Booklist – September
As the summer temperatures fade away into pleasant cool, and the leaves begin to change, it is time to gather the fruits of the season. This time of year, we head to the orchards and the fields to celebrate a season of labor and prepare for the coming winter. Whether you have a home garden, purchase your produce from the local farmer’s market, or from the supermarket we have prepared a feast of harvest- themed books for you to enjoy!
Nonfiction
Strange Harvest by Edward Posnett
This book explores locations that produce wonders of natural materials, including eiderdown, vicuña fiber, sea silk, vegetable ivory, civet coffee, guano, and edible birds’ nests. It discusses the myths, traditions, folklore, and rituals celebrated by the cultures that harvest them. Some violence.
Foolproof Preserving: A Guide to Small Batch James, Jellies, Pickles, Condiments, and More by America’s Test Kitchen
Guide and recipes related to preserving and canning food. Topics covered include common vocabulary, food preservation science, step-by-step canning instructions, tips for troubleshooting common issues, necessary tools, and recipes for jams, jellies, chutneys, pickles, tomatoes, fruit in syrup, condiments, and fruit butter.
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver
The author describes moving back to an ancestral farm in the Appalachians with her biologist husband and two daughters to live off the land. It details caring for the garden, canning vegetables, and buying local meats and explores the toxicity of industrial agriculture.
The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry
Now considered an American classic, Berry argues that good farming is a cultural and spiritual discipline. Today’s agribusiness, however, takes farming out of its cultural context and away from families and estranges us from the intimate knowledge, love, and care of the land.
Fiction
The Harvester by Gene Porter-Stratton
The story of a young man who lives by collecting and selling medicinal herbs he has learned to harvest from the woods and how he uses this knowledge to free the woman he loves from oppression in Chicago. It expounds on the love of nature and the importance of human connection.
Lady Bug Farms Books 1-3
In A Year on Ladybug Farm, three friends decide that since their families are grown, they will leave the suburbs and buy a dilapidated house and farmland in the Shenandoah Valley together. Also includes At Home on Ladybug Farm and Love Letters from Ladybug Farm. Some strong language.
The Harvest by Jim Grace
A finalist for the Man Booker prize, this book tells the story of a remote English village that wakes up on the morning after harvest looking forward to a hard-earned day of rest and feasting at their landowner’s table. But the sky is marred by two conspicuous columns of smoke that bring newcomers and big change at the dawn of industrialization.
Harvest House by Shaun Taylor-Corbett
A YA book to prepare for the spooky season, Hughie is excited to volunteer in a fun, local harvest show until he learns that the haunt is taking advantage of local indigenous folk lore for cheap thrills. Meanwhile, suspicious things begin happening around town and Hughie has to balance when to speak up about exploitation with the haunting things occurring in real life.
Image Description: Bails of hay sit in a harvested field in neat, furrowed rows. The hay is golden and the sun is setting in the sky, the sun hangs low on the horizon and the clouds are orange, reflecting the light.