From the wonders of alfalfa, the "miracle plant," to barbed wire and the myriad difficulties of operating tractors and siderakes, renowned author Verlyn Klinkenborg paints a stunning and memorable portrait of life on American family farms.
Making Hay gives an unforgettable glimpse of everyday life on the farms of Iowa, Minnesota, and Montana. In beautiful, deceptively simple prose touched with humor and affection, Klinkenborg evokes a way of life at risk, and weaves a marvelous story of the richness of rural living.

From the rugged Appalachians to the Atlantic shore, from the rolling Blue Ridge Mountains to the Chesapeake Bay, Virginia boasts diverse natural wonders amidst its settled landscapes. In this first-of-its-kind collection of original essays, 20 of Virginia's finest authors--nature writers, essayists, and journalists--immerse themselves in 20 different wild places. In essays that range from natural history to social commentary to childhood memories, their tone varies from reflective to outraged to humorous--each one uniquely personal.

Every existence has its pulse points," writes Ted Leeson in this brilliant new book, "those places where life rises somehow closer to the surface and makes itself more keenly felt. Spring creeks have been mine." Jerusalem Creek is an exploration into the unique landscape and of the "driftless area" of Wisconsin. Left untouched by a succession of glaciers that continually reshaped the surrounding territory, the driftless area slowly weathered into a region of hundreds of narrow valleys carved by hundreds of small spring creeks that, taken together, make up ten thousand square miles of trout country. But for all its size, the driftless country "is a geography of small concealments" - of coves and hollows, oak groves and shady bends, winding brooks and trout: "It is not a landscape that you hike up, or climb down into, or stand out looking upon; it is one that you slip inside of," and this book presents the view from within. From the rumour of an old fishing log that first sends him into driftless country in search of trout, to a recognition of the loss and compromise that lie at the heart of many landscapes and many lives, Leeson reflects on waters and people - and the nature of his spring creek country. At times thoughtful and hilarious, passionate and wry, he journeys into the special charms of small-scale waters and pastoral spaces; the nature of meandering in trout streams and trout fishermen; ruminations on dairy cows, honeybees, and the Midwestern character, family and angling companions, Amish farmsteads, the memory of a missing photograph, the equivocal dream of owning a trout stream, the ways in which the past endures in the present. Jerusalem Creek tells the story of how we create the places we love - and how they in turn create us. This is a wise, poignant, and haunting book.

Coyote Nowhere - a phrase taken from Jack Kerouac's On the Road - explores and examines the northern high plains through John Holt's words and Ginny Diers's photographs. The northern high plains roll east from the base of the Rocky Mountains like still-life waves for hundreds of miles. From the Canadian Northwest down through Montana and into Wyoming, the sparsely populated country drifts off eternally. Isolated pockets of mountains rise thousands of feet above what was once an ancient seabed and home to dinosaurs. Millions of acres of native grass buffet back and forth in the wind or bake under a wicked sun. Yet, despite all this space, threats to the country rain down in the form of strip mining, oil exploration, and logging, to name a few.
The story begins in late spring in Livingston, Montana, and describes a loop that courses down through Wyoming, back into Montana, crosses the border into Alberta, Canada, and heads farther north before winding up back in Livingston as winter closes in. Follow Holt and Diers as they camp, fish, hang out in cowboy bars, dodge careening oil-rig semis, meet their fair share of law enforcement officials, and sink even further into the country that has such a firm hold on them.

From his boyhood days through his adulthood as a trapper, guide, naturalist, and outdoorsman, Andy Russell lived a lifestyle that would be near-impossible today. Growing up in the Northern Rockies in a "land of boots and saddles, guns and fishing rods, and the smell of pines and grass," he observed the ways of animals wild and tame, braved rugged mountaintops and freezing rivers. He forged friendships with the local Indians and with the "remittance men," second sons of British aristocracy who left their stamp on the new country with ready cash and a zest for high living. Here are thrilling and humorous tales of breaking horses, hunting bears, and living proud and free, told in a naturally eloquent voice. (51/2 X 81/4, 320 pages, b&w photos)

Those who know and love the Chesapeake will find the bay they treasure on the pages of Water's Way: Life along the Chesapeake. The story of one of North America's most fascinating regions unfolds through the sensitive photographs and prose of two men who have studied the Chesapeake all their lives. Photographer David W. Harp and writer Tom Horton vividly portray how, as Horton writes, "the edges where land and water meet charm us all, from watermen to watercolorists and beachcombers to duck hunters."

Water's Way will guide you to "those rare, hidden nooks of the bay country where nature still appears as glorious and untrammeled as it did a thousand years ago." It will also take you to less hidden, but equally intriguing sites within the Chesapeake's reach as Harp and Horton depict the worlds of both nature and humans.

An intimate knowledge of and an unwavering reverence for the bay pervade Water's Way. Harp and Horton are as attuned to the romance that still clings to the Chesapeake as they are to the realities that inspire and threaten it. In a time when the region faces tremendous changes and challenges, Water's Way is neither strident nor sentimental. Rather, it is suffused with the fundamental respect for the bay which Harp and Horton see as key to its survival.

"Dave Harp's photography and Tom Horton's text are nothing short of inspirational. Through the combination of each man's art, Water's Way communicates the beauty and essence of the Chesapeake like no other book. It conveys the very reasons why I have dedicated my life's work to saving the bay." -- William Baker, President, Chesapeake Bay Foundation

"Three forces have been hard at work in the making of thisexquisite piece: the gentle and informed eye of Dave's camera, Tom's inspirited love affair with our language, and the mystery they conspire in, creating a vivid picture and genuine portrait of a life that is greater than ourselves." -- Tom Wisner, author of Chesapeake Born

"Harp's photographs, gorgeously reproduced here... have, I think, finally surpassed the late Aubrey Bodine's famously romantic shots of the Chesapeake." -- John Goodspeed, Easton Star-Democrat

"Tom Horton has a poet's touch and a realist's frankness as he writes of the delicate ecology of this great aquatic system in chapters whose subjects range from the role of marshes to the life of the watermen to the growing pressures of urban development... This book is a singing tribute to the bay." -- Islands Magazine

A tribute to the barn by the master documentarian of our time.

As an elemental part of our landscape and our history, barns evoke childhood memories for many of us, recollections of a simpler way of life. Regardless of their size or shape, their forms follow their functions. They are honest. They are beautiful. And they are rapidly vanishing. Across the land we see abandoned farms with barns falling down, being torn down, and only occasionally being converted to other uses. As urban sprawl eats up the countryside and food-producing Goliaths put small farmers out of business, the need for old barns has diminished. For most of his life as a photographer, David Plowden has admired and photographed barns. In recent years, as their disappearance accelerated, he made it his mission to document these beautiful structures, before they too are lost. The result is this beautiful book, his hymn to the American barn. 130 duotone photographs.

For those who seek the special serenity that seems to be found near moving water, this guide to waterfalls in one of America s most beautiful states will be a blissful find in itself. Vermont Waterfalls: A Guide is illustrated with appealing antique postcards of some of the state s most famous falls as well as modern photographs of falls described here for the first time. Using the same successful geographic organization scheme employed in Connecticut Waterfalls: A Guide, the author makes it feasible to see several waterfalls in one trip. Detailed maps identify waterfalls by their proximity to Vermont's major roadways: US 7 in the west; route 100 bridging the center; and US5/I-91 to the east. With more than 200 entries that include the history of and directions to all these cataracts and cascades, this guide is meant for everyone waterfall enthusiasts, photographers, hikers, artists, families . . ."