For his fifteenth birthday in 1805, young Noah Blake's parents gave him a little leatherbound diary in which he recorded the various activities on his father's farm. This reprint of an actual early nineteenth-century book provides today's readers with a charming rarity -- a view of bygone days through the eyes of a young boy. Eric Sloane has taken the notebook with its brief comments and expanded the daily entries with explanatory narrative and 72 of his own delightful drawings.

Verbal sketches and drawings detail the construction of an entire backwoods farm, as well as such common tasks as making nails, building a bridge, splitting shingles, spring plowing, and maple-sugaring. The result is a remarkable window into the customs and preoccupations of rural New England two centuries ago.

By Eric Sloane

108 pg. Paperback

Merchant Ship Review - Tamara: I came across this book through Geoffrey Botkin's Stand Up and Lead videos and am excited to be able to make it available at Merchant Ship! It is a fun and interesting read. The sketches are very helpful in making the way they did things easy to grasp. You can see Geoffrey Botkin's video called "How to Think Like a Free Man" on his website here (He walks through some of the book about 10 min. in).