Homesteading From Scratch is for people who want to do things differently. The type of people who want to eat real food, grow herbs, make cheese, raise baby animals, hunt mushrooms, pick blackberries, unschool their children, can jelly, ferment kraut, farm organically, connect to nature, live intentionally, and more. Guiding readers from desire to full-blown off-the-grid living—and everything in between—this book covers farming, animal husbandry, food preparation, homeschooling, fiber arts, and even marketing. It provides inspiration from other homesteaders, with operations from small to large, who have made a go of it, outlining their successes and failures throughout the process. It helps to democratize the homesteading movement, by providing “ins” for nearly every level of dedication, from the container gardener to full-time farmers. It provides the knowledge necessary to discover homesteading as a movement and as a lifestyle. Inspired by From Scratch magazine, an online publication devoted to homesteading and intentional living, this book provides readers with continued support and community for information and resources online. This book serves as a reference, as well as a cheerleader, for those who want a bit more control and responsibility over where their food comes from, the things they consume, and how they live their lives.

Southern writer and folklorist Kelly Kazek’s collection of eerie and enigmatic Alabama ghost stories

A native son and accomplished historian does not flinch from pointing out Alabama's failures from the past 100 years; neither is he restrained in calling attention to the state's triumphs in this authoritative, popular history of the past 100 years.

An accessibly written and dramatic account of Alabama's role in the Civil War. The Civil War has left indelible marks on Alabama's land, culture, economy, and people. Despite its lasting influence, this wrenching story has been too long neglected by historians preoccupied by events elsewhere. In These Rugged Days: Alabama in the Civil War, John S. Sledge provides a long overdue and riveting narrative of Alabama's wartime saga. Focused on the conflict's turning points within the state's borders, this book charts residents' experiences from secession's heady early days to its tumultuous end, when 75,000 blue-coated soldiers were on the move statewide. Sledge details this eventful history using an impressive array of primary and secondary materials, including official records, diaries, newspapers, memoirs, correspondence, sketches, and photographs. He also highlights such colorful personalities as Nathan Bedford Forrest, the "Wizard of the Saddle"; John Pelham, the youthful Jacksonville artillerist who was shipped home in an iron casket with a glass faceplate; Gus Askew, a nine-year-old Barbour County slave who vividly recalled the day the Yankees marched in; and Augusta Jane Evans, the young novelist who was given a gold pen by a daring blockade runner. Sledge offers a refreshing take on Alabama's contributions to the Civil War that will intrigue anyone who is interested in learning more about the state's war efforts. His narrative is a dramatic account that will be enjoyed by lay readers as well as students and scholars of Alabama and the Civil War. These Rugged Days is an enthralling tale of action, courage, pride, and tragedy, making clear the relevance of many of the Civil War's decisive moments for the way Alabamians live today.

An outgrowth of the Language Variety in the South III symposium, New Perspectives on Language Variety in the South: Historical and Contemporary Approaches comprises forty-five original essays on a range of topics regarding the languages and dialects of the American South. Book jacket.

For the first time in paperback, an acclaimed look at the American South through the lenses of its most acclaimed storytellers and their tales. Rarely does a nonfiction work come along that is as original and refreshing as Sitting Up with the Dead. Here, take a ride with Pamela Petro as she embarks on a series of road trips through the states of the Old South to collect its stories and meet its tellers of traditional tales. Some of them are local celebrities, others national treasures. Among them are Ray Hicks, a National Heritage Fellow; Kathryn Windham, the “ghost lady”; Nancy Basket, a kudzu paper-maker; Colonel Rod, self-proclaimed “Florida cracker”; and Grammy Award-winner David Holt. You encounter plat-eyes and boo-hags, Jack the trickster and Brer Rabbit, mule eggs, singing turtles, talking corpses, and flying Africans from the sea islands of South Carolina. Stories provide the connective tissue of the South, linking the past with the present. They join communities as widespread as the coastal plains of the Carolinas and Georgia, the swamps of the Gulf Coast, and the mountains and valleys of Appalachia. As distinctly American as jazz, they blend cultures and oral traditions as diverse as those of southern England, Ireland, West Africa, and native America. They contain bits of lived history, both from before the Civil War and after. In Sitting Up with the Dead, Pamela Petro offers a paradoxical wake for the undying body of the Old South, to hear its truths and contemplate its robust afterlife in the tallest, “lyingest,” most fruitful, and most haunting of its tales.