Description: Acceptable. Cover edges have some slight wear, corner tips curl in a tiny bit otherwise this book is still in good reading condition. read more
Edition: Twelfth Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Harper, New York
Date Published: 1945
Description: Good in Good jacket. 6 X 8 1/2" Faint age toning and one small stain on cover and in corresp. spot on jacket. Jacket has a few small tears and has been mended with tape, but is not price-clipped.. read more
Edition: 10th ed.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Harper& Brothers, New York
Date Published: 1945
Description: Lord, Kate. Good in fair dust jacket. 1945 Harper hard cover. NOT EX LIB! Clean pages, bright, with just a hint of tanning, & light reading wear. Moderate edgewear. Dust jacket is worn, with tears and chips. 302 p. Includes Illustrations. read more
Edition: 16th printing
Binding: Black Cloth 5 3/4" x 8 1/2"
Publisher: Harper & Brothers, New York
Date Published: C.1945
Description: Drawings. VG, corners/spine ends a little worn, head a little foxed. DJ Good 302pp. DJ corners/spine ends a little worn, spine browned, bottom half front flap & 2"x3" triangle on front missing. read more
"We own 79 acres of farm/ranch land that I am beginning the second generation of ownership. While I worked on the farm a lot of my life, it was really my father's passion and like most kids I looked at the farm work as WORK, and something to be avoided as much as possible. Now that he's gone and I'm older with kids of my own, I understand the lessons that growing up on a farm provided me.
Unfortunately, what I didn't learn was actually how to do everything. Do I get this feed or that feed? How do I prepare soil in a large field? I know how to garden, but I really don't think I'll hand till 10 acres, nor haul in grass clippings to improve the soil one pitch fork at a time. The Amazon reviews lead me to believe that Pleasant Valley was, while a bit winded, the perfect book to start with on learning to connect with your land, and how to properly manage the land to have it healthy and self sufficient (with work).
Having finally finished the book, I can agree with the winded part of the book. I had to keep reminding myself that this book was written during the 40s and 50s, and the type of agriculture practices that the author rails INCESSANTLY against were much more prevelent during that time period. That some of the practices he is promoting really were a new way of thinking at that time. But in current times, these ideas aren't really anything dramatic. Protect the soil, use cover crops, legumes provide nitrogen, cow poop is good for the soil. Not exactly startling revelations.
What this book is really a primer for is either going off the grid and being self sufficient, or becoming a human world hating enviromentalist. If you are trying to actually farm, raise animals, or need details on how to set up a small farm, there are better books which I hope to review as I go forward."
"Louis Bromfield is one of those authors who was famous in his day, a Pulitzer winner, but virtually unknown now. I picked up this book because my daughter attended the College of Wooster in Ohio, and Bromfield lived somewhat near there. The book is the story of how he came to settle on a farm and renovate the property (because of his Hollywood work, it's where Humphrey Bogart married Lauren Bacall). At first I was intrigued by the descriptions of nature and farm life, but then it got incredibly tedious as he indulged in more and more polemics about how farmers needed to return to natural methods and how so many of his neighbors didn't know what the hell they were doing, and then when he began to describe every room of the house and its renovations, I thought, that's it. So Bromfield may be worth exploring for his fiction, but you can steer your tractor right around this one."
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