Designed to soothe children before bedtime, this delightful story features a multicultural group of people visiting a traditional country store in different settings across America. With rhythmic language that guides children through the passage of both a single day and the four seasons, this board book teaches children to read by identifying familiar items found in a country store, including homemade foods, country crafts, a soda fountain, and classic toys, while celebrating a unique aspect of Americana.
"Rebecca Rule brings her Yankee style, love of all things New Hampshire, and natural wit to the allure of the country store. It's a taste of cheddar, the briny scent of the pickle barrel, creak of the floorboards, and the call of the clerk greeting a daily customer that somehow feels just right. It reminds us of home. The old-fashioned country store has been idolized by poets, artists and writers alike, but Calef's Country Store is special. Rule shares the intriguing tale of a family-owned store that became a true community center-a place to warm the bones-set among the stories of Joel Sherburne. A Calef's employee for sixty years, Joel is a lover of cheese, prankster of high regard, and a life-long volunteer in his hometown of Barrington. In Sixty Years of Cuttin' the Cheese we learn his tips for how to care for your cheese, and we are introduced to his Joelisms, like "Set you back a week." As in: "When Billy Calef sat Joel down and told him the store was to be sold out of the family, well, that set him back a week." Today Joel enjoys the friendship of the new owners, Greg Bolton and Len Angelo, whose vision of the old, enhanced by the new, has brought Calef's to its 150th anniversary year with style and a thriving, mail-order cheese trade. Illustrated with period photographs, Sixty Years of Cuttin' the Cheese includes twenty-two secret recipes from Calef's kitchen, like Cheddar Cheese Crisps, Apple Cranberry Cheddar Muffins, and Smoky Cheese Chowder. So sit back with a plate of Rat Trap Cheddar and some gingersnaps, and reminisce with Joel and Becky around the old woodstove"--P. [4] of cover.
Living the dream of the endless vacation “Anyone who has ever dreamed of leaving the city and taking their lives back to nature (and who hasn't?) will find much to contemplate in this warm and hilarious tale of rural misadventure and small town quirk, even if they have never chased a goat in a bathing suit or called 911 because there were cows in the road. Stimson's voice is endearing: both in its self-deprecation and its rapture, as she sings an only slightly conflicted love song to Vermont.” —Pam Houston, author of Contents May Have Shifted “Taking a plunge that wimpier sorts (i.e. most of us) only fantasize about, Ellen Stimson and her family packed up their house in St. Louis and threw themselves into a wildly different life in small-town Vermont. Armed with the passion-and haplessness-of wide-eyed newcomers they rescue goats and adopt chickens, do battle with skunks and bats and falling ice, and, most disastrously, buy a black hole of a general store. Through it all they manage to retain their love for their adopted home as well as one another. This is a tale to which all the cliché words absolutely apply: hilarious, heartwarming, rollicking, and, most of all, rich in the real stuff of life.” —Julia Reed, author of But Mama Always Put Vodka in Her Sangria!
The ultimate New England store, whose catalog reaches millions of people, presents the store's first cookbook bringing us back to simpler days. The Vermont Country Store Cookbook captures both the essence of the iconic store and the soul of the Vermont way of life: a self-reliant, rich life in the slow lane. Through recipes, yarns, archival photos, and sumptuous visuals, it tells the story of five generations of Orton storekeepers, while featuring fresh-from-the-farm cooking that imbues the cuisine of the present with the best of the past. Approximately 120 updated and original family recipes evoke memories, conveying all the hominess of the catalogue, but also appeal to the modern tastes of contemporary cooks. The book also features sidebars of Vermont history and more than 200 photographs, both black-and-white archival and four-color photographs, the latter taken especially for the book.
Often hidden on the back roads and byways of the Granite State, country stores are an essential and beloved part of the state's character. Developed from trading posts as travelers settled throughout the state, they are recognizable for their vast array of merchandise and a fragrant blend of tobacco, spices and coffee. The country store became the center of the community, where residents could play checkers, mail letters, attend town meetings and shop. They are still fixtures in many towns today, including the Brick Country Store in Bath, considered to be the oldest in the United States, dating back to 1790; Fadden's General Store and Sugarhouse in North Woodstock, which produces award-winning maple syrup; and the Old Country Store in Moultonborough, which had its beginnings as a tavern. Historian Bruce D. Heald, PhD, chronicles New Hampshire's historic country stores and the keepers behind these unique local landmarks.
In this terrifyingly twisted thriller, a young couple discovers the horror held within their newly purchased dream house. It’s the house of their dreams. Former marine Harry and his wife, Sasha, have packed up their life and their golden retriever, Dash, and fled the corporate rat race to live off the land in rural Idaho. Their breathtaking new home sits on more than forty acres of meadow, aspen trees, and pine forest in the Teton Valley. Even if their friends and family think it’s a strange choice for an up-and-coming pair of urban professionals, Harry and Sasha couldn’t be happier about the future they’re building, all by their lonesome. That is, until their nearest neighbors, Dan and Lucy Steiner, come bearing more than housewarming gifts. Dan and Lucy warn Harry and Sasha of a malevolent spirit that lives in the valley, one that with every season will haunt them in fresh, ever-more-diabolical ways. At first, it seems like an old wives’ tale. But when spring arrives, so does the first evil manifestation, challenging everything Harry and Sasha thought they knew about the world. As each season passes, the spirit grows stronger, the land more sinister, and each encounter more dangerous. Will Harry and Sasha learn the true meaning of a forever home before it’s too late? Haunting and bone-chilling, Old Country is a spellbinding debut in the horror genre.
World-renowned artist and textile designer Kaffe Fassett provides a window into his creative process, offering readers new patterns, new ideas, and new inspiration With successes like Bold Blooms and Dreaming in Color, the latest book from Kaffe Fassett brings together all the best elements of his work and life. Kaffe Fassett in the Studio will offer an in-depth look at his work and where he finds inspiration, paying particular attention to his color work. He’ll also showcase some of his greatest designs in the areas of needlework, patchwork, and knitting, as well as provide three to four new patterns in each of these areas. Lastly, Fassett will speak to his fabric design and painting processes. He remains an icon in the fashion and craft worlds. He partners with brands such as Coach and is regularly featured in the pages of Vogue. Fassett’s brilliant use of color sets his work apart from other artists, and any collection of his work is a must have among fans and beyond.
With his unerring eye, Kaffe has succeeded in finding the perfect location for his exquisite new collection of quilts, featuring both his scintillating new fabric designs and his classics, all in his unique color palette. This time he has chosen the medieval English village of Lavenham in Suffolk, where the 19 quilts in this book are set off against the ancient half-timbered Tudor houses. They are displayed in all their glory in a sumptuous eye-catching quilt gallery. Included in this set of new designs are many very special ones by Kaffe, and several by his long-time friend and co-designer, Liza Prior Lucy. Kaffe's Starry Night, featured on the cover, fussy cuts some of his brilliant floral fabrics in deep rich colors to great effect, setting them off by surrounding stars in his Shot Cottons. Shards translates the traditional Broken Dishes design into deliciously soft and subtle blends of pastel fabrics, shown off to perfection against the pale plaster and weathered timbers of the Lavenham houses. In a quite different vein, the boldly contrasting background stripes in black and white fabric in Blooming Columns make a dramatic contrast to the huge fussy-cut flowers appliquéd onto it. This book--the 23rd in the series--includes a range of quilts for all skill levels, from beginners to advanced. Shaded Squares is one such lovely quilt for first timers, with its cleverly shaded squares each made up from two large triangles, one plain and one striped in Kaffe's Shot Cotton and Wide Stripe fabrics. Flat shots, a practical know-how section and glossary, back up the fully illustrated, step-by-step instructions for each quilt.
A collection of short stories of rural Ireland in the classic Irish mode: full of love (and sex), melancholy and magic, bedecked in some of the most gorgeous prose being written today—from the author of the wildly acclaimed Night Boat to Tangier. With three novels and two short story collections published, Kevin Barry has steadily established his stature as one of the finest writers not just in Ireland but in the English language. All of his prodigious gifts of language, character, and setting in these eleven exquisite stories transport the reader to an Ireland both timeless and recognizably modern. Shot through with dark humor and the uncanny power of the primal and unchanging Irish landscape, the stories in That Old Country Music represent some of the finest fiction being written today.
