The Farmer’s Library: 8 Reads for an Expanded Land-Based Worldview

Reader Contribution by Keba M. Hitzeman
Published on February 2, 2021

My reading list has been expanding, as is always the case when I do a lot of browsing around on the internet, read a magazine article or book, or scroll through my liked pages and groups on Facebook. Several library systems near me have inter-library loan, so my first order of business is to find which library has the book available. I’ll browse through it, then decide whether to buy it or not. As much as I would like to buy all the books, space and budget dictate otherwise, leading me to make some hard choices. At times, the book is so obscure that it’s quite challenging to find for sale at a reasonable price — those are usually the books I’d like to have the most because of the great information in them!

Looking at the titles, you may correctly guess that some of these aren’t actually “reading books” but references or occasional-use books. Those get a quick read-through to familiarize myself with the contents, then it’s added to the appropriate section in our home library. Yes, our books are organized by content —  there’s no way we could find anything otherwise! Farming, history, cooking, fiber, general art, spiritual, herbs, sci-fi/fantasy, animals/vet — everything has a section, which means I only have to scan through two to five cubes of books instead of all of them!

 Favored Titles in the Farm Library

The Little House Cookbook was a gift from dear friends of ours. Our two families share many farming and lifestyle ideals, and we also share our books. And buy each other books for Christmas. This book is a recipe book of foods mentioned in the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, along with excerpts from those books, and commentary by the author. I’m not sure what it says about me that I grew up eating not a few of these foods.

The Veterinary Clinical Parasitology and Shetland Wool Week books, again, not exactly “reading” books. To put a fine point on it, I got the VCP to learn how to run my own fecal tests for the sheep and goats, and this was the text recommended for that purpose. I’ll just leave it at that! And the Shetland Wool Week? A lovely annual that corresponds to the Shetland Wool Week festival in the Shetland Islands, which is definitely on my bucket list to attend. It’s full of articles about Shetland fiber and people, along with patterns using Shetland wool.

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