My First Tractor Stories Of Farmers And Their First Love

Driving a tractor was a rite of passage for every farmboy and girl. Anyone who grew up on a farm has nostalgic—or not so happy!—stories about his or her first tractor: the Farmall that replaced the draft horses, the John Deere “Poppin’ Johnny” that ran forever, and the cursed tractor that would never start. The long hours spent in the metal tractor seat, come rain, snow, or the glaring sun, were formative in a farmer’s life. Here are 25 stories from notable rural authors relating fond or not-so-fond memories of their first tractors, including Michael Perry, Bob Artley, Roger Welsch, Bob Feller, Ben Logan, Gwen Petersen, Ralph W. Sanders, Robert N. Pripps, Patricia Penton Leimbach, Randy Leffingwell, Lee Klancher, Don Macmillan, Scott Garvey, John Dietz, and more.

When Elvis Presley decided he wanted to buy a horse in 1966, he didn't want just any horse. "He wanted a Golden Palomino," Priscilla Presley remembers. "He would get up at 3:00 in the morning, go to certain farms and ranches and say, 'Do you have a Golden Palomino for sale?' People would say, 'That was Elvis Presley!" Elvis's legendary love of horses drove him to find the Golden Palomino who would become his beloved companion Rising Sun, and to fill Graceland's stables and Circle G Ranch with horses for family and friends to ride. In the first-ever book dedicated to Elvis's equestrian side, horse lovers Kimberly Gatto and Victoria Racimo share rare stories, interviews, and photographs that shed light on the beautiful, quiet life the King lived when he was with his horses.

At Clay Bottom Farm, author Ben Hartman and staff practice kaizen, or continuous improvement, cutting out more waste--of time, labor, space, money, and more--every year and aligning their organic production more tightly with customer demand. Applied alongside other lean principles originally developed by the Japanese auto industry, the end result has been increased profits and less work. In this field-guide companion to his award-winning first book, The Lean Farm, Hartman shows market vegetable growers in even more detail how Clay Bottom Farm implements lean thinking in every area of their work, including using kanbans, or replacement signals, to maximize land use; germination chambers to reduce defect waste; and right-sized machinery to save money and labor and increase efficiency. From finding land and assessing infrastructure needs to selling perfect produce at the farmers market, The Lean Farm Guide to Growing Vegetables digs deeper into specific, tested methods for waste-free farming that not only help farmers become more successful but make the work more enjoyable. These methods include: Using Japanese paper pot transplanters Building your own germinating chambers Leaning up your greenhouse Making and applying simple composts Using lean techniques for pest and weed control Creating Heijunka, or load-leveling calendars for efficient planning Farming is not static, and improvement requires constant change. The Lean Farm Guide to Growing Vegetables offers strategies for farmers to stay flexible and profitable even in the face of changing weather and markets. Much more than a simple exercise in cost-cutting, lean farming is about growing better, not cheaper, food--the food your customers want.

This book is about a boy born in the last year of the Great Depression, 1934. It tells about the pre-teen years, the age of doing dumb and daring things, and miraculously escaping injury and death, later teen and young adult activities, and career as Teacher, completing his Masters Degree (double major) in Education Administration and Counseling and Guidance, the interruption while serving in the U.S. Army in the 3rd Armor Division in Germany, then 11 years as a teacher and administrator in the public schools, then 27 years as a Counselor and Supervisor in the Texas Rehabilitation Commission. Retirement was a lot of fun, raising cattle and doing routine ranching chores.

In this combination memoir and craft book, award-winning author Jerry Apps shares the next phase in his life story begun in Limping through Life and Once a Professor. Beginning with a boyhood surrounded by storytellers, Jerry takes readers along on his path to becoming one of the Midwest’s best-known and most revered writers. In characteristic no-nonsense style, he shares the joys, disappointments, and frustrations of the writing life and describes the genesis and creation of many of his best-known books. In recounting his nearly six-decade writing career, Jerry provides an insider’s view into the creative process, delving into sources for ideas, research strategies, and guidelines and essential tools for writing. Along the way he recalls his relationships with publishers, editors, TV producers, librarians, booksellers, and others and shares a scrapbook’s worth of stories—some funny, some heartwarming, a few of them harrowing—from the road. A book for book lovers!

The ideal first book to introduce tractors to toddlers, My First Tractor is packed with colourful images and clear word-labels to encourage early learning. Help your toddler learn all about tractors in My First Tractors. With colourful, bright pictures of tractors alongside clear word-labels your little one will see ploughing and planting and a combine harvester. From counting tractors to different coloured tractors, My First Tractor keeps early learning simple and fun for your little one. Perfect for encouraging children to build vocabulary and language skills, My First Tractor helps toddlers grasp early concepts. Your little one will love discovering pictures of tractors while holding the chunky pages of this tactile board book. Read it together and help them turn the pages and learn all about tractors.

A deeply poetic account of love and resistance through a young girl’s eyes by acclaimed writer, Sahar Khalifeh, called "the Virginia Woolf of Palestinian literature” (Börsenblatt) Nidal, after many decades of restless exile, returns to her family home in Nablus, where she had lived with her grandmother before the 1948 Nakba that scattered her family across the globe. She was a young girl when the popular resistance began and, through the bloodshed and bitter struggle, Nidal fell in love with freedom fighter Rabie. He was her first and only real love—him and all that he represented: Palestine in its youth, the resistance fighters in the hills, the nation as embodied in her family home and in the land. Many years later, Nidal and Rabie meet, and he encourages her to read her uncle Amin’s memoirs. She immerses herself in the details of her family and national past and discovers the secret history of her absent mother. Filled with emotional urgency and political immediacy, Sahar Khalifeh spins an epic tale reaching from the final days of the British Mandate to today with clear-eyed realism and great imagination.