Black Barn Seasons

Meandering across the foothills of Te Mata Peak and through the Tuki Tuki Valley, Black Barn Vineyards has become one of Hawke's Bay's most popular attractions. Its evolution over the past 20 years is a story of enterprise and creativity - from a single cottage into a wine, food and luxury accommodation destination. Owners Kim Thorp and Andy Coltart envisioned not just a vineyard but a unique environment that would entice people to stay. With a collection of stylish yet low-key retreats, Black Barn is one of the most sought-after getaways in the region, while the vineyard, bistro, growers' market and outdoor amphitheater are a drawcard for locals and tourists alike. Black Barn- portrait of a place is a fitting tribute to a Hawke's Bay landmark. Lavishly photographed by Brian Culy, with text and poetry contributed by Gregory O'Brien and Jenny Bornholdt, and recipes from the Black Barn Bistro menu, it's the next best thing to being there yourself.

Futuresteading is a practical and inspirational guide to living in a way that values tomorrow: a slower, simpler, steadier existence that is healthier for you, your home and the environment. Whether you live in a city apartment, in the suburbs or on twenty acres, the principles of futuresteading offer easy-to-understand information and hands-on ideas. Learn to grow delicious food and medicinal plants; share rituals with loved ones through the seasons; feast on healthy home-cooked food for the family; nourish body and soul with outdoor expeditions and moments of rest; and create wonders with your hands. This welcoming handbook begins by showing how futuresteading works in an accessible and practical explainer, before venturing through six seasonal chapters - Awakening, Alive, High Heat, Harvest, The Turning, and Deep Chill - filled with inspiration for the garden, including making fences and wicking beds, along with 30+ rewarding recipes for slow, nourishing and easy meals. Grow, store, eat, preserve and share food that deepens the connections you have with your household, your soil and those around you.

New, expanded edition: the world's best full-color travel guides just got better. This volume in the award-winning Eyewitness Travel Guides series show New Zealand as it has never been shown before. With the help of this guide, you can explore the sites with 3-D cutaways, and get the inside scoop on the best restaurants, museums, shops markets, festivals, art, and more! The Best Just Keeps Getting Better! Great maps and plenty of hotel and restaurant recommendations make sure your visit is fun and hassle-free.

“[A] lyrical portrait of a central Illinois sustainable farm . . . Brockman covers her subject with hard-earned expertise and organic passion.” —Publishers Weekly Henry’s Farm, run by Henry Brockman, is in central Illinois—some of the richest farming land in the world. There, he and his family—five generations of farmers, including sister Terra, the author—have bucked the traditional agribusiness conventional wisdom by farming in a way that’s sensible, sustainable, and focused on producing healthy, nutritious food in ways that don’t despoil the land. Terra Brockman tells the story of her family and their life on the farm in the form of a year-long memoir (with recipes) that takes readers through each season. Studded with vignettes, digressions, photographs, family stories, and illustrations of the farm’s vivid plant life, the book is a one-of-a-kind treasure that will appeal to readers of Michael Pollan, E. B. White, Gretel Ehrlich, and Sandra Steingraber. “Here’s what you get when the farmer’s sister turns out to be a masterful writer: a compelling argument for rebuilding our nation’s food security that is threaded within a lyrical, funny, suspenseful narrative of life on her brother’s Illinois farm.” —Sandra Steingraber, author of Having Faith “Terra Brockman's new book is such a delightful synergy of poetic inspiration and realistic descriptions of life on a farm. Here is everything from the joy and satisfaction of growing garlic and raising turkeys, to tending fruit trees and growing vegetables . . . Given the recent renewed interest in gardening and urban farming, the appearance of this inspiring book could not be more timely.” —Frederick Kirschenmann, president, Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture

When Christie Purifoy arrived at Maplehurst that September, she was heavily pregnant with both her fourth child and her dreams of creating a sanctuary that would be a fixed point in her busily spinning world. The sprawling Victorian farmhouse sitting atop a Pennsylvania hill held within its walls the possibility of a place where her family could grow, where friends could gather, and where Christie could finally grasp and hold the thing we all long for--home. In lyrical, contemplative prose, Christie slowly unveils the small trials and triumphs of that first year at Maplehurst--from summer's intense heat and autumn's glorious canopy through winter's still whispers and spring's gentle mercies. Through stories of planting and preserving, of opening the gates wide to neighbors, and of learning to speak the language of a place, Christie invites readers into the joy of small beginnings and the knowledge that the kingdom of God is with us here and now. Anyone who has felt the longing for home, who yearns to reconnect with the beauty of nature, and who values the special blessing of deep relationships with family and friends will love finding themselves in this story of earthly beauty and soaring hope.

Through enchanting prose and delightful activities, avid writer, gardener and placemaker Christie Purifoy helps readers capture the curious magic of the garden and bring its life and joy into their homes. A flower garden is a place where endless possibilities are contemplated (and celebrated), where reason bows to beauty, and practicality gives way to whimsy. It’s where we sink our roots deep, lean into the rhythms of each season, and wish for beautiful things to grow. This fully photographed guide shows you how to enjoy the many gifts the garden offers inside your own home, transforming your living spaces into places filled with warmth and wonder. Each season, Christie shares her notes on what to plant and walks you through easy projects that will surely become lifelong practices that help you bring the outdoors in. Learn how to grow your house into a home in bloom.

A wide-ranging collection of poems, aphorisms, and black-and-white photographs by an American writer and public policy scholar born in California in 1953 and raised in the American South and Pacific Northwest. Topics include faith and its loss, nature and the environment, war, social justice, friendship, teaching, chronic pain, mental health, and the struggle to communicate with others when ordinary words fail. The photography emphasizes California and the Northwest, but includes images from the American South and from Japan. Many of the writings and images convey nautical themes or nature themes. A major section addresses the Portland, Oregon, of the 1990s. This is a collection that can be read in any order or sampled a little at a time, and it can be revisited many times with new insight and delight.

For nature lovers as well as cooks, there's plenty to whet the appetite in this unique field guide-cum-cookbook. Starting with the first plants ready for eating in the early spring (watercress and nettles) and following the sequence of harvest through the late fall (persim-mons and Jerusalem artichokes), Kay Young offers full, easy-to-follow directions for identifying, gathering, and preparing some four dozen edible wild plants of the Great Plains. And since most of the plants occur elsewhere as well, residents of other regions will find much of interest here. ø 'This is not a survival book," writes the author; "only those plants whose flavor and availability warrant the time and effort to collect or grow them are included." The nearly 250 recipes range from old-time favorites (poke sallet; catnip tea; horehound lozenges; hickory nut cake; a cupboardful of jams, jellies, and pies) to enticing new creations (wild violet salad, milkweed sandwiches, cattail pollen pancakes, day-lily hors d'oeuvres, prickly-pear cactus relish). ø Reflecting the author's conviction that just as we can never go back to subsisting wholly on wild things, neither should we exclude them from our lives, this book serves up generous portions of botanical information and ecological wisdom along with good food.