The Haymakers: A Chronicle of Five Farm Families       by  Steven R. Hoffbeck
 
Spanning 150 years, Hoffbeck tells a story of the labor and heartbreak suffered by five families in five different eras, from the 1850s through the present. The author writes that it is "a book of remembrance… how haying was part of the seasonal rhythms" of farm families, and also the "larger rhythms of life and death."

This book has been called both an epic and an elegy: an epic because it is the history of man’s struggle with nature as well as his struggle against machines, and an elegy to a way of life fast disappearing from our landscape.
Hoffbeck chronicles his own family’s struggle to hold onto their family farm, and his own struggle as he decided to leave farming for another way of life. His writing succeeded. This book won both a Minnesota Book Award and the Red River Heritage Award. It appears he succeeded as well. Hoffbeck is an assistant professor of history at Minnesota State University, Moorhead, with a specialization in agricultural history.

FA - 10    Paperback    $15.95    Note: Rural Route Bookstore still has copies at this price. A $3.00 price
                                                 increase (per book) from the publisher will be reflected on the next order placed.

Mapping the Farm: The Chronicle of a Family       by John Hildebrand

In what has been called an "absorbing and hauntingly beautiful book," the author passionately writes about four generations of a Minnesota farm family, and maps the story of a 240-acre farm in southeastern Minnesota and of the O'Neill family that lives there. This is a double history — of a family, and of agriculture — from 1880 when farming was king until the end of the 20th century when subdivisions and four-lane highways split up the land and social progress divides families.

If the decline of rural communities, institutions, and farms are of special interest to you, we suggest that you also purchase the video, Delafield.

FA - 02 Paperback $14.95

Keeping Watch by Kathryn A. Sletto
                                   Subtitled, "30 sheep, 24 Rabbits, 2 Llamas, 1 Alpaca and
                                   a Sheperdess with a Day Job"

This book, being released this month by MN Historical Press, has such an angelic-sounding title, but remember, it wasn't angels or wise men keeping watch over their flocks by night; it was shepherds. There were no harps playing and no gifts of gold, frankincense, or myrrh out in the pasture. The same situation is found today in Central Minnesota. Sletto's randomly-acquired flock gifts her with mud, muck and manure, and surrounds her with distant sounds of despairing bleats and ferocious growls, which gives true meaning to the Biblical phrase, sore afraid.

Read more about this wonderful book.

FA - 05   Hardcover    $24.95

Barns of Minnesota      Photography by Doug Ohman and Story by Will Weaver

                    NOMINATED FOR A 2006 MINNESOTA BOOK AWARD!

This book pays tribute to these vanishing rural icons that symbolize a way of life on the land that was as strong and proud, as fragile and humble, as the barns among us. The rise of agribusiness and corporate farming has made barns nearly obsolete, and the old barns that once anchored family farms across Minnesota are slowly vanishing due to technology and a century of Minnesota's winters.
This book combines fact with fiction: the 85 stunning color photographs by Minnesotan Doug Ohman of these once numerous barns are accompanied by a small, moving novel — written by Minnesota's own Will Weaver — about the life and death of one barn through the eyes of the family who built it. According to Weaver, barns "...are landmarks, they are icons, they are metaphors, they are symbols. There's so much meaning packed into those old barns... They're now as obsolete as the steamship, as the coal fired locomotive."
A perfect gift for anyone over 20, these 125 pages (plus an Afterword by Weaver and Ohlman) stick with you long after you finish devouring the pictures and reading this uplifting, yet sad, story.
This is still my favorite story, and that of many of my friends and family.

FA - 03   Jacketed Hardcover    $19.95

Voices for the Land   Photography by Brian Peterson
                                   Essays and Thoughts by 52 Minnesotans
 
 A few years ago, the Voices for the Land project, organized by the nonprofit group 1000 Friends of Minnesota, encouraged Minnesotans to write about the land they love, and to fight for its preservation. The Minneapolis Star Tribune published a selection of these essays, paired with Brian Peterson's photos, in an award-winning series. Voices for the Land brings these essays and photos together now in paperbook form. Brian Peterson has been honored eight times as the Minnesota Press Photographer of the Year.
 
 This marriage of words, images, and landscape provides a powerful reminder of our deep and abiding connection to the land. Fifty-two Minnesotans write about the special, sometimes secret, places that give their lives meaning. For some it is their home or cabin or lake; for others, it's a family farm or neighborhood park, a backyard garden or north woods trail--all places where one finds a personal and spiritual connection to the land. The writers share the experience of these favorite places through their senses, from the aching tingle of a cold winter night and the sound of ice "singing" to the buzz of mosquitoes and the acrid smell of burning peat.
 
 FA - 04 Paperback $19.95

 

Little Book of Log Cabins                 by William S. Wicks

Subtitled "How to Build and Furnish Them," this design and construction guidebook was written over a century ago. However, it wasn't penned by the average pioneer, but rather by a highly successful architect whose structures are still evident in Buffalo, NY.

Complete with simple diagrams and step-by-step details, this is an ideal manual for people who dream of building their own cottage or make-it-yourself log furnishings. Building instructions are accompanied by clear, accurate line drawings of simple log structures, lean-tos, practical shelters, fancy Adirondack cabins, fireplaces, stairways, furniture, beamed ceilings, and more. 

A perfect gift for that outdoors person, this book provides a feast for both browsing and practical projects.

FA - 07 Paperback       $6.95

Barns, Sheds and Outbuildings: A Practical Guide      by  Byron D. Halsted

This ecologically aware manual was written in 1881 with the farmer in mind — during a time when a laborer earned a mere dollar a day. When it was originally released, it was titled Barn Plans and Outbuildings.

Included are more than 250 illustrations and designs for nearly 100 structures spanning the gamut of farm buildings: from monumental barns (four stories high and covering nearly an acre) to lowly hen coops, root cellars, dog houses and bird houses, The particulars of their construction, recounted in simple and practical terms, tell a tale of life lived amid the changing seasons and the natural world.

Halsted's building theories are based upon qualities good builders still hold dear: light and air, space, cost, and beauty, as well as permanence, convenience, and workability. The anecdotal style in this facsimile edition of the 1881 book can truly engage a reader, and it would make a fun and useful gift for those hard-to-shop-for men on your holiday list.

FA - 08     Paperback    $11.95

Seasons on the Farm         by Bob Artley

Beloved sketch artist Bob Artley's many drawings, articles, and books have taken us back to a simpler, albeit more physically demanding, way of life. For Artley, every moment of historical farm life from doing "shores" to walking to school uphill each way triggered an opportunity for him to allow others to remember a bygone way of rural life.

A foreword by the late Paul Gruchow points out that books like this aren't just about nostalgia; they are about "growing up, one of the half-dozen great themes of art." Artley, the former Iowa farm kid, "has discovered the child buried within himself." It is that child that Artley has so graciously shared with audiences for over 50 years. In this book, with almost 200 pages of sketches and quips, Artley takes the reader/viewer through the four seasons of life on a farm in the 1920's-60's: welcoming the first calf in the Spring, getting covered with cockleburs, skinny dipping after a long day of haying, etc.

MEM - 12          Paperback       $12.95

Ole's Oil Rag

We listened to you men! You saw "Helga Hanson's Hotflash Hanky"  and said you wanted something too.  Well, here you are.  "Ole's Oil Rag -- For When Your Dipstick Comes Up Short"!

CA 9 - 04  Cloth Hanky    $6.95