Turn Here Sweet Corn: Organic Farming Works (A Fesler-Lampert Minnesota Heritage Book)

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Synopsis
When the hail starts to fall, Atina Diffley doesn&’t compare it to golf balls. She&’s a farmer. It&’s &“as big as a B-size potato.&” As her bombarded land turns white, she and her husband Martin huddle under a blanket and reminisce: the one-hundred-mile-per-hour winds; the eleven-inch rainfall (&“that broccoli turned out gorgeous&”); the hail disaster of 1977. The romance of farming washed away a long time ago, but the love? Never. In telling her story of working the land, coaxing good food from the fertile soil, Atina Diffley reminds us of an ultimate truth: we live in relationships—with the earth, plants and animals, families and communities. A memoir of making these essential relationships work in the face of challenges as natural as weather and as unnatural as corporate politics, her book is a firsthand history of getting in at the &“ground level&” of organic farming. One of the first certified organic produce farms in the Midwest, the Diffleys&’ Gardens of Eagan helped to usher in a new kind of green revolution in the heart of America&’s farmland, supplying their roadside stand and a growing number of local food co-ops. This is a story of a world transformed—and reclaimed—one square acre at a time.And yet, after surviving punishing storms and the devastating loss of fifth-generation Diffley family land to suburban development, the Diffleys faced the ultimate challenge: the threat of eminent domain for a crude oil pipeline proposed by one of the largest privately owned companies in the world, notorious polluters Koch Industries. As Atina Diffley tells her David-versus-Goliath tale, she gives readers everything from expert instruction in organic farming to an entrepreneur&’s manual on how to grow a business to a legal thriller about battling corporate arrogance to a love story about a single mother falling for a good, big-hearted man.
Copyright:
2012

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:
9781452939179
Related ISBNs:
9780816677719
Publisher:
University of Minnesota Press
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
Atina Diffley
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
History, Nonfiction, Biographies and Memoirs, Outdoors and Nature
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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