agriculture ranching

Softcover. Dixfield ME, Coburn Press, reprint, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 282 pages. Originally published in the early 1970s as The Cow Economy and reprinted many times over, Keeping a Family Cow has launched thousands of holistic small-scale dairy farmers and families raising healthy cows in accordance with their true nature. The book offers answers to frequently asked questions like, 'Should I get a cow?' and 'How Much Space do I need?' in addition to extensive information.

Hardcover. Baltimore MD, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 356 pages, b&w illustrations. Starrs offers a detailed and comprehensive look at one of America's most enduring institutions. Richly illustrated with 130 photographs and maps, the book combines the authentic detail of an insider's view (Starrs spent six years working cattle on the high desert Great Basin range) with a scholar's keen eye for objective analysis. Tracing the geography and history of ranching in the United States, Starrs tells how Anglo settlers first encountered the open grasslands of the West - an environment alien to most of the European experience." Clean copy.

Hardcover. Norwich, Conn., Henry Bill Publishing, reprint, 1890, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 715 pages, with over 350 engravings and maps, gilt decorated cover and spine on green cloth, all edges marbled. Minor corner and edge wear, otherwise, very clean and tight copy.

Softcover. Arlington Heights, IL, AHM Publishing, 4th pr., 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 352 pages, b&w illustrations. This is a study in cultural ecology involving the adaptive processes and relations of four groups: Plains Cree, cattle ranchers, wheat farmers, and Hutterites of southwestern Saskatchewan over a sixty year period.... Bennett has aptly demonstrated the falsity of the belief that anthropologists can learn nothing from a study of their own culture. The book merits reading by all those who are interested in ecology, economic anthropology, and culture change and is a significant addition to the relatively meager amount of anthropological information on Western culture. Sunning to covers. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Lexington KY, Commercial Printing Co., 1936, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth covers stamped in black. 305 pages, b&w illustrations. How to raise sheep as a business. Contents include: Choosing the breed of sheep; Selecting and judging sheep; fattening commerical lambs; producing and, handling wool; marketing lambs and sheep; etc. Name on front fly leaf, hinges have some loss of paper, otherwise a solid, clean copy.

Softcover. Ontario CA, ECW Press, 1st, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover/Advanced Reading Copy, 228 pages. A restorative and resonant memoir of a year in the life of an aging shepherd. For 50 years, Barbara McLean has tended a flock of Border Leicester sheep on her small Ontario farm, Lambsquarters. In Shepherd's Sight she shares the crises, pleasures, and challenges of farm life over the course of a year. Now in her 70s, McLean faces a new problem: how much longer she can continue with the physically taxing work that is her central source of meaning and satisfaction. Through her unsentimental gaze, we witness the highs and heartbreaks of delivering and rearing lambs, the shearing and spinning of wool, the wildlife in the woods (and occasionally in the house), and the garden produce moving from seed to harvest to table. Even after half a century on this land, McLean is still making fresh observations, and she shares them in evocative, elegant prose. As she moves through the calendar year, she also reflects on years past, offering a long view on climate, stewardship and agriculture. With its vivid description and absorbing storytelling, Shepherd's Sight offers an unforgettable glimpse of a life lived on the land. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, C. M. Saxton, reprint, 1862, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 231 pages, engraved drawings by William Harvey. Edited by A Stevens. Brown embossed cloth covers with library bookplates on front endpapers but no other markings.

Hampshire UK, Drift Books, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, green wrappers, 170 pages, b&w illustrations, map. The author went to the Falklands as a young man to work on a sheep farm. His memoir offers a personal glimpse of the harsh but rewarding life of the Islands in the 1950s. Previous owner's inscription on inside cover, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Rochester NY, D. D. T. Moore, 4th Ed., 1863, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, embossed green cloth with the gilt sheep on front and lettering on spine. Still bright and square, illustrated with woodcuts. A sound, solid example of this CIvil War-era manual of sheep domestication. Minor foxing, some pencil marking on endpapers, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, William Morrow, 1st, 1951, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, green cloth in a lightly worn dust jacket that has a sticker on the spine. The author was 53 when he quit his 30 year career as a newspaperman and decided to be a dairy farmer. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Guilford CT, TwoDot, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 159 pages, b&w photos throughout. Classic Photographs from the Farm Security Administration 1936-1943. Featuring images by such renowned photographers as Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, Russell Lee, and several others, this book documents ranching culture in western states during the Great Depression and leading up to World War II. This was a period of great change in the ranching West that included the introduction of the automobile, electricity, radio, the telephone, and other technologies that drastically transformed the lives and work of ranching people, and some of the best documentation exists in the powerful documentary photographs by this remarkable group of photographers. Clean copy.