Born on a multi-generational dairy farm in Winslow, Jennifer was imbued with a love of Maine history and farming from a very early age. These two elements are echoed in all five books of The Sovereign Series, which seeks to connect readers to a simpler and more fulfilling lifestyle. Jennifer (l) and a friend stalk the elusive giant pickerel on the Sebasticook River in Winslow, Maine.Today, both Jennifer and her older sister Cheryl Wixson are actively engaged in promoting Maine farms and small-scale, non-industrialized farming. Jennifer keeps bees and raises grass-fed, grass-finished, non-GMO Scottish Highland cattle for beef www.HighlandFarmsofTroy.com and Cheryl runs www.CherylWixsonsKitchen.com, which puts more healthy Maine food on Maine plates.  

Jennifer (r) and her older sister Cheryl Wixson at Oaknole Farm in Winslow.

Here's a brief synopsis of the connection between Maine farming and/or history in each of the four books:

In Book 1, Hens & Chickens, Lila and Rebecca raise hens and sell organic eggs on the old Russell homestead in Sovereign, resurrecting the hen pen where Wendell Russell's grandmother, Grammie Addie, once kept 400 laying hens.

 In Book 2, Peas, Beans & Corn, Bruce Gilpin returns from Afghanistan with the secret dream of restarting Sovereign's old sweet corn canning factory. 

Click here to see a slideshow of old Maine "cornshop" images, historical black and white photographs of the state's sweet corn canning industry, which had a 100-year run from about 1860-1960. The pictures are from the Don Mills Collection, Poland, Maine, courtesy of the Minot Maine Historical Society. All images are of the same corn shop, Burnham & Morrill Co. Corn Shop #5, which was located at Minot Corner between the Methodist Church and the Little Androscoggin River.

 Book 3, The Songbird of Sovereign offers a remarkable inside look at a forgotten era in US history, the treatment of consumption (TB) at countryside sanitoriums in places like Maine, where recovering residents often slept on open-air porches and were fed wholesome, farm-raised foods.

 Click here to see a slideshow of life at the Western Maine Sanitorium in Hebron 1928-29, courtesy of the Maine Memory Network.

 In Book 4, The Minister's Daughter Doctor Bart, 29, who was born on a dairy farm in Albion, shares his love of the rural lifestyle AND of old-fashioned roses with a forlorn Nellie Walker, 22, the daughter of the minister of the Sovereign Union Church. 

Book 5, Maggie's Dilemma 

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Multi-generational Maine Farmers