The Nature Pages: Dirt

The three dozen essays in this anthology explore and explain and celebrate the virtues of Earth's outer surface or, to put it simply, dirt. Edited by novelist Barbara Richardson, the collection includes a wide range of writings by artists, scientists, poets and farmers reflecting on diverse topics emerging from a common soil.

Contributors who could be labeled as "nature writers" include Julene Bair, Wes Jackson, Edward Kanze, Lisa Knopp, John T. Price, Janisse Ray, Jeanne Rogers, Donald G. Schueler, and Liz Stephens.

In her preface, Richardson refers to Walt Whitman's directive "Look for me under your boot-soles" and extols the divinity of dirt. "Grab a shovel. Hike a ravine. Breathe a dust storm. Reek like old goat and sleep like Venus after a dirty long day. Relish dirt's unbiased receptivity. Worship, if you will, the endless fecundity of soil. Or better yet, fall in love. Dirt makes a resilient, astounding lover."

Dirt

A Love Story

by Barbara Richardson

ForeEdge, 2015

continued in The Nature Pages

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Reading the History: Burley

Once iconic American symbols, tobacco farms are gradually disappearing. It is difficult for many people to lament the loss of a crop that has come to symbolize addiction, disease, and corporate deception; yet, in Kentucky, the plant has played an important role in economic development and prosperity. Burley tobacco (a light, air-cured variety used in cigarette production) has long been the Commonwealth's largest cash crop and an important aspect of regional identity, along with bourbon, bluegrass music, and Thoroughbred horses.

In Burley: Kentucky Tobacco in a New Century, Ann K. Ferrell investigates the rapidly transforming process of raising and selling tobacco by chronicling her conversations with the farmers who know the crop best. She demonstrates that although the 2004 "buyout" ending the federal tobacco program is commonly perceived to be the most significant change that growers have had to negotiate, it is, in reality, only one new factor among many.

Burley

Kentucky Tobacco in a New Century

by Ann Ferrell 

University Press of Kentucky, 2016

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