“A small masterpiece of the rural life.” — The Times Literary SupplementA Globe 100 best book of 2024“A joy to read. Compelling, wise, and deeply human.” — Helen Humphreys, author of Followed by the LarkA restorative and resonant memoir of a year in the life of an aging shepherdFor 50 years, Barbara McLean has tended a flock of Border Leicester sheep on her small Ontario fa...

At the age of twenty-four, Barbara McLean and her husband, Thomas, decided to make their home in the country, near a village called Alderney in Grey County, Ontario. Together they became homeowners, farmers and, eventually, parents. They called their farm Lambsquarters, and they remain there today, twenty-six years later.Life on a farm is a cycle of neverending work and discovery. Barbara and her family develop close relationships with every living thing: the hearty lambs and the f...

A restorative and resonant memoir of a year in the life of an aging shepherdFor fifty 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 seventies, McLean faces a new problem: how much longer she can continue with the physically taxing work that is her central source of meaning and...

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize“The book is a form of meditation, written with headlong urgency, about seeing. . . . There is an ambition about [Dillard's] book that I like. . . . It is the ambition to feel.” — Eudora Welty, New York Times Book ReviewPilgrim at Tinker Creek is the story of a dramatic year in Virginia's Roanoke Valley, where Annie Dillard set out to chronicle incidents of "beauty tangled in a rapture w...

The acclaimed author transforms a single day on his small farm into a "gorgeously thoughtful meditation on the natural world" and our place in it ( Vancouver Sun).The acclaimed poet and author Brian Brett takes readers on an irreverent and illuminating journey through a day in the life of his small island farm in British Columbia, affectionately named Trauma Farm. With fascinating ruminations on everything from the natural history of farming to the horrors ...

The Lean-To and It's Variants Used in Survival and Bush Bough BedsOpen Fronted Lean-to Principles, The Simple Open-Fronted Lean-to, Thermal Mass Version, Insulation Version, The Open-Fronted Lean-to Made of Flexible Materials, More Than One Occupant, Bough Beds, The Simple Bed, The Standard Mat, The Deluxe Bed, Larger Beds, Making a Winter Snow-Based Bed are all covered.Written by Mors Kochansk

Between my finger and my thumbThe squat pen rests; snug as a gun.-- from 'Digging'With its lyrical and descriptive powers, Death of a Naturalist marked the auspicious debut of one of the century's finest poets.

From his life’s work so far, spanning more than four decades, Les Murray has selected these 100 poems, his personal best. Including classics such as ‘The Broad Bean Sermon’, ‘An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow’ and ‘The Dream of Wearing Shorts Forever’, this elegant hardback is guaranteed to delight Murray fans and introduce new readers to his work. This is a wonderful gift, and a treasure trove of the best poems ever written in Australia.‘No poet has ever travelled like this, whether ...

Britain's favourite gardener Alan Titchmarsh has also been the most popular contributor to Gardeners' World magazine for the last twenty years.This collection of his very best columns, demonstrates just why he is regularly voted the readers' favourite. His brilliant writings are, in turn, practical - just how far back should we prune our roses? - opinionated - I always rail at people who go out on a Sunday afternoon to tidy their gardens. I mean, a garden is no...

A graceful and sharply observed book of inspiration that uses the garden as its central museA New Leaf traces a year of growing seasons at The Leaf, Merilyn Simonds' acreage in eastern Ontario. A lifelong gardener, Simonds works the soil and the soul for wide-ranging revelations about everything from flowers that keep time, to the strange gift of compost, to great gardens of the world, to things lost and found underground.She is joined on her journ...

From the bestselling, critically acclaimed author of The Hatbox Letters and Shadow Child comes the story of a year of transformation.In the middle years of her life, Beth Powning stands on a threshold: an “edge season.” Late one August, when Beth and her partner, Peter, observe the deserted sauna bath on their farm near Sussex, New Brunswick, she remembers the faith and energy that went into building it. As they begin to repair the sauna, the project becomes a met...

A step-by-step guide to building your own show jumps and cross-country fences.