One cannot know of Harlan and Anna Hubbard's life without rejoicing in it and in the good human possibilities that it represents. - Wendell Berry Just as the pioneers who crossed the eastern US mountains into their great unknown carried not only skills and tools with them but also the then few widely circulated inspirational books, today's back-to-the-lander should pack Payne Hollow . A quiet book born of a quiet, contemplative life, it is imbued with a Zen-like understanding of work as meditation. It joins the work of Henry Thoreau and the more recent writing of Helen and Scott Nearing on a growing shelf of wisdom literature for the alternative lifestyles movement. (The Living Wilderness) Hubbard writes a painter's prose. The philosophy of life it bespeaks is Rousseau-like with the ideals of our young environmentalists, yet practical and competent in a way few idealists can achieve. His feeling for his surroundings is a kind of ecstasy, yet expressed with a sober simplicity. (Louisville Courier-Journal) Things in the world of Payne Hollow, like their canny proprietor-observer-author himself, are simply and satisfyingly themselves, achieving complexity and significance through the clear, basic relationship of need to fulfillment within the carefully circumscribed wholeness of Anna and Harlan Hubbard's honest, sensitive, extraordinary lives.

- Edward Lueders.