For more books about the
bygone era of farming and rural living, check out the section on Hometown
Humor & Nostalgia.
This Old
Tractor: A Treasury of Vintage Tractors and Family Farm
Memories
by Michael Dregni, ed.
For
many farmers their tractor is almost a part of the family, and this big
book — paying homage to farm life, farm families, and to classic farm
tractors — is the ultimate oral and visual tribute to this "family
member.
The
text is made up of humorous and sentimental tractor stories, essays,
and memories about such momentous events as a first tractor, learning
to drive a tractor, and the art of collecting and restoring tractors.
Written by well-known tractor historians (Leffingwell, Sanders, Pripps,
Wendel, Vossler, Macmillan, and CBS Sunday Morning's Roger Welsch), the
text is accompanied by paintings, 85 full-color photos of machines and
tractor toys, and reprints of tractor ads, catalogs and magazine covers.
These
nostalgia-filled pages are sure to bring back warm memories of
cherished days spent on the family farm. Tractor buffs, folks
interested in farming or collectibles, and anyone who grew up on a
farm, will cherish this collection devoted to the classic farm tractor.
FA -
09
Hardcover $12.99
The Last Hunter: An American
Family Album by Will Weaver
Following in the
footsteps of his father, Will Weaver — Minnesota author, novelist and
outdoorsman — has been a hunter since he was a young boy. As he writes,
“in the fall, when Canada geese came through and when partridge season
opened, [we] heard the far-off thudding report of shotguns—and in
November the heavier poom-poom! of deer rifles.” The Last Hunter is an
examination of family, life on the land, and those things we hold dear
enough to want to carry along, one generation to another.
Hunting frames
Weaver’s childhood memories, his relationship with his father, and his
own definition of self. And although one side of his family lineage
includes men who would not hunt, go to war, or carry a rifle, Weaver is
caught off guard when his son and daughter show no interest in
upholding the tradition of the hunt.
The Last Hunter
has been called "a 21st century collection of deeply personal tales—a
truly American story." Weaver’s heartfelt rendering sweeps the reader
along on a family journey from an isolated North Dakota farm “built
around a fork and shovel” to postmodern America.
FA -
06
Hardcover $24.95
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 Watchby 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.
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
The
Lay
of the Land: A
View from the Prairie by
Brent Olson
Olson
combines a keen sense of humor with prairie wisdom in a series of
essays about the land, lutefisk, duck hunting, Girl Scout
cookies, skunks, diversity and Prozac! Olson has farmed in
Western Minnesota
for
a quarter of a century on a farm his Norwegian great-grandparents
homesteaded 120 years ago, and sometimes it is hard to tell if things
are better than they were in the 1880s, or just different. If more
people read this kind of
writing, there'd soon be no need for Prozac -- or lutefisk!
FA-01
Paperback $11.95
Reapers
of the Dust: A Prairie Chronicle
by Lois Phillips Hudson
Long
recognized as a major chronicler of the Depression years in America’s
agricultural heartland, Hudson strengthens her recollections of life in
North Dakota in the ‘30s with sound academic research. The story that
emerges is a human one where simple and joyous days can still be spent
amid continuing battles with hostile environmental elements.
ND
- 02
Paperback $8.95
Just
How Much Scrap Lumber does a Man need to Save? by Suzann
Nelson & Janet Martin
This book, perfect for the
men
in your life, traces the history of scrap lumber to the cavemen and
Noah right up to Martha Stewart, President Bush, Stephen King, Ralph
Lauren and Sally Jesse Raphael. If you really want to make a statement,
top it off with a Scrap
Lumber King cap
or the t-shirt.
CA
2 - 15
Paperback $10.95
This "Those Lutheran Ladies"
shim (bookmark) will be included free with your order of the Scrap
Lumber book.
Order
by
using the 'Place an Order'
form
or you may order by
phone (800 494-9124). For payment and shipping charges, see 'Place an Order.'