Farmstead Shelterbelts (Stories of Land, Trees, People, and Dwelling)

Shelterbelts are those long rows of trees one sees on North America’s prairies and plains. Farmstead shelterbelts are those that encompass farmers’ residences and workyards. This book focuses on Manitoba farmstead shelterbelts and the people who live with them. Today’s farmstead shelterbelts are the result of large-scale governmental policies and agencies as well as local vernacular expressions. Taken together, their presence, absence, and/or character indicate larger social, economic and technological forces as well as ecological and psychological ones.

At the book’s heart are vivid photographic, diagrammatic, and perspectival documentations of farmstead shelterbelts and interviews who live and work among them. These documentations explore people’s relationships with trees throughout Manitoba history, in particular as shaped by Canada’s Prairie Tree Planting program that operated for over a hundred years. Farmstead shelterbelts are considered in light of trees in Manitoba’s history, their ecological significance, and their place in the province’s past and present changing rural landscape and inhabitants.