, however, is that each of the children photographed in the book has Down Syndrome. The storyline is appropriate for all children and clearly shows the abilities of children with an extra chromosome.10% of the profits will be donated to various Down Syndrome organizations.
The days are growing shorter, but on Sunny Hill Farm Mr and Mrs Evans are working as hard as ever, looking after the animals and bringing in the last of the year's harvest. Meanwhile preparations are under way for a wedding in Rosehill village - Chris, the vet, is marrying his assistant, Tracy, and everyone has been invited. It is going to be a magnificent occasion. The Green Dragon Inn will be decorated with flowers for the wedding reception, and after the food and dancing Mr Marvellous will be performing his celebrated magic show to bring an incredible year to a truly magical end.
Spending the summers growing up on my uncles farm was, for me, an education in learning about my life on the farm. Much of my time was spent in observing how my uncles milked the cows teats and how they led them afterward out to the field to eat and rest. I watched the horses, as they too, were led to the fields where they rested after pulling the wagons filled with hay into the barn. I saw the trees which had been planted years before and had grown protecting everyone from the heat of the summer sun. And I learned to play baseball with children from nearby farms who challenged me and my friends to win. I learned about the mothers who came with their children to the country to escape the sweltering city and to gratefully breathe the country air and then to welcome their tired husbands and childrens fathers on weekends. I grew up thankful for all that I experienced in those years and I remain thankful to this day, for all I have learned.
Booklist Editors’ Choice “Best Books of 2019” An intimate portrait of the joys and hardships of rural life, as one man searches for community, equality, and tradition in Appalachia Charles D. Thompson, Jr. was born in southwestern Virginia into an extended family of small farmers. Yet as he came of age he witnessed the demise of every farm in his family. Over the course of his own life of farming, rural education, organizing, and activism, the stories of his home place have been his constant inspiration, helping him identify with the losses of others and to fight against injustices. In Going Over Home, Thompson shares revelations and reflections, from cattle auctions with his grandfather to community gardens in the coal camps of eastern Kentucky, racial disparities of white and Black landownership in the South to recent work with migrant farm workers from Latin America. In this heartfelt first-person narrative, Thompson unpacks our country’s agricultural myths and addresses the history of racism and wealth inequality and how they have come to bear on our nation’s rural places and their people.
At a time when food is becoming increasingly scarce in many parts of the world and food prices are skyrocketing, no industry is more important than agriculture. Humans have been farming for thousands of years, and yet agriculture has undergone more fundamental changes in the past 80 years than in the previous several centuries. In 1900, 30 million American farmers tilled the soil or tended livestock; today there are fewer than 4.5 million farmers who feed a population four times larger than it was at the beginning of the century. Fifty years ago, the planet could not have sustained a population of 6.5 billion; now, commercial and industrial agriculture ensure that millions will not die from starvation. Farmers are able to feed an exponentially growing planet because the greatest industrial revolution in history has occurred in agriculture since 1929, with U.S. farmers leading the way. Productivity on American farms has increased tenfold, even as most small farmers and tenants have been forced to find other work. Today, only 300,000 farms produce approximately ninety percent of the total output, and overproduction, largely subsidized by government programs and policies, has become the hallmark of modern agriculture. A Revolution Down on the Farm: The Transformation of American Agriculture since 1929 charts the profound changes in farming that have occurred during author Paul K. Conkin’s lifetime. His personal experiences growing up on a small Tennessee farm complement compelling statistical data as he explores America’s vast agricultural transformation and considers its social, political, and economic consequences. He examines the history of American agriculture, showing how New Deal innovations evolved into convoluted commodity programs following World War II. Conkin assesses the skills, new technologies, and government policies that helped transform farming in America and suggests how new legislation might affect farming in decades to come. Although the increased production and mechanization of farming has been an economic success story for Americans, the costs are becoming increasingly apparent. Small farmers are put out of business when they cannot compete with giant, non-diversified corporate farms. Caged chickens and hogs in factory-like facilities or confined dairy cattle require massive amounts of chemicals and hormones ultimately ingested by consumers. Fertilizers, new organic chemicals, manure disposal, and genetically modified seeds have introduced environmental problems that are still being discovered. A Revolution Down on the Farm concludes with an evaluation of farming in the twenty-first century and a distinctive meditation on alternatives to our present large scale, mechanized, subsidized, and fossil fuel and chemically dependent system.
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Farm, written by Sharon Wistisen and illustrated by Kathy Hamann, is a collection of vignettes about farm family living in Southeastern Idaho. In total, the essays tell the story, sometimes warm and thoughtful, often humorous, of a third-generation farmer-rancher who marries a California city girl. It is filled with dialogue depicting the trials and joys of working side by side with their five children – often being raised by them. It is homespun humor, insider’s wisdom, and reflections of yesteryear.
Adapts a familiar children's song with a barnyard theme and pairs verses with illustrations of a puppy tractor driver who picks up his farm animal friends early in the morning.
The garden gnomes all live happily together in their toadstool houses near the pond in Pauline Green's garden. They are simply fanatical about recycling. Nothing is wasted if it can be reused or made into something beautiful. This is the story of how they came to live with Pauline and Neddy the goat, furnishing their new homes using bits and pieces humans throw away and living in harmony with the natural world. In 'At the Allotment' the fruits and vegetables are boasting about their merits. Each one thinks himself better in some way than all the others. Sunny the Scarecrow and Pete the Pixie have to keep the peace as best they can.
