Drawn to the Land: The Romance of Farming is a beautiful book that takes readers on a tour of rural upstate New York through its farming communities. The book features Elizabeth J. Cockey's beautiful oil paintings that are displayed throughout the book and used to accent the stories and thoughts of the Cockeys as they share Elizabeth's memories of growing up in Washington County, New York in her hometown of Greenwich.
Drawn to the Land introduces the reader to raising chickens, building silos and growing potatoes by sharing conversations with the farmers who actually do these things. It is broken down into sections for Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall. Winter discusses the cold in upstate New York and how it impacted the settlers and their successors. It discusses apple cider, ice cutting, chopping firewood in general and also introduces the reader to various farms in the area and the special challenges they face in the winters. The paintings capture the loneliness and bareness of the winters.
Spring in upper New York starts with maple sugaring and the authors take you through a brief introduction to sugaring. They also discuss honeybees, both their history up through colony collapse disorder and the rising price of honey that resulted. There is also information on water witching and the introduction of modern day tractors and machinery. I love the fact that the authors added in that older internal combustion tractors are the best of all. They have no computers and will still start up after an EMP attack unlike the current vehicles that rely heavily on computers to work.
Summer is my favorite section with memories and thoughts about backyard food production and how modern changes and the introduction of agribusiness has had many negative effects on our health. I love the paintings of the cows grazing in pastures and bales of hay lined up in fields. There are some gorgeous paintings of summer flowers that are just loaded with color.
Article comments