Rural Heritage April/May 2026

Rural Bookshelf Oxette: The Power of Two M any of us grew up picking rocks in the farm field, especially after spring tillage. We’d spend hours picking up rocks and tossing them on a stone boat, sled or wagon until we were sure we’d found them all.

for the larger rocks, you don't have to lift them but can roll them onto the sled. The farmer in Lea Patrice Fales new children’s book, Oxette: The Power of Two , yokes her small cow, Virginia, to a stone boat to gather field stones. She explains that the larger stones will be used as construction material on the farm for walls or buildings. The story is told in a rhyming cadence that is almost impossible to not read out loud. With her Masters of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, Lea is a skilled artist with a keen attention to detail in making the illustrations authentic and the colors natural.

Of course, the following spring, we were sadly surprised when a new crop of rocks had pushed their way up to pepper the field we’d cleared the year before. Some farmers pull a wagon up and down the field with a tractor. Others use draft animals put to a stone boat who step forward and stop with voice commands. The nice thing about a stone boat is,

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