This Blessed Earth, Ted Genoways
This Blessed Earth, Ted Genoways
1 Rating(s)
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This Blessed Earth
A Year in the Life of an American Family Farm

Author: Ted Genoways

Narrator: Christopher Solimene

Unabridged: 8 hr 17 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/19/2017

Synopsis

The family farm lies at the heart of our national identity, and yet its future is in peril. Rick Hammond grew up on a farm, and for forty years he has raised cattle and crops on his wife's fifth-generation homestead in Nebraska, in hopes of passing it on to their four children. But as the handoff nears, their small family farm—and their entire way of life—are under siege. Beyond the threat posed by rising corporate ownership of land and livestock, the Hammonds are confronted by encroaching pipelines, groundwater depletion, climate change, the fickle demands of the marketplace, and shifting trade policies.

Following the Hammonds from harvest to harvest, Ted Genoways explores the rapidly changing world of small, traditional farming operations. He creates a vivid and nuanced portrait of a radically new landscape and one family's fight to preserve their legacy and the life they love.

About Ted Genoways

Ted Genoways is an award-winning poet, journalist, and editor. He is the author of two books of poems and the nonfiction book Walt Whitman and the Civil War. He is also a contributing editor at Mother Jones and editor-at-large at OnEarth. His essays and poetry have appeared in the Atlantic, Bloomberg Businessweek, Harper's, the New Republic, Outside, and the Washington Post Book World. Ted is a winner of a National Press Club Award and the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, and he has received fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation. He edited the Virginia Quarterly Review from 2003 to 2012, during which time the magazine won six National Magazine Awards. Ted lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, with his family.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Meredith on February 04, 2019

This book wasn't even on my radar until Governor Pete Ricketts of Nebraska (my home and the setting of this book) refused to sign the the proclamation of this book receiving the 2019 One Book One Nebraska book by the Nebraska Library Commission on basis of the author being a "political activist". Of......more

Goodreads review by Roxanne on July 31, 2017

This is a Goodreads win review. I may not have enjoyed this book so much when I lived in Palm Springs, CA for 38 years. In the part I lived in we only grew tourists. Down they grow figs, dates, grapefruit and other crops. The reason I really liked this book is because I now live in Kansas and when I......more

Goodreads review by Kate on January 06, 2018

I loved this book. Honestly, this is the story I had tried to write as a senior in college for my comps (senior thesis) paper. Although I did not receive a "distinction" award, this book deserves one. It is a work of regional history, agricultural history, and sociology through participant observati......more

Goodreads review by Tuck on November 05, 2017

Clear and succinct explanations of farming on USA , corn and soy beans mostly , using conventional organophosphates and manufactured fertilizer and gmo seed and aquifer water. Author does a great job explaining the water issues and how seed corn is produced and how gmo "works". Interesting highlight......more

Goodreads review by Kim on April 09, 2019

I had to share parts of this with my Dad, who is a lifelong full time farmer in southeast Iowa. Between the Pioneer seed corn stories and the center pivot irrigators, i knew he could relate. It was as if the author was telling our farm story too! And the history of Nebraska farming as well as the de......more

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