Last year I read "Vermont People," (and wrote quite a bit about it); this year I read "Vermont Farm Women."

Over the history of the United States, farmers have mostly been men. Miller's choice to write a book both about Vermont, a radical place in many ways, and female farmers, is a feministic move that I applaud.

It seems as though much of the material in the book comes from around the year 2000, covering a more recent era than Miller's "Vermont People."

The book is both beautiful—for the romantic portrait of rural life that it provides, and tragic—in that the era of the self-sufficient homestead in Vermont has come to a close, with the state essentially having become an over-priced vacationland for city folks from Boston and New York.

If you find Vermont's aesthetic appealing, and have interest in farming and feminism, this is an excellent book. ( )

-- In VERMONT FARM WOMEN photographer Peter Miller profiles almost 50 women with accompanying black & white photographs. His subjects care for animals & the land. They're gardeners, dairy farmers, cheesemakers, maple sugarers. They grow vegetables & Christmas trees. They live & work in the Northeast Kingdom, central Vt., & Brattleboro. They represent all marital statuses. Some married established farmers & others started from scratch. All the women derive satisfaction from their livelihoods be it raising horses or operating sawmills. Hardcover book is oversized. -- ( )