Farming And Homesteading With The Saints

CULTIVATE YOUR FAITH WHILE CULTIVATING THE LAND Everyone who works the soil, whether on a prairie, the outskirts of a small town, in a city garden, or in your own yard, can use inspiration and blessings to help get through the endless work and daunting challenges. Who better to look to for examples of strength, courage, and faith than the heavenly companions who have been there themselves? In Farming and Homesteading with the Saints, author and hobby farmer Andie Andrews Eisenberg presents a faith-filled treasury of Catholic holy men and women connected to agriculture, animals, and rural life. In these pages, you’ll meet the patron saints of creatures, critters, flying things, horses, sheep, cats, dogs, beekeepers, gardeners, field hands, shepherds. and many more. You will also have at your fingertips a wellspring of blessings to pray for the safety of your home, your farm, and the creatures under your care. Whether you are a traditional or next-gen farmer, a weekend gardener, or someone who embraces the revival of the back-to-the-land movement, Farming andHomesteading with the Saints is a timeless resource and a stirring reminder that farming with faith means that you are never, ever alone in your work.

Based on empirical analysis, this ethnographic fieldwork and collection of original articles on contemporary Protestant religions in Mexico and Central America examines regions ranging from the Pacific coast in the north to Guatemala in the south. These new studies reveal that Protestantism was in the rise in the last decades of the twentieth century because it was opposing political structures that were largely unworkable in a new age of economic expansion and population growth. The studies cover regional and local variations in the growth of Protestantism, examine numerous reasons for the variations, and compare rural villages with modern communities. While the Catholic Church remains only a marginal player in the conflicts taking place in local communities, the book concludes that the modern religious conflicts bear only a general resemblance to the anti-Catholic issues that impelled the original Protestant Reformation in Europe. Relying on traditional scientific principles of data recording and theory development, the contributors look into the lives of contemporary rural people, Indian and mestizo, and provide data that enhance the general study of modern religious movements. The chapters examine, among other topics, the relationship between religion and demography, the role of leadership in church growth, the theories of Max Weber relating capitalism and Protestantism, religious conversion, and the modernization of Indian communities. Scholars and students who are interested in cultural anthropology, religious change, and religion in Latin America will find in these pages a unique and enlightening examination of Protestantism's rise and spread in Latin America.

From Thomas Jefferson's Monticello to Michelle Obama's White House organic garden, the image of America as a nation of farmers has persisted from the beginnings of the American experiment. In this rich and evocative collection of agrarian writing from the past two centuries, writers from Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur to Wendell Berry reveal not only the great reach and durability of the American agrarian ideal, but also the ways in which society has contested and confronted its relationship to agriculture over the course of generations. Drawing inspiration from Virgil's agrarian epic poem, Georgics, this collection presents a complex historical portrait of the American character through its relationship to the land. From the first European settlers eager to cultivate new soil, to the Transcendentalist, utopian, and religious thinkers of the nineteenth century, American society has drawn upon the vision of a pure rural life for inspiration. Back-to-the-land movements have surged and retreated in the past centuries yet provided the agrarian roots for the environmental movement of the past forty years. Interpretative essays and a sprinkling of illustrations accompany excerpts from each of these periods of American agrarian thought, providing a framework for understanding the sweeping changes that have confronted the nation's landscape.

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.

What it means to be a man or a woman is questioned today like never before. While traditional gender roles have been eroding for decades, now the very categories of male and female are being discarded with reckless abandon. How does one act like a gentleman in such confusing times? The Catholic Gentleman is a solid and practical guide to virtuous manhood. It turns to the timeless wisdom of the Catholic Church to answer the important questions men are currently asking. In short, easy- to-read chapters, the author offers pithy insights on a variety of topics, including • How to know you are an authentic man • Why our bodies matter • The value of tradition • The purpose of courtesy • What real holiness is and how to achieve it • How to deal with failure in the spiritual life

The Shepherdess was inspired by the brief life of St. Germaine Cousin of Pibrac as illuminated by Catholic history and tradition. An isolated and abused child stricken with an incurable, disfiguring disease, she became a shepherdess and heroic model of patience, humility, faith, and fortitude - as well as the patroness of those suffering from abandonment, abuse, disability, or poverty. In a world plagued by the evils of human trafficking, St. Germaine is a serviceable saint for our time.Written by a modern-day shepherdess, some names, characters, details, and events have been novelized as a means of presenting St. Germain's story with heart and imagination while remaining faithful to the essence of her biography and heroic journey to sainthood.

When a jaded romance writer takes up horseback riding as research for her latest project, she joins up with a horse on an accidental journey that will challenge everything she knows about love... Enter into New Jersey's legendary horse country, where wealthy women, six-figure performance horses, and elite show barns are part of the natural landscape. It's into this white-gloved arena that Clarissa Stamos, a reclusive, midlife romance writer is thrust when she decides to write a country-western romance. The only problem is-she's never been on a horse. Clarissa signs up for riding lessons and finds relief from her troubled marriage and her darkest secrets in the company of horses who offer an intoxicating sense of freedom and daring. Before long, she impulsively buys an ex-rodeo horse who spurs her to take charge of her own destiny-or wind up in the dust. Complicating matters is an intriguing, Argentinian dressage trainer with secrets of his own. One part romance novel, one part literary fiction, one part love-affair-with-horses, Ephemeral is told from the viewpoint of a quirky, old cow horse who not only invites you into his world, but also shares his sensible and soulful outlook on human hearts and the meaning of true horsemanship.

Peek inside the journal of a young suburban family who made the leap to a hobby farm, only to find themselves returning to the city less than two years later. What follows is the chronological, no-nonsense account of what the Rose family faced and how they handled it. Sometimes they made mistakes; other times they found help and kindness in unexpected places.Inside you will discover stories and tips on: finding good land, developing ponds, rotational cattle grazing, how to not get ripped off, farm trucks, tractors, and other engines that fail, Jersey cow milking, good (and not-so-good) country neighbors, seeding, permaculture, gardening, chainsawing, and feral hog avoiding. The information may just save your life, or at least prevent you from making the same mistakes they did.