Carving Out A Living On The Land

When he first envisioned becoming a farmer, author Emmet Van Driesche never imagined his main crop would be Christmas trees, nor that such a tree farm could be more of a managed forest than the conventional grid of perfectly sheared trees. Carving Out a Living on the Land tells the story of how Van Driesche navigated changing life circumstances, took advantage of unexpected opportunities, and leveraged new and old skills to piece together an economically viable living, while at the same time respecting the land's complex ecological relationships. From spoon carving to scything, coppicing to wreath-making, Carving Out a Living on the Land proves that you don't need acres of expensive bottomland to start your land-based venture, but rather the creativity and vision to see what might be done with that rocky section or ditch or patch of trees too small to log. You can lease instead of buy; build flexible, temporary structures rather than sink money into permanent ones; and take over an existing operation rather than start from scratch. What matters are your unique circumstances, talents, and interests, which when combined with what the land is capable of producing, can create a fulfilling and meaningful farming life.

Very little has yet been written about the cultural or economic contributions of woodcarving to people's livelihoods or the consequences of felling hardwood and softwood trees for the international woodcarving trade. Carving Out a Future is the first examination of this trade and its critical links to rural livelihoods, biodiversity, conservation, forestry and the international trade regime. A range of case studies from Australia, Bali, India,Africa and Mexico provides a lens for examining the critical issues relating to the significant impacts of woodcarving on forests, conservation efforts, the need to promote sustainable rural livelihoods and efforts to promote trade so that skilled artisans in developing countries get a fair economic return. Livelihoods, Carving and Conservation * Global Overview * The Case of Woodcarving in Kenya * Drums and Hornbills * Sculpture and Identity * Carving Wood in Southern Zimbabwe * The Kiaat Woodcrafters of Bushbuckridge, South Africa * Carvers, Conservation and Certification in India * Colour, Sustainability and Market Sense in Bali * Aboriginal Woodcarvers in Australia * BurseraWoodcarving in Oaxaca, Mexico * Linaloe Wood Handicrafts * Learning from a Comparison of Cases * Carving, Sustainability and Scarcity * Certification of Woodcarving * Planning for Woodcarving in the 21st Century *

Very little has yet been written about the cultural or economic contributions of woodcarving to people's livelihoods or the consequences of felling hardwood and softwood trees for the international woodcarving trade. Carving Out a Future is the first examination of this trade and its critical links to rural livelihoods, biodiversity, conservation, forestry and the international trade regime. A range of case studies from Australia, Bali, India,Africa and Mexico provides a lens for examining the critical issues relating to the significant impacts of woodcarving on forests, conservation efforts, the need to promote sustainable rural livelihoods and efforts to promote trade so that skilled artisans in developing countries get a fair economic return.Livelihoods, Carving and Conservation * Global Overview * The Case of Woodcarving in Kenya * Drums and Hornbills * Sculpture and Identity * Carving Wood in Southern Zimbabwe * The Kiaat Woodcrafters of Bushbuckridge, South Africa * Carvers, Conservation and Certification in India * Colour, Sustainability and Market Sense in Bali * Aboriginal Woodcarvers in Australia * BurseraWoodcarving in Oaxaca, Mexico * Linaloe Wood Handicrafts * Learning from a Comparison of Cases * Carving, Sustainability and Scarcity * Certification of Woodcarving * Planning for Woodcarving in the 21st Century *

To celebrate the 270th anniversary of the De Gruyter publishing house, the company is providing permanent open access to 270 selected treasures from the De Gruyter Book Archive. Titles will be made available to anyone, anywhere at any time that might be interested. The DGBA project seeks to digitize the entire backlist of titles published since 1749 to ensure that future generations have digital access to the high-quality primary sources that De Gruyter has published over the centuries.

Reimagining Rural: Urbanormative Portrayals of Rural Life examines the ways in which rural people and places are being portrayed by popular television, reality television, film, literature, and news media in the United States. It is also an examination of the social processes that reinforce urbanormative standards that normalize urban life and render rural life as something unusual, exotic, or deviant. This includes exploring the role of the media as agenda setting agent, informing people what and how to think about rural life. Further it includes scrutinizing the institution of formal education that promotes a homogenous urban-oriented curriculum, while in the process, marginalizing the unique characteristics of local rural communities. These contributions are some of the only studies of their kind, investigating popular cultural representations of rural life, while providing powerful evidence and unique challenges for an urban society to rethink and reimagine rural life, while confronting the many stereotypes and myths that exist.

Taking its title from a poem by Prince Edward Island poet Anne Compton, In the Interval of the Wave is a close study of diaries written by Prince Edward Island women in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Women from both rural and urban regions of the Island recorded their lives in a genre that allowed them to play with the conventions of the language they knew. For busy farm wives, their quotidian language, syntax, and choice of topic appear simple, whereas for the urban elite like Margaret Gray Lord and Wanda Wyatt, the erudition of their diaries suggests a more leisured existence. Mary McDonald-Rissanen argues that the initial reception of the text - its physical appearance, handwriting, gaps, and flood of words - provides interesting insights for understanding the circumstances of Prince Edward Island women from times past. Intertextual readings of the diaries alongside other cultural artifacts such as paintings, histories, folk stories, and songs embellish the idiosyncratic diary discourse. Diaries enabled women to write their voices, create a subjective identity, and redefine their place in the world. In the Interval of the Wave exposes lives lived and recorded in a special moment and place never far from the rhythm of the sea.

This book highlights the unique and complex role women have played in the shaping of the American environment from pre-Columbian Native Americans to present day environmental justice activists.