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An illuminating study of America's agricultural society during the Colonial, Revolutionary, and Founding eras In the eighteenth century, three-quarters of Americans made their living from farms. This authoritative history explores the lives, cultures, and societies of America's farmers from colonial times through the founding of the nation. Noted historian Richard Bushman explains how all farmers sought to provision themselves while still actively engaged in trade, making both subsistence and commerce vital to farm economies of all sizes. The book describes the tragic effects on the native population of farmers' efforts to provide farms for their children and examines how climate created the divide between the free North and the slave South. Bushman also traces midcentury rural violence back to the century's population explosion. An engaging work of historical scholarship, the book draws on a wealth of diaries, letters, and other writings-including the farm papers of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington-to open a window on the men, women, and children who worked the land in early America.

Farm life --- History. --- United States --- Social life and customs

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Putting the Barn Before the House features the voices and viewpoints of women born before World War I who lived on family farms in south-central New York. As she did in her previous book, Bonds of Community, for an earlier period in history, Grey Osterud explores the flexible and varied ways that families shared labor and highlights the strategies of mutuality that women adopted to ensure they had a say in family decision making. Sharing and exchanging work also linked neighboring households and knit the community together. Indeed, the culture of cooperation that women espoused laid the basis for the formation of cooperatives that enabled these dairy farmers to contest the power of agribusiness and obtain better returns for their labor. Osterud recounts this story through the words of the women and men who lived it and carefully explores their views about gender, labor, and power, which offered an alternative to the ideas that prevailed in American society.Most women saw "putting the barn before the house"-investing capital and labor in productive operations rather than spending money on consumer goods or devoting time to mere housework-as a necessary and rational course for families who were determined to make a living on the land and, if possible, to pass on viable farms to the next generation. Some women preferred working outdoors to what seemed to them the thankless tasks of urban housewives, while others worked off the farm to support the family. Husbands and wives, as well as parents and children, debated what was best and negotiated over how to allocate their limited labor and capital and plan for an uncertain future. Osterud tells the story of an agricultural community in transition amid an industrializing age with care and skill.

Family farms --- Farm life --- Rural women --- Women in agriculture --- History --- Nanticoke Valley (N.Y.) --- Rural conditions. --- Farm women --- Rural life --- Nanticoke Creek Valley (N.Y.) --- Agriculture --- Women --- Country life --- Farms --- Farms, Small --- Private plot agriculture

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Bull Threshers and Bindlestiffs is a panorama on a continental canvas: the Great Plains of North America, stretching from Texas to Alberta. Onto this surface the author lays the large features of regional practice in the harvesting and threshing of wheat during the days before the combined harvester—harvesting with binder and header, threshing with bull thresher and steam engine. Into the picture he places the key figures who accomplished the task of gathering the grain—the farm men and women, the custom threshermen, and the bindlestiffs, or itinerant laborers. Affectionately he sketches the small details of folklife that comprised the everyday work and culture of the wheat belt—building shocks, loading racks, constructing stacks, pitching bundles into the separator, hauling water to the engine, drinking deep from the crockery water jug.Bull Threshers and Bindlestiffs is a profusely illustrated study of a complex, vigorous regional culture concerned with the production of wheat—a culture that centered around the annual harvest and declined with the advent of the combine. This is an examination of the interaction of culture, environment, and technology with import for the fields of agricultural history and regional history. More than that, with its grassroots research, its descriptions of tools and customs, and its lavish illustrations, it is a recreation of a proud phase of regional life previously captured only in yellowed albumen photographs.

Farm life --- Threshing machines --- Grain --- Threshing --- History. --- Harvesting --- Machinery --- Technological innovations --- Breadstuffs --- Cereal grains --- Cereals --- Grains --- Botany, Economic --- Field crops --- Flour --- Food --- Food crops --- Seed crops --- Agricultural processing --- Threshers (Machines) --- Agricultural machinery --- Separators (Machines) --- Rural life --- Country life --- History of the Americas

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Home economics, Rural --- Cooking --- Handicraft --- Interior decoration --- Décoration intérieure --- Économie domestique en milieu rural --- Artisanat --- Cooking. --- Handicraft. --- Home economics, Rural. --- Interior decoration. --- Périodiques. --- Decoration, Interior --- Home decoration --- House decoration --- Interior design --- Art --- Buildings --- Decoration and ornament --- Home economics --- Furniture --- House furnishings --- Upholstery --- Rural home economics --- Country life --- Farm life --- Crafts (Handicrafts) --- Handcraft --- Occupations --- Decorative arts --- Manual training --- Sloyd --- Cookery --- Cuisine --- Food preparation --- Food science --- Cookbooks --- Dinners and dining --- Food --- Gastronomy --- Table --- Environmental engineering

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This book is an interdisciplinary primer on critical thinking and effective action for the future of our global agrifood system, based on an understanding of the system's biological and sociocultural roots. Key components of the book are a thorough analysis of the assumptions underlying different perspectives on problems related to food and agriculture around the world and a discussion of alternative solutions. David Cleveland argues that combining selected aspects of small-scale traditional agriculture with modern scientific agriculture can help balance our biological need for food with its environmental impact-and continue to fulfill cultural, social, and psychological needs related to food. Balancing on a Planet is based on Cleveland's research and engaging teaching about food and agriculture for more than three decades. It is a tool to help students, faculty, researchers, and interested readers understand debates about the current crisis and alternatives for the future.  

Food industry and trade. --- Agricultural industries --- Sustainable agriculture --- Food supply. --- Agribusiness --- Food preparation industry --- Food processing industry --- Food trade --- Food control --- Low-input agriculture --- Low-input sustainable agriculture --- Lower input agriculture --- Resource-efficient agriculture --- Sustainable farming --- Environmental aspects. --- Economic aspects. --- Industries --- Agricultural processing industries --- Processed foods --- Produce trade --- Agriculture --- Food security --- Single cell proteins --- Alternative agriculture --- Food --- Food processing --- Food technology --- Processing --- Food industry and trade.. --- Agricultural industries -- Environmental aspects.. --- Sustainable agriculture -- Economic aspects.. --- agriculture. --- agrifood system. --- breeders. --- cooking. --- country life. --- engaging. --- environmental impact. --- farm life. --- farms and farmers. --- food and ag. --- food lovers. --- food studies. --- food writing. --- food. --- gastronomy. --- global agrifood. --- interdisciplinary primer. --- natural settings. --- politics. --- rural. --- scientific agriculture. --- sociocultural roots. --- technology engineering. --- thorough analysis. --- traditional agriculture.