From barnyard to backyard, lowly hens have flown the country coop and joined the city chicken movement. A new generation of small-acreage farmers raising heritage breeds has inspired urbanites and suburbanites across America to install some poultry out back for eggs, meat, fertiliser, and cockeyed companionship. Whether the breed is Jersey Giant, Wyandotte, Buff Orpington, or Silver Frizzle Polish-chickens are now chic. This is not a how-to book on raising chickens but rather a wry, fascinating, sometimes startling appreciation of them, conveyed in compelling accounts by Susan Troller and striking prints and paintings by S.V. Medaris. A bonus: chicken stories from three of Wisconsin's most celebrated writers-Jane Hamilton (The Book of Ruth, A Map of the World), Michael Perry (Coop, Population 485), and Ben Logan (The Land Remembers)-round out the collection.

Twentieth Century climatology was dominated by two great figures: Wladamir Kppen and C. Warren Thornthwaite. The first carefully developed climatic parameters to match the larger world vegetation communities. The second developed complex formulas of "Moisture Factors" that provided efficient understanding of how evapotranspiration influences plant growth and health, both for native and non-native communities. In the latter half of the Twentieth Century, the Sunset Magazine Corporation develop a purely empirical set of Garden Zones, first for California. This thesis examines the digitized zones with reference to PRISM climate data. Variable coverages resembling those described by Sunset are extracted from the PRISM data. These variable coverages are collected for two buffered areas, one in northern California and one in southern California. This process is quite amenable for further examination of other regions of California

This beloved American memoir is about a farm and its people, recollections of a boyhood in Wisconsin's Driftless region. Ben Logan grew up on Seldom Seen Farm with his three brothers, father, mother, and hired hand Lyle. The boys discussed and argued and joked over the events around their farm, marked the seasons by the demands of the land, and tested each other and themselves.