[Publib] Narrative NonFiction Farming Memoirs - Compiled

[Sarah Brown]

Thanks for your patience folks. I've compiled the list of Narrative 
Nonfiction Farming Memoirs that everyone so graciously supplied. I've 
tried to include the setting and original publication date when possible.

Two things to note: (1) the main list is for North America and excludes 
"ranching" memoirs; (2) since I received several farming memoirs set in 
Europe, I've included a small list of those near the end - this list is 
just a place to start and is by no means complete.

Thanks and Enjoy!
Sarah - who just tripled her TBR pile with selections from these lists!


  Narrative Non-Fiction Farming Memoirs (North America)*

Ableman, Michael and Alice Waters. /On Good Land: The Autobiography of 
an Urban Farm/ (California; 1998).

Alexander, Max. /Man Bites Log: The Unlikely Adventures of a City Guy in 
the Woods /(Maine; 2004).

Alexander, William. /The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, 
Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the 
Perfect Garden /(Hudson Valley; 2006).

Antony, Richard. /Mountain of My Dreams: The Early Years/ (2003); 
/Mountain of My Dreams: The Middle Years/ (Blue Ridge Mountains, 
Rappahannock County, Virginia; 2004).

Babb, Sanora. /An Owl on Every Post/ (pre-WWI, Colorado; 1970).

Barnes, Margaret Ann. /A Buzzard is My Best Friend/ (Virginia; 1981).

Beston, Henry. /Northern Farm: A Glorious Year on a Small Maine Farm 
/(post-WWII, Maine; 1994).

Bogue, Allan. /The Farm on the North Talbot Road/ (Nebraska?; 2001)

Boulton, Marsha. /Letters >From the Country /(I-IV) (Ontario, Canada; 
1995+).

Brawley, Ken. /Journeys Home: The Confessions of a Cross-Eyed Cotton 
Farmer/ (2004).

Brende, Eric. /Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology/ (Midwest; 
2004).

Bright, Jean Hay. /Meanwhile, Next Door to the Good Life/ (Maine?; 2003).

Bromfield, Louis. /The Farm/ (early settlers, North Central Ohio; 1935); 
/Pleasant Valley/ (1946); /Malabar Farm/ (Ohio; 1948); /Out of the 
Earth/ (1950); /From My Experience: The Pleasures and Miseries of Life 
on a Farm/ (1955).

Brox, Jane. /Here and Nowhere Else: Late Seasons of a Farm and Its 
Family/ (New England).

Chaskey, Scott. /This Common Ground: Seasons on an Organic Farm/ (Long 
Island, New York; 2005).

Church, Doris. /Tales from Woolly Acres /(near Hudson, Wisconsin; 1992).

Coatsworth, Elizabeth. /Maine Ways /(1947);/ Country Neighborhood 
/(1944);/ Maine Memories/ (1968) /Personal Geography: Almost An 
Autobiography /(1976).

Colfax, David. /Hard Times in Paradise: an American Family’s Struggle to 
Carve Out a Homestead in California’s Redwood Mountains/ (California; 1992).

Crowell, Marnie. /Greener Pastures/ (upstate New York).

Cunningham, Laura. /A Place in the Country/ (From a childhood in the 
Bronx to the Shawangunk Mountains of New York; 2000).

Douglas, Marjorie Myers. /Eggs in the Coffee, Sheep in the Corn: My 17 
Years As a Farmwife/ (Minnesota?; 1994).

Drake, Barbara. /Peace at Heart: An Oregon Country Life/ (Oregon; 1998).

Ellis, Mel. /Notes From Little Lakes: The Story of a Family and 15 
Acres/ (Wisconsin; 1996).

Fellows, Will. Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men From the Rural Midwest (1996).

Foster, Marilee. /Dirt Under My Nails: An American Farmer and Her 
Changing Land/ (Sagaponack, New York; 2002).

Friend, Catherine. /Hit by a Farm: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and 
Love the Barn/ (Minnesota; 2006).

Goldhammer, Catherine. /Still Life With Chickens: Starting Over in a 
House by the Sea/ (New England; 2006).

Graves, John. /Hard Scrabble: Observations on a Patch of Land/ (1974) 
and /From a Limestone Ledge: Some Essays and Other Ruminations About 
Country Life in Texas/ (Texas; 1980).

Gussow, Joan Dye. /This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban 
Homesteader/ (Hudson River Valley, New York; 2001)

Hall, Donald. /Seasons at Eagle Pond/ (1987); /Here at Eagle Pond/ (New 
Hampshire; 1990).

Hardie, Dee. /Hollyhocks, Lambs & Other Passions: a Memoir of Thornhill 
Farm/ (Worthington Valley, Maryland; 1985).

Hart, Elva Trevino. /Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child/ (Texas, 
Minnesota, Wisconsin; 1999).

Hilles, Helen Train. /Farm Wanted/ (1951).

Hubbell, Sue. /A Country Year: Living the Questions/ (Ozark Mountains; 
1999).

Isherwood, Justin. /Book of Plough: Essays on the Virtue of Farm, 
Family, and the Rural Life/ (2005) and /Farm Kid/ (Plover, Wisconsin; 2005).

Ivanko, John and Lisa Kivirist. /Rural Renaissance: Renewing the Quest 
for the Good Life/ (Wisconsin; 2004).

Jorrin, Sylvia. /Sylvia’s Farm: The Journal of an Improbable Shepherd/ 
(Catskill Mountains, New York; 2004).

Joseph, Stanley and Lynn Karlin. /Maine Farm: A Year of Country Life/ 
(Maine; 1991).

Katz, Jon. /The Dogs of Bedlam Farm: an Adventure With Sixteen Sheep, 
Three Dogs, Two Donkeys, and Me/ (upstate New York; 2004).

Kellie, Luna. /A Prairie Populist: The Memoirs of Luna Kellie/. (19^th 
Century Nebraska, 1925).

King-Smith, Dick. /Chewing the Cud: An Extraordinary Life Remembered by 
the Author of Babe: The Gallant Pig/ (2002).

Kline, David. /Great Possessions: An Amish Farmer’s Journal/ (Ohio; 2001).

Kluckner, Michael. /The Pullet Surprise: a Year on an Urban Farm/ (1997) 
and /Wise Acres /(Vancouver, British Columbia; 2000).

Korda, Michael. /Country Matters: The Pleasures and Tribulations of 
Moving from a Big City to an Old Country Farmhouse/ (upstate New York; 
2002).

Kumin, Maxine. /To Make a Prairie: Essays on Poets, Poetry, and Country 
Living and In Deep: Country Essays/ (1980).

Laskas, Jeanne. /Fifty Acres and a Poodle: a Story of Love, Livestock, 
and Finding Myself on a Farm/ and /The Exact Same Moon: Fifty Acres and 
a Family /(Pennsylvania; 2000).

Logan, Ben. /The Land Remembers: the Story of a Farm and Its People 
/(Wisconsin; 1975).

Logsdon, Gene. /The Contrary Farmer/ (Upper Sandusky, Ohio; 1994).

Lutes, Della. /Country Kitchen/ (Michigan; 1936?).

MacDonald, Betty. /The Egg and I/ (Olympic Peninsula; 1945:).

Masumoto, David Mas. /Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family 
Farm/ (1996) and /Harvest Son: Planting Roots in American Soil /(San 
Joaquin Valley, near Del Rey, California; 1999).

Merrick, Elliott. /Green Mountain Farm/ (Vermont; 1948).

Miller, Cathleen. /The Birdhouse Chronicles: Making a New Life in the 
Country/ (Pennsylvania; 2002)

Moffett, Judith. /Homestead Year: Back to the Land in Suburbia/ 
(suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; 1995).

Mullen, Jim. /It Takes a Village Idiot: A Memoir of Life After the City/ 
(upstate New York; 2001).

Murphey, Sallyann. /Bean Blossom Dreams: A City Family’s Search for a 
Simple Country Life /(Brown County, Indiana; 1994).

Murphy, Tim. /Set the Ploughshares Deep: A Prairie Memoir /(North 
Dakota; 2000)

Nearing, Helen and Scott. /Living the Good Life: How to Live Sanely and 
Simplify in a Troubled World/ (Vermont; 1954); The Good Life Picture 
Album (1974); Continuing the Good life (1979); /Loving and Leaving the 
Good Life/ (Maine; 1992).

Needles, Dan. /Letters From Wingfield Farm/ (1989); /Wingfield’s Hope: 
More Letters From Wingfield Farm /(Ontario, Canada; 2005).

O’Reilley, Mary Rose. /The Barn at the End of the World: The 
Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd/ (2000).

Orchard, Hugh. /Old Orchard Farm: The Story of an Iowa Boyhood/ (1952).

Perrin, Noel. /First Person Rural: Essays of a Sometime Farmer /(1978);/ 
Second Person Rural /(1980);/ and Last Person Rural/ (Vermont; 1991).

Price, Trudy Chambers. /The Cows are Out! Two Decades on a Maine Dairy 
Farm/ (Maine; 2004).

Reiger, George. /Heron Hill Chronicle/ (Eastern Shore, Virginia; 1994).

Robertson, Adele Crockett. /The Orchard: A Memoir/ (Ipswich, 
Massachusetts; 1995).

Russell, Sally. /Shatter Me With Dawn: A Celebration of Country Life/ 
(North Georgia; 2001).

Schwab, James. /Raising Less Corn and More Hell: Midwestern Farmers 
Speak Out/.

Sherry, John. /Maggie’s Farm /(1984).

Silber, Tery. /A Small Farm in Maine: How One Couple Built a 
Self-Sustaining Life in the Country /(Hedgehog Hill Farm, near 
Buckfield, Maine; 1988).

Smith, Nicola. /Harvest: a Year in the Life of an Organic Farm/ (Fat 
Rooster Farm, Vermont; 2004).

Stewart, Keith. /It’s a Long Road to a Tomato: Tales of an Organic 
Farmer Who Quit the Big City for the (Not So) Simple Life/ (upstate New 
York; 2006).

Svenson, Peter. /Battlefield: Farming a Civil War Battleground/ 
(Shenandoah Valley, Virginia; 1992).

Tarte, Bob. /Enslaved by Ducks: How One Man Went From Head of the 
Household to Bottom of the Pecking Order/ (near Lowell, Michigan; 2003).

Taylor, Henry. Tarpleywick: A Century of Iowa Farming (1970).

Thane, Elswyth. /The Strength of the Hills/ (1976); published as /The 
Reluctant Farmer/ (1950; Southern Vermont).

Thomas, Rosanne Daryl. /Beeing: Life, Motherhood, and 180,000 Honeybees/ 
(New England; 2002).

Wells, Joan. /Downwind From Nobody/ (1978).

Westfall, Patricia Tichnor. /Real Farm: Encounters With Perception 
/(Iowa; 1989).

Winchester, William Paul. /A Very Small Farm/ (Oklahoma; 1995).

** NOT including “Ranching” memoirs*


  Narrative Non-Fiction Farming Memoirs (Europe)

* *

Beevor, Kinta. /A Tuscan Childhood/ (Aulla and Fiesole, Italy; 2000).

Castagno, Dario. /Too Much Tuscan Sun: Confessions of a Chianti Tour 
Guide/ (Chianti Wine Region, Italy; 2004).

Clare, Horatio. /Running for the Hills: Growing Up on My Mother’s Sheep 
Farm in Wales/ (2006).

De Blasi, Marlena. /A Thousand Days in Tuscany: A Bittersweet Adventure/ 
(Italy; 2004).

Doran, Phil. /The Reluctant Tuscan/ (Italy, 2005).

Draine, Betsy. /A Castle in the Backyard: The Dream of a House in France 
/(Dordogne Valley, Southwest France; 2002).

Drinkwater, Carol. /Olive Farm: A Memoir of Live, Love and Olive Oil in 
the South of France/ (hills above Nice, France; 2001).

Grant, Donald. /White Goats and Black Bees/ (NY journalists retire to 
cottage in Ireland; 1974).

Greene, Jeffrey. /French Spirits: A House, a Village, and a Love Affair 
in Burgundy /(Rogny, La Puisaye region, France; 2003).

Hawes, Annie. /Extra Virgin: A Young Woman Discovers the Italian 
Riviera, Where Every Month is Enchanted/ (rose grafting, Liguria, Italy; 
2002).

Henry, Mary Roblee. /A Farmhouse in Provence: An American Finds Old 
Stones, New Wine and Love Among the French/ (vineyard, Avignon, France; 
2000).

Irwin, Graham and Ken Ashton. /A Farm of Our Own: A Spiritual Journey 
Running a Smallholding/ (England; 1998).

Kavanagh, Liz. /Country Living/ (1998); /Home to Roost/ (Cork Co., 
Ireland; 1999).

Kerr, Peter. /Snowball Oranges: A Winter’s Tale on a Spanish Isle/ 
(orange grove, Majorca, Spain; 2003); /Manana Manana: One Mallorcan 
Summer/ (2004); /Viva Mallorca! One Mallorcan Autumn /(2005).

Lambert, Derek. /Spanish Lessons/ (La Jara, Spain; 2002).

Mate, Ferenc. /The Hills of Tuscany/. (Montepulciano, Italy; 1999).

McMullen, Jeanine. /My Small Country Living/ (Wales; 1985).

Newby, Eric. /A Small Place in Italy/ (foothills Italian Alps, Tuscany, 
Italy; 1995).

Nichols, Beverley. /Merry Hall/ (1951); /Laughter on the Stairs/ (1953); 
/Sunlight on the Lawn/ (Great Britain; 1956).

Silvestre, Ruth. /A House in the Sunflowers: Living the Dream in the 
South of France/ (Bel-Air de Grezelongue, Lot-et-Garone region, 
Southwest France; 2001).

St. Aubin de Teran, Lisa. /A Valley in Italy/ (San Orsola, Umbrian 
Valley, Italy; 1995).

Stewart, Chris. /Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Spain/ (sheep 
farming, Granada, Andalusia, Spain; 2000); /Parrot in the Pepper Tree: a 
Sort of Sequel to Driving Over Lemons/ (2002).

Wale, Michael. /View >From a Shed: Four Seasons as an Urban Farmer/ 
(England; 2006).

-- 
********************************************************
Sarah E. Brown, Librarian
Tippecanoe County Public Library
3101 S. Creasy Lane
Lafayette, IN  47905
(tel) 765-269-5393
(fax) 765-269-5383

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend..."  
Groucho Marx
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The opinions expressed here are my own and 
do not necessarily reflect TCPL policy.
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