Rural Life Books - Page 12

Homesick for the Hills

Alyce Faye Bragg

Amazon Price: $12.95 List Price: $12.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Mountain State Press Amazon Marketplace: 12 new & used starting at $8.74

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

It's Country 4 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

Alyce Faye Bragg's first collection of stories has already been reprinted and at least part of the credit goes to her love affair with the hills. These are the hills of West Virginia and from the small, very small town of Ovapa in sparsely populated Clay County. In her new book, Alyce Faye will tell you about drinking clear Appalachian mountain spring water, an addictive experience. If you have ever been exposed to farm living, you will be reached by her writing of the old vacant farm, "a sad sight." Alyce Faye says we can all go `back home' since she had already done this. She also recalls early holiday memories and her mother's Christian examples. Alyce Faye takes you there; her descriptions are powerful and enjoyable. But there are many things about rural life you may not already know: a shucking peg, about duck sitting, a pennyroyal, leather britches (not clothing), the horse that should have gone to jail and all about green apples and yellow jackets (ouch!). She writes about the real Mountaineer and a real Mountain woman. It may be humorous or sometimes sad, but it is never dull. A gracious real mountain woman herself, Alyce Faye Bragg brings real insight to her stories about country life.

Editorial Review:

This collection of columns are woven with a nostaligic note of how life used to be in the hills of Clay County, West Virginia and underlines the longing of those who have left the country life to come back home again. It describes accurately the land, its people, and their country ways.

Ask the Animals: Life Lessons Learned As an Animal Communicator

Kim Ogden-Avrutik

Amazon Price: $12.00 List Price: $12.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Lantern Books Amazon Marketplace: 31 new & used starting at $1.22

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Subjects -> Home & Garden -> Animal Care & Pets -> General
Subjects -> Home & Garden -> Animal Care & Pets -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Pearls of Wisdom from our 4 legged companions 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This book should be read by all who revere and respect their animal companions. It helps your mind open up to your pets as much as your heart already has. The stories in this book reveal the integrity of canine/feline/etc. spirits by demonstating the intelligence and honesty these wonderful creatures express to those who have learned how to hear them. With Dr. Kim's help, I see my own animals differently now, as true participants in our shared life journeys. This book is a quick read and a very worthy re-read.

Editorial Review:

The twenty-four true stories in this book show that animals have their own individual personalities, likes and dislikes—and, often, spiritual lessons to share. In fact, Dr. Ogden-Avrutik believes that animals can be spiritual gifts, put in our path to help us grow. Time after time, she and her human clients are granted surprising insights into the wisdom and emotional life of the animals they love. These heartwarming stories celebrate the loving bond between humans and their animal companions, and show what wonders are possible when we stop to listen to what our animal friends have to tell us.

My Vegetable Love: A Journal of a Growing Season

Carl H. Klaus

List Price: $22.95 By: Houghton Mifflin Amazon Marketplace: 54 new & used starting at $0.01

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Subjects -> Home & Garden -> Gardening & Horticulture -> Fruit
Subjects -> Home & Garden -> Gardening & Horticulture -> Vegetables

Editorial Review:

This passionate gardener's daily record of a growing season adds up to one of the best pieces of garden writing in years. But this book is about much more than planting, tending, and harvesting a vegetable garden. It's about all the things that influence this gardener: the weather, the neighborhood, his wife's possibly recurring cancer, the changing nature of the academic community; it's about the last months of his twenty-year-old cat, about his dog, and about all the other humans and animals in his gardening world. And about his family: the aunts and uncles who cared for and fed a six-year-old orphan and instilled in him the understanding that good food was a way of knowing that someone cared. In all the gardens he has tended, the dills he has pickled, and the dinners he has cooked, Klaus has tried to carry on that tradition and pass it on to his own children. No reader will come away from My Vegetable Love untouched by the humor, the lyrical quality of the writing, and above all the

Last Person Rural

Noel Perrin

List Price: $21.95 By: David R. Godine Publisher Amazon Marketplace: 14 new & used starting at $12.62

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Going to Grandma's House (Good Ole Days) (Good Ole Days)

Ken Tate

List Price: $24.95 By: House of White Birches Amazon Marketplace: 26 new & used starting at $0.47

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Editorial Review:

This beautifully illustrated book will joyfully take you down memory lane to that most wonderful of childhood places back in the Good Old Days.

Country Living Is Risky Business

Nick Evangelista, Anita Evangelista

List Price: $16.95 By: Loompanics Unlimited Amazon Marketplace: 4 new & used starting at $8.95

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Not a bad book 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This book isent as good as the evangelistas other books but its still well worth the money for there best book ide say "blood lust chickens and renegade sheep" and for the best how to books ide recomend "backyard meat production" and "how to live without electricty and like it" but all of there work is great nick and anita are great writers

A singular farm book! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I enjoyed Nick and Anita Evangelista's first farm book, "Blood-Lust Chickens and Renegade Sheep," and fully expected to enjoy this second effort. I was not disappointed. The Evangelistas have created another volume full of inspiring life experience and helpful how-to info dished up with a generous helping of humor. I recommend this book.

Beginning Farming and What Makes a Sheep Tick

Lowell T. Christensen

Amazon Price: $9.00 List Price: $9.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Pinon Publishing Company (NM) Amazon Marketplace: 8 new & used starting at $7.98

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

This does not deliver on it's title 1 out of 5 stars.
19 of 22 people found this review helpful.

This book is a humor book and does not deliver anything related to basic farming.

Dave Barry meets James Herriot. 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 9 people found this review helpful.

If you've lived on a far, lived near a farm, or just smelled a farm, read this book. As someone who's also routinely tried to herd sheep, had to clean (a.k.a dress) chickens or learned to hand-milk a cow I laughed until I cried. I only wish I could read the sheep section (in its entirety) to a church choir... They would then understand why it's a miracle that "Sheep may safely graze".

Farmer, Gardner, Country Gentleman. Good humor for all. 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I'm not ready to become a farmer, but I did buy some acres and move to the country. Lowell Christensen shares the troubles, wisdom, and humor of farming with us city folk who haven't figured out that a fence won't keep a bull away from the cows. He covers every part of farming from animals to driving on country roads to shoveling manure. The prose are light and humorous. There are a thousand ways to make mistakes on a farm, and at least half of them are humorously detailed in this short book. His recipe for home made soap produces eight pounds of soap, 18 doughnuts, and 3oz of pork skins. If you raise chickens there are thoughtful questions such as, "How many baskets should you put your eggs in?"

I'm not going to raise goats or cows, and I would need more detailed information than this general beginning book if I wanted to. But it's a fun and humorous little book on farming. It is also full of inside information from a man who grew up on a family farm. Its fun to read even if you aren't ever going to live on a farm.

Editorial Review:

This is a humor book about farming, or about ranching, which sounds more adventurous. It s a farm if you plant wheat. If you plant radishes, it's a garden. It's a ranch if you own a beef cow or if you get tired of your milk cow stepping in the milk pail and transform her into hamburger. If you own sheep, it's a sign you need your head examined.

Leaning into the Wind: Women Write from the Heart of the West

Page Lambert

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Loved most of it 4 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

It got a bit repetitive though - I mean, ALL those stories of calving were a bit excessive. I bought this book during my first visit to the High Plains last week on my spring break in South Dakota. I enjoyed most of the stories - I didn't think they were all particularly and equally wonderful, but with so many writings you will have likes and dislikes. I did wish, however, that I could talk to some of these women and let them know that not all vegetarians and animal-rights activists hate ranchers. We're not all hippy-dippy airheads who don't know the real story of animal farming - the hard work and even love that goes into the raising of animals. It's just a difference of opinion regarding the sanctity of _all_ life. I felt attacked, quite a few times, while reading this book. Overall though, there were very inspiring stories and quotable quotes - "Pay a holy kind of attention" !!! Loved that one.

Editorial Review:

In the true stories, essays, and poems of Leaning into the Wind we meet the real women of the High Plains today. Included are reflections on cowboys, tractor-driving lessons, outhouses, ranch marriages, and family legacies.

Old Las Vegas: Hispanic Memories From The New Mexico Highlands

Nasario Garcia

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Editorial Review:

The last vestiges of a cultural past in Northern New Mexico

Las Vegas, New Mexico, "a land of castles and conquerors, ideas and icons," is a symbol of the Western frontier, and for good reason. Even in the first half of the twentieth century, life there and its environs posed daily and often daunting struggles for survival, as these twenty viejitos attest.

Their oral histories, both sad and joyful, comprise a medley of compelling subjects, ranging from life in the countryside, folk healing, religion, politics, and folklore to witchcraft and superstitions. Recounted here in their original Spanish and in English translation, these reflections on a distant past are uncomplicated and straightforward, lucid and honest; their aged tellers are freed of preconditioning or pretense.

Told so quietly they fairly whisper, these stories resonate with simple wisdom and with the richness of a language, culture, and traditions that span several centuries in New Mexico.

Folklorists, historians, cultural and social anthropologists, and students and teachers of Spanish throughout the Southwest will find much that engages and instructs in the accounts that Nasario García has so lovingly gathered and carefully assembled here.