Billy Best came to Berea College as a student in the 1950s from a Haywood County, North Carolina, farm that has been in his family for generations. Except for his graduate studies, he has lived near Berea ever since, managing a farm not far from town that is renowned in area farmers’ markets. His interest and knowledge of heirloom vegetables is preeminent. Dobree Adams lives on a farm north of Frankfort, Kentucky. She is well-known as a photographer and also raises the sheep which she sheers to create fiber art. “Bill Best is already legend with over 700 varieties of discrete beans and hundreds of tomatoes stockpiled and catalogued . . . Best is distinguished not only for his collection of seeds, but for his keen interest in the stories that accompany them and his ability to weave those stories into the history of a people and a region, the Appalachian South.” Ronni Lundy, author of Victuals. “The book is a kind of seed itself, fecund, filled with life and potential."―Gurney Norman.
Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2017. 269 pages with an index, resources (including names, addresses and phones of resource people!), photos (including a special section of color photos), a Foreword by A. Gwynn Henderson, and an Afterword by Book Elliott. Hardback with pictorial cover