Good Old Books: Christmas Make-It Book

Here is a new book about an old holiday, glowing with ideas for family fun and family savings.

Step-by-step illustrations and clear directions show how to make hundreds of unusual decorations, gifts, and ornaments.

You will delight your family, impress your friends, and enjoy Yuletide more than ever with this gay book to help. And the things you make with the Christmas Make-It Book will save its purchase price many times over!

Christmas Make-It Book

by Barbara Baer

Hearthside Press, 1954

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Christmas Ornaments, Stockings and Decorations

Farm and Garden Picks: Apples of Uncommon Character

While supermarkets limit their offerings to a few waxy options, apple trees with lives spanning human generations are producing characterful varieties—and now they are in the midst of a rediscovery. From heirlooms to new designer breeds, a delicious diversity of apples is out there for the eating.

With more than 150 art-quality color photographs, Apples of Uncommon Character shows us the fruit in all its glory.

Apples of Uncommon Character

Heirlooms, Modern Classics, and Little-Known Wonders

by Rowan Jacobsen

Bloomsbury USA, 2014

Farm and Garden Books
Growth Spurts
Home Grown
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Book Stall Review: Canning, Pickling, and Freezing with Irma Harding

Created by farm equipment manufacturer International Harvester (IH) to peddle home appliances to rural women, Irma Harding was an iconic figure of the 1950s - much like Betty Crocker - who taught women how to can, pickle, and store foodstuffs in newly available freezers and refrigerators.

From their base in Evasnville, Illinois, a sales force of young educated women armed with pamphlets and recipes traveled throughout the Midwest as Irma Harding (IH) deputies, educating rural housewives on the advantages of freezing and refrigerating.

This book republishes some of those Irma Harding recipes, along wth several IH advertisements and period photographs, but the bulk of the volume's how-to information has been updated and complemented by fresh and time-saving approaches to retro cooking techniques.

Canning, Pickling, and Freezing with Irma Harding

Recipes to Preserve Food, Family and the American Way

by Marilyn McCray and Michael Perry

Octane Press, 2014

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Now Cooking with Brazilian Barbecue & Beyond

Bem vindo — welcome to the Brazilian table, filled with tropical açai, banana, and coconut; tasty snacks like pão de queijo (cheesy dough balls); new-style twists on traditional favorites like the meat-and-bean stew feijoada and the shrimp and lobster curry moqueca, plus other unique culinary delights.

From fruit-packed breakfasts to classic barbecue, cachaça-based cocktails, colorful sides, and luscious desserts, this cookbook presents modern Brazilian food as you've never seen it before.

Brazilian Barbecue & Beyond

by David Ponte, et al

Sterling Epicure, 2014

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Farm and Garden Picks: Apples of Uncommon Character

While supermarkets limit their offerings to a few waxy options, apple trees with lives spanning human generations are producing characterful varieties—and now they are in the midst of a rediscovery. From heirlooms to new designer breeds, a delicious diversity of apples is out there for the eating.

With more than 150 art-quality color photographs, Apples of Uncommon Character shows us the fruit in all its glory.

Rowan Jacobsen collected specimens both common and rare from all over North America, selecting 120 to feature, including the best varieties for eating, baking, and hard-cider making. Each is accompanied by a photograph, history, lore, and a list of characteristics.

Apples of Uncommon Character

Heirlooms, Modern Classics, and Little-Known Wonders

by Rowan Jacobsen

Bloomsbury USA, 2014

Farm and Garden Books
Growth Spurts
Home Grown
Outrider Reading Group

Exploring the Nature of... The Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon

September 1, 2014 marked the centenary of one of the best-documented extinctions in history—the demise of the Passenger Pigeon. From being the commonest bird on the planet 50 years earlier, the species became extinct when Martha, the last of her kind, died at the Cincinnati Zoo.

This book marks the centenary of that tragic event. Built around the framework of a visit to Cincinnati and the pigeon’s former haunts in North America's east coast, by author Mark Avery, it tells the tale of the pigeon, and of Martha, and explores the largely untold story of the ecological annihilation of this part of America in the years between the end of the US Civil War and 1900—an unprecedented loss of natural beauty and richness, as the prairies were ploughed, swiftly to be replaced by a dustbowl, while the population of Bison plummeted from around 30 million to just 1,000, the victim of habitat destruction and indiscriminate slaughter.

A Message from Martha

The Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon and Its Relevance Today 

by Mark Avery

University Of Chicago Press, 2013

The Nature Pages
Nature Writing and Natural Histories
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Book Stall Review: The Yew Tree

Claudius, the 1st century Roman Emperor, believed that the juices of the yew tree could be used as an antidote for snake venom. Germans of the Middle Ages were conivinced that yew pitch mixed with butter could cure tuberculosis.

Members of the Cowlitz tribe of Native Americans used to crush yew needles into a paste to put on wounds. These are just a few of the dozens of historic uses recorded in The Yew Tree, an impressive biography of the species written by an Oregon treeplanter, Hal Hartzell, Jr.

The Yew Tree

A Thousand Whispers

by Hal Hartzell, Jr

Hulogosi Books, 1991

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