{"id":1107,"date":"2026-10-15T08:38:39","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T15:38:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nortoncreekpress.com\/wordpress\/?post_type=product&p=1107"},"modified":"2026-11-09T20:03:15","modified_gmt":"2026-11-10T04:03:15","slug":"gold-in-the-grass","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/www.nortoncreekpress.com\/wordpress\/product\/gold-in-the-grass\/","title":{"rendered":"Gold in the Grass"},"content":{"rendered":"
Rags to Riches Through Soil Reclamation and Sustainable Farming<\/h3>\n
by Margaret F. Leatherbarrow Norton Creek Press, ISBN 9780972177054. 218 pages. Available in paperback and Kindle formats.<\/em><\/p>\n
As World War II was ending, Alfred Leatherbarrow, a wounded Canadian veteran, and his nurse, Margaret, fell in love. They married, bought their dream farm\u2014and discovered that their crops would not grow. The farm\u2019s soil had been exhausted through years of destructive tillage practices.<\/p>\n
Faced with certain defeat, they used innovative farming techniques\u2014including a prototype forage harvester to gather grass for silage\u2014to restore the fertility of their farm.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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 sixty years out of print.<\/p>\n
Gold in the Grass is Volume 3 of Norton Creek Press’ Back-to-the-Land Adventure series. It’s an example of the Norton Creek Press motto: \u201cMost of the best books are out of print and forgotten, but we can fix that!”<\/p>\n