by Margaret F. Leatherbarrow Norton Creek Press, 218 pages. ISBN 0972177051.
As World War II was ending, Alfred Leatherbarrow, a wounded Canadian veteran, and his nurse, Margaret, fell in love, married, bought their dream farm—and discovered that their crops would not grow. The farm’s soil had been exhausted through years of destructive tillage practices. Faced with certain defeat, they used innovative farming techniques—including a prototype forage harvester to gather grass for silage—to restore the fertility of their farm. This early experiment in sustainable agriculture not only saved the farm in a rags-to-riches turnaround, but showed other farmers in their region how to pull out of the death spiral of decreasing fertility, yields, and income.
Gold in the Grass is a love story, a back-to-the-land adventure, and an inspirational example of how conservation tillage can restore the fertility of a used-up farm. This is a great book, and has spent far too many of its fifty years out of print.
Gold in the Grass is an example of the Norton Creek Press motto: “Most of the best books are out of print and forgotten, but we can fix that!”
By Edmund Morris “Revived Edition” Edited by Robert Plamondon Norton Creek Press. ISBN 978-0-9721770-8-5. 176 pages.
Ten years after Henry David Thoreau learned how to be a poor farmer, Edmund Morris learned how to be a good one. Ten Acres Enough is the personal story of how Morris quit the publishing business and achieved happiness and prosperity by farming ten acres of fruits and berries.
Rather than glorifying poverty and isolation, Ten Acres Enough shows farming as the path to financial security, while still providing all the benefits of country life—provided that the farmer understands that the key lies in producing crops of the highest possible quality, while living within striking distance of a major market.
Ten Acres Enough has left its mark on generations of back-to-the-land farmers. Its influence on both the title and the contents of M. G. Kains’ classic Five Acres and Independence (1935) is obvious. And it is benefiting readers today, whether as a piece of Americana or as a source of small-farm ideas and inspiration.
Through over 160 years old, Ten Acres Enough remains a fascinating book. However, the passage of time is making the original edition increasingly inaccessible due to its archaic vocabulary and style. I have copy-edited this “Revived Edition” to restore its clarity. I have also removed needless repetition, added footnotes where necessary (all footnotes are mine), and provided inflation-adjusted prices in addition to the originals. I think Morris would approve.
Norton Creek Press. Revised Edition, October 2008, 172 pages, Suggested retail price, $17.95 (Kindle $4.97). ISBN 0972177094.
Best known for his classic small-farm handbook, Five Acres and Independence, M. G. Kains contributed a second gem to back-to-the-land literature: his true-life adventures in We Wanted a Farm.
Kains shows how he and his family moved from New York City apartments to a full-fledged farm in easy stages: first to a rented suburban house where they grew a large vegetable garden, then in a purchased suburban house where they concentrated on fruits and berries, and finally on a full-blown farm where they went into fruits and berries in a big way. Kains’ “Don’t quit your day job” approach allowed them to gain experience without betting the farm–not until they were ready.
First published in 1941, Norton Creek Press is proud to bring this charming book back into print.
Our line of back-to-the-land books includes three books: Ten Acres Enough, Gold in the Grass, and We Wanted a Farm. These are entertaining, thought-provoking, useful, and provide charming slices of Americana that are impossible to get any other way.
Ten Acres Enough by Edmund Morris is a wonderful book, a classic back-to-the-land adventure from 1864 that has been reprinted over the years by several publishers. Morris was a newspaper publisher in Philadelphia who yearned to get out of the high pressure of the news business and live a simpler, healthier life in the country. He found a little farm that was just an hour away from the city and, after some false starts, he and his family made an excellent living on just ten acres.
Because the passage of time has made this book increasingly inaccessible, we have copy-edited it from end to end so it will make sense to today’s readers.
Gold in the Grass by Margaret Leatherbarrow is a back-to-the-land adventure from 1954, (almost a centurey after Ten Acres Enough). It tells the rags-to-riches story about wounded WWII soldier Alfred Leatherbarrow and his nurse Margaret, who fell in love in the hospital, got married, and bought a played-out farm that everyone thought was too far gone to provide them with a living. Alfred and Margaret finally succeed after adopting soil reclamation and sustainable farming techniques.
We Wanted a Farm is a forgotten classic by M. G. Kains, author of “Five Acres and Independence.” It is full of anecdote and tells the tale of his three-step back-to-the-land program, where he first moved from Manhattan to a rented house in the suburbs (where he raised a big garden), then a purchased house in the suburbs (where he planted a bigger garden with plenty of berries and fruit trees), and finally a move to the country, where he went into orcharding in a big way. Very entertaining, especially the chapter about the on-farm uses of dynamite!
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