"Employing precise geographical information system (GIS) mapping of land ownership and land use, Donahue describes how the land was settled and how mixed husbandry was developed in Concord. By reconstructing several farm neighborhoods and following them through many generations, he reveals a diverse sustainable farming system of tillage, orchards, pastures, hay meadows, and woodlots that required careful management of soil and water. Donahue concludes that ecological degradation came to Concord only later, when nineteenth-century economic and social forces undercut the environmental balance that earlier colonial farmers had nurtured."--BOOK JACKET.

First published in 1930 and shortlisted for the Pulitzer, the winner of Hesperus' "Uncover a Classic" competition is a long-neglected American classic, a romantic saga of young love on the Kentucky trail in colonial America Diony Hall has waited for many years for her betrothed to return to marry her. Trying to fathom the nature of identity and her place in the vast newly created America, Diony spends her time at the family hearthside, combining her love of reading with her roles within the family circle and the daily tasks on the homestead. When Berk Jarvis returns and they are married, they both bid farewell to Virginia, family, community, and security to head out to found a new family and a new life together in the wilderness of Kentucky. What follows is a breathtaking story of love and death, as the settlers cross the Appalachian mountains and struggle to carve a new life on the unforgiving frontier at the mercy of shortages, harsh winters, and the perpetual danger of Indian attack. This astonishing novel, with its rhythmic prose, has too long been forgotten.

Kroniek van het leven van een settlersfamilie in de bergen van Kentucky op het eind van de 18e eeuw.

In 'The Great Meadow', Brian Donahue examines the farming practices of the early settlers at Concord in Massachusetts. He argues against the long held belief that these farmers used methods that degraded the land & shows how the Concord community in fact achieved a successful & sustainable system.

The seeds Chipmunk buried last fall are missing, but in their place a beautiful sunflower grows, and by summer's end it drops its seeds for Chipmunk and the other creatures in the meadow to enjoy.

Fourteen-year-old John Barron is asked, like his father and grandfather before him, to spend the summer taking care of their sheep in the haymeadow. Six thousand sheep. John will be alone, except for two horses, four dogs, and all those sheep. John doesn't feel up to the task, but he hopes that if he can accomplish it, he will finally please his father. But John finds that the adage "things just to sheep" is true when the river floods, coyotes attack, and one dog's feet get cut. Through it all he must rely on his own resourcefulness, ingenuity, and talents to survive this summer in the haymeadow.