Agriculture & Farming

In this joyful novel, our narrator is Charles Dickens's tenth child, Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, known as Plorn. Sent, as his brother Alfred had been before him, at sixteen years of age, to Australia to learn to 'apply himself', we follow his early Australian adventures in outb...ack NSW learning to become a man from the most diverse and toughest of men. Part of Dickens' motivation was to separate these younger of his children from the Dickens family schism, where Charles had expelled his wife from the family home, keeping her sister Georgie there to run the household and taking up with the actress Ellen Tiernan. Plorn arrived in Melbourne in late 1868 carrying a terrible secret. He has never read a word of his father's work. After a very brief stopover he is sent out to become a gentleman stockman on a 2000 square mile station in remotest, semi-arid parts of NSW. Here he inevitably gets enmeshed in a tribe named the Paakintji and various other folk, colonists, colonial-born, ex-convicts, ex-soldiers, and very few women - though he is struck by each one he does encounter. Plorn did not expect he would encounter the same veneration of his father and familiarity with his work in Australia that was rampant in England. Against this backdrop, and featuring cricket tournaments, horse-racing, bushranging, sheep droving, shifty stock and station agents, frontier wars and first encounters with Australian women we follow Plorn, and sometimes his brother Alfred, through wonderful adventures as he works to apply himself. This is Tom Keneally in his most familiar terrain. Taking historical figures and events and reimagining them with verve, compassion and humour. It is a romp.
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'Compelling, illuminating and often confronting, On Eating Meat is a brilliant blend of a gastronome's passion with forensic research into the sources of the meat we eat. Matthew Evans brings his unflinching honesty - and a farmer's hands-on experience - to the question of how to... be an ethical carnivore.' Hugh Mackay How can 160,000 deaths in one day constitute a 'medium-sized operation'? Think beef is killing the world? What about asparagus farms? Or golf? Eat dairy? You'd better eat veal, too. Going vegan might be all the rage, but the fact is the world has an ever-growing, insatiable appetite for meat - especially cheap meat. Former food critic and chef, now farmer and restaurateur Matthew Evans grapples with the thorny issues around the ways we produce and consume animals. From feedlots and abattoirs, to organic farms and animal welfare agencies, he has an intimate, expert understanding of the farming practices that take place in our name. Evans calls for less radicalisation, greater understanding, and for ethical omnivores to stand up for the welfare of animals and farmers alike. Sure to spark intense debate, On Eating Meat is an urgent read for all vegans, vegetarians and carnivores.
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The further adventures of the star of Our Yorkshire Farm and bestselling author Amanda Owen, as she takes us back to the Yorkshire Dales with her delightful family.

Two men decide to become beekeepers, learning about nature and about themselves in the process

Take organic gardening to the next level by learning the secrets of permaculture.