“Recently we have seen a great back-to-the-land movement, with many young professional people returning to small scale farming; thus it is great fun to read about someone who did exactly the same thing in 1864. In that year, Mr. Edmund Morris gave up his business and city life for a farm of ten acres, made a go of mixed farming and then wrote a book about it. Mr. Morris proves Abraham Lincoln’s prediction: ‘The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.’ Kudos to Review Press for resurrecting this fascinating treasure.” — Sally Fallon Morell, President, The Weston A. Price Foundation
by Edmund Morris
214 pages
ISBN 9780980297638
RRP US$12.99 UK£899
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DESPITE THE FACT THAT IT WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1867 – or perhaps because of it – this book has something for everyone; for the small farmer, the home gardener, the city dweller who wonders whether there might not be a better life in the country — and for anyone who has an idea, and needs just a spark of courage and inspiration to make it happen. This book may be about farming and homesteading, and indeed it is a delightfully readable autobiography of a farmer in the America of the 1860s, but it also about much, much more. The challenges that faced the author are timeless, as are his courage, commitment, and ingenuity. There are insights for anyone, farmer or not, in this book.
CONTENTS
1) City Experiences ~ Moderate Expectations
2) Practical Views ~ Safety of Investments in Land
3) Resolved to Go ~ Escape from Business ~ Choosing a Location
4) Buying A Farm ~ A Long Search ~ Anxiety To Sell ~ Forced To Quit
5) Making a Purchase ~ First Impressions
6) Planting a Peach orchard ~ How to preserve peach trees
7) Planting Raspberries and Strawberries ~ Tricks of the Nursery
8 ) Blackberries ~ A Remarkable Coincidence
9) The Garden ~ Female Management ~ Comforts and Profits
10) Cheated in a Cow ~ A Good and a Bad One ~ The Saint of the Barnyard
11) A Cloud of Weeds ~ Great Sales of Plants
12) Pigs and Poultry ~ Luck and Ill Luck
13) City and Country Life Contrasted
14) Two Acres in Truck ~ Revolution in Agriculture
15) Birds and the Services they Render
16) Close of my First Year ~ Its Loss and Gain
17) My Second Year ~ Trenching the Garden ~ Strawberry Profits
18) Raspberries ~ The Lawtons
19) Liquid Manures ~ An Illustration
20) My Third Year ~ Liquid Manure ~ Three Years’ Results
21) A Barnyard Manufactory ~ Land Enough ~ Faith in Manure
22) Profits of Fruit-growing ~ The Trade in Berries
23) Gentleman Farming ~ Establishing a Home
24) Unsuccessful Men ~ Rebellion not Ruinous to Northern Agriculture
25) Where to Locate—East or West
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