Best of
Agriculture

2017

Kiss the Ground: How the Food You Eat Can Reverse Climate Change, Heal Your Body & Ultimately Save Our World


Josh Tickell - 2017
    Now, in Kiss the Ground, he explains an incredible truth: by changing our diets to a soil-nourishing, regenerative agriculture diet, we can reverse global warming, harvest healthy, abundant food, and eliminate the poisonous substances that are harming our children, pets, bodies, and ultimately our planet. Through fascinating and accessible interviews with celebrity chefs, ranchers, farmers, and top scientists, this remarkable book, soon to be a full-length documentary film narrated by Woody Harrelson, will teach you how to become an agent in humanity’s single most important and time sensitive mission. Reverse climate change and effectively save the world—all through the choices you make in how and what to eat.

Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life


David R. Montgomery - 2017
    Now conventional agriculture is threatening disaster for the world’s growing population. In Growing a Revolution, geologist David R. Montgomery travels the world, meeting farmers at the forefront of an agricultural movement to restore soil health. From Kansas to Ghana, he sees why adopting the three tenets of conservation agriculture—ditching the plow, planting cover crops, and growing a diversity of crops—is the solution. When farmers restore fertility to the land, this helps feed the world, cool the planet, reduce pollution, and return profitability to family farms.

The New Farm: Our Ten Years on the Front Lines of the Good Food Revolution


Brent Preston - 2017
    When Brent Preston, his wife, Gillian, and their two young children left Toronto ten years ago, they arrived on an empty plot of land with no machinery, no money and not much of a clue. Through a decade of grinding toil, they built a real organic farm, one that is profitable, sustainable, and their family's sole source of income. Along the way they earned the respect and loyalty of some of the best chefs in North America, and created a farm that is a leading light in the good food movement. Told with humour and heart in Preston's unflinchingly honest voice, The New Farm arrives at a time of unprecedented interest in food and farming, with readers keenly aware of the overwhelming environmental, social and moral costs of our industrial food system. The New Farm offers a vision for a hopeful future, a model of agriculture that brings people together around good food, promotes a healthier planet, and celebrates great food and good living."

Call of the Reed Warbler: A New Agriculture – A New Earth


Charles Massy - 2017
    Author and radical farmer Charles Massy explores transformative and regenerative agriculture and the vital connection between our soil and our health. It is a story of how a grassroots revolution – a true underground insurgency – can save the planet, help turn climate change around, and build healthy people and healthy communities, pivoting significantly on our relationship with growing and consuming food.   Using his personal experience as a touchstone – from an unknowing, chemical-using farmer with dead soils to a radical ecologist farmer carefully regenerating a 2000-hectare property to a state of natural health – Massy tells the real story behind industrial agriculture and the global profit-obsessed corporations driving it. He shows – through evocative stories – how innovative farmers are finding a new way and interweaves his own local landscape, its seasons and biological richness.  At stake is not only a revolution in human health and our communities but the very survival of the planet. For farmer, backyard gardener, food buyer, health worker, policy maker and public leader alike, Call of the Reed Warbler offers a tangible path forward for the future of our food supply, our Australian landscape and our earth. It comprises a powerful and moving paean of hope.

Big Chicken: The Incredible Story of How Antibiotics Created Modern Agriculture and Changed the Way the World Eats


Maryn McKenna - 2017
    In this riveting investigative narrative, McKenna dives deep into the world of modern agriculture by way of chicken: from the farm where it's raised directly to your dinner table. Consumed more than any other meat in the United States, chicken is emblematic of today's mass food-processing practices and their profound influence on our lives and health. Tracing its meteoric rise from scarce treat to ubiquitous global commodity, McKenna reveals the astounding role of antibiotics in industrial farming, documenting how and why "wonder drugs" revolutionized the way the world eats--and not necessarily for the better. Rich with scientific, historical, and cultural insights, this spellbinding cautionary tale shines a light on one of America's favorite foods--and shows us the way to safer, healthier eating for ourselves and our children.

Your Successful Farm Business: Production, Profit, Pleasure


Joel Salatin - 2017
    With another 20 years of experience under his belt, bringing him to the half-century mark as a full-time farmer, he decided to build on that foundation with a sequel, a graduate level curriculum.Everyone who reads and enjoys that previous work will benefit from this additional information. In those 20 years, Polyface Farm progressed from a small family operation to a 20-person, 6,000-customer, 50-restaurant business, all without sales targets, government grants, or an off-farm nest egg.As a germination tray for new farmers ready to take over the 50 percent of America's agricultural equity that will become available over the next two decades, Polyface Farm in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley stands as a beacon of hope in a food and farming system floundering in dysfunction: toxicity, pathogenicity, nutrient deficiency, bankruptcy, geezers, and erosion. Speaking into that fear and confusion, Salatin offers a pathway to success, with production, profit, and pleasure thrown in for good measure.

Letters to a Young Farmer: On Food, Farming, and Our Future


Martha HodgkinsJoan Dye Gussow - 2017
    Three dozen esteemed writers, farmers, chefs, activists, and visionaries address the highs and lows of farming life—as well as larger questions of how our food is produced and consumed—in vivid and personal detail. Barbara Kingsolver speaks to the tribe of farmers—some born to it, many self-selected—with love, admiration, and regret. Dan Barber traces the rediscovery of lost grains and foodways. Michael Pollan bridges the chasm between agriculture and nature. Bill McKibben connects the early human quest for beer to the modern challenge of farming in a rapidly changing climate. Congresswoman Chellie Pingree probes the politics of being a young farmer today. Farmer Mas Masumoto passes on family secrets to his daughter—and not-soon-forgotten stories to us all. Other contributors include Temple Grandin, Verlyn Klinkenborg, Wendell Berry, Rick Bayless, and Marion Nestle.Letters to a Young Farmer is both a compelling history and a vital road map—a reckoning of how we eat and farm; how the two can come together to build a more sustainable future; and why now, more than ever before, we need farmers.

The Art of Loading Brush: New Agrarian Writings


Wendell Berry - 2017
    Mr. Berry believes that American cultural problems are nearly always aligned with their agricultural problems, and recent events have shone a terrible spotlight on the divides between our urban and rural citizens. Our communities are as endangered as our landscapes. There is, as Berry outlines, still much work to do, and our daily lives—in hope and affection—must triumph over despair.Mr. Berry moves deftly between the real and the imagined. The Art of Loading Brush is an energetic mix of essays and stories, including "The Thought of Limits in a Prodigal Age," which explores Agrarian ideals as they present themselves historically and as they might apply to our work today. "The Presence of Nature in the Natural World" is added here as the bookend of this developing New Agrarianism. Four stories from an as-yet-unfinished novel, better described as "an essay in imagination," extend the Port William story as it follows Andy Catlett throughout his life to this present moment. Andy works alongside his grandson in "The Art of Loading Brush," one of the most moving and tender stories of the entire Port William cycle. Filled with insights and new revelations from a mind thorough in its considerations and careful in its presentations, The Art of Loading Brush is a necessary and timely collection.

Teaming with Fungi: The Organic Grower's Guide to Mycorrhizae


Jeff Lowenfels - 2017
    This natural union between plants and fungi is the foundation of our food web.” —Paul Stamets, author of Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the WorldTeaming with Fungi is an important guide to mycorrhizae and the role they play in agriculture, horticulture, and hydroponics. Almost every plant in a garden forms a relationship with fungi, and many plants would not exist without their fungal partners. By better understanding this relationship, home gardeners can take advantage of the benefits of fungi, which include an increased uptake in nutrients, resistance to drought, earlier fruiting, and more. This must-have guide will teach you how fungi interact with plants and how to best to employ them in your home garden.

The Lean Farm Guide to Growing Vegetables: More In-Depth Lean Techniques for Efficient Organic Production


Ben Hartman - 2017
    Applied alongside other lean principles originally developed by the Japanese auto industry, the end result has been increased profits and less work.In this field-guide companion to his award-winning first book, The Lean Farm, Hartman shows market vegetable growers in even more detail how Clay Bottom Farm implements lean thinking in every area of their work, including using kanbans, or replacement signals, to maximize land use; germination chambers to reduce defect waste; and right-sized machinery to save money and labor and increase efficiency. From finding land and assessing infrastructure needs to selling perfect produce at the farmers market, The Lean Farm Guide to Growing Vegetables digs deeper into specific, tested methods for waste-free farming that not only help farmers become more successful but make the work more enjoyable. These methods include:Using Japanese paper pot transplantersBuilding your own germinating chambersLeaning up your greenhouseMaking and applying simple compostsUsing lean techniques for pest and weed controlCreating Heijunka, or load-leveling calendars for efficient planningFarming is not static, and improvement requires constant change. The Lean Farm Guide to Growing Vegetables offers strategies for farmers to stay flexible and profitable even in the face of changing weather and markets. Much more than a simple exercise in cost-cutting, lean farming is about growing better, not cheaper, food--the food your customers want.

Letter to a Young Farmer: How to Live Richly Without Wealth on the New Garden Farm


Gene Logsdon - 2017
    In Letter to a Young Farmer, his final book of essays, Logsdon addresses the next generation--young people who are moving back to the land to enjoy a better way of life as small-scale "garden farmers." It's a lifestyle that isn't defined by accumulating wealth or by the "get big or get out" agribusiness mindset. Instead, it's one that recognizes the beauty of nature, cherishes the land, respects our fellow creatures, and values rural traditions. It's one that also looks forward and embraces "right technologies," including new and innovative ways of working smarter, not harder, and avoiding premature burnout.Completed only a few weeks before the author's death, Letter to a Young Farmer is a remarkable testament to the life and wisdom of one of the greatest rural philosophers and writers of our time. Gene's earthy wit and sometimes irreverent humor combines with his valuable perspectives on many wide-ranging subjects--everything from how to show a ram who's boss to enjoying the almost churchlike calmness of a well-built livestock barn.Reading this book is like sitting down on the porch with a neighbor who has learned the ways of farming through years of long observation and practice. Someone, in short, who has "seen it all" and has much to say, and much to teach us, if we only take the time to listen and learn. And Gene Logsdon was the best kind of teacher: equal parts storyteller, idealist, and rabble-rouser. His vision of a nation filled with garden farmers, based in cities, towns, and countrysides, will resonate with many people, both young and old, who long to create a more sustainable, meaningful life for themselves and a better world for all of us.

A Foodie's Guide to Capitalism


Eric Holt-Gimenez - 2017
    Everyone who wants to end hunger, who wants to eat good, clean, healthy food, needs to understand capitalism. This book will help do that.In his latest book, Eric Holt-Gim�nez takes on the social, environmental, and economic crises of the capitalist mode of food production. Drawing from classical and modern analyses, A Foodie's Guide to Capitalism introduces the reader to the history of our food systemand to the basics of capitalism. In straightforward prose, Holt-Gim�nez explains the political economics of why--even as local, organic, and gourmet food have spread around the world--billions go hungry in the midst of abundance; why obesity is a global epidemic; and why land-grabbing, global warming, and environmental pollution are increasing.Holt-Gim�nez offers emblematic accounts--and critiques--of past and present-day struggles to change the food system, from voting with your fork, to land occupations. We learn about the potential and the pitfalls of organic and community-supported agriculture, certified fair trade, microfinance, land trusts, agrarian reform, cooperatives, and food aid. We also learn about the convergence of growing social movements using the food system to challenge capitalism. How did racism, classism, and patriarchy become structural components of our food system? Why is a rational agriculture incompatible with the global food regime? Can transforming our food system transform capitalism? These are questions that can only be addressed by first understanding how capitalism works.

Step-by-Step Projects for Self-Sufficiency: Grow Edibles, Raise Animals, Live Off the Grid, DIY


Black & Decker - 2017
    Whether tackling the garden, raising animals, learning more about alternative energy, or bettering your storage and preservation, Step-by-Step Projects for Self-Sufficiency is the perfect starting point. Step-by-step instructions and photos will guide you through how to make over 60 complete projects. After all, DIY projects are more fun (and generally easier) when you approach them with helpful aides and tools you made yourself. Projects in this new volume include:-A portable chicken ark-Two types of beehives-Solar cookers-Firewood storage-A potato growing box-Hoophouses and greenhouses-Raised planting beds-Rainbarrels-A cider press-Compost bins-Drying racks  With its clear plan drawings, precise instructions and detailed photos, Step-by-step Projects for Self Sufficiency makes DIY easier than ever.

Holistic Goat Care: A Comprehensive Guide to Raising Healthy Animals, Preventing Common Ailments, and Troubleshooting Problems


Gianaclis Caldwell - 2017
    From providing milk and meat for sustenance and fiber and hides for clothing and shelter to carrying packs and clearing brush, there isn't much that goats cannot do. Managing goats successfully requires an understanding of how nature designed them to thrive, including nutritional and psychological needs, as well as how to identify a problem and intercede before it's too late.For more than a decade, Gianaclis Caldwell and her family have operated Pholia Farm Creamery, an off-grid, raw milk goat cheese dairy. In Holistic Goat Care, Caldwell offers readers a comprehensive guide to maintaining a healthy herd of goats, whether they are dairy goats, meat goats, fiber goats, or pet goats.Holistic Goat Care will empower even novice goat owners to confidently diagnose and treat most of the ailments that goats might experience. For the experienced goat farmer, the book offers a depth of insight and approaches to treatment not found in any other book. Caldwell places special emphasis throughout on holistic, natural, and alternative approaches to caring for goats, including information on:Handling and managing goats using their natural instincts as an assetDeveloping good farm management practices such as appropriate housing and fencing systems and manure and mortality managementMaking feeding decisions based on understanding goats' ruminant digestive system and their evolutionary needsGrowing forage and garden crops as feed and utilizing wild browseTroubleshooting health problems based on assessing symptomsImplementing advanced health procedures such as pain control, fecal testing, and transplanting rumen microbes from healthy to sick goatsDiagnosing, treating, and preventing more than 75 common goat ailmentsWhether your herd is two or two hundred, this first-of-its-kind, comprehensive book will help you keep your goats healthy, safe, and productive and give you a deep and enjoyable insight into the wondrous creature that is the goat.

Chasing the Harvest: Migrant Workers in California Agriculture


Gabriel Thompson - 2017
    Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers' grape and lettuce boycotts captured the imagination of the United States in the 1960s and '70s. Yet today, the stories of the more than 800,000 men, women, and children working in California's fields--one third of the nation's agricultural work force --are rarely heard, despite the persistence of wage theft, dangerous working conditions, and uncertain futures. This book of oral histories makes the reality of farm work visible in accounts of hardship, bravery, solidarity, and creativity in California's fields, as real people struggle to win new opportunities for future generations. AMONG THE NARRATORS: Maricruz, a single mother fired from a packing plant after filing a sexual assault complaint against her supervisor. Roberto, a vineyard laborer in the scorching Coachella Valley who became an advocate for more humane working conditions after his teenage son almost died of heatstroke. Oscar, an elementary school teacher in Salinas who wants to free his students from a life in the fields, the fate that once awaited him as a child.

Homegrown Pantry: A Gardener's Guide to Selecting the Best Varieties & Planting the Perfect Amounts for What You Want to Eat Year-Round


Barbara Pleasant - 2017
    In-depth profiles highlight how many plants to grow of each crop for a year s worth of eating, and which storage methods work best for specific varieties. Author Barbara Pleasant culls tips from decades of her own gardening experience and from growers across North America to offer planting, care, and harvesting refreshers for every region and each vegetable."

Country Grit: A Farmoir of Finding Purpose and Love


Scottie Jones - 2017
    While recovering, he became convinced that they needed a change and a simpler way of life, one more connected with nature and with each other. So, driven by a desire to cut ties with a material and convenient suburban life that had left them feeling empty, they bought a peaceful-looking farmhouse on sixty acres in Oregon and said good-bye to everything they knew. But though the grass may look greener, the road to pastural bliss is fraught with financial woes, relentless rural roadblocks, and colossal failures. When the burden becomes almost too much to bear, Scottie hits on the idea of turning a house they initially built for their daughter into a Farm Stay, where people could visit and learn about Leaping Lamb Farm. The Farm Stay becomes the niche that rescues them from foreclosure--having found both a sense of purpose and a sense of place, the couple now finds the means to sustain it. In a world increasingly filled with questions of where our food comes from and dissatisfactions about our modern lives, Country Grit is a story that will resonate with countless people itching to get back to the land. Told with humor and hard-earned wisdom, it is also an account of what small-scale farmers across the country experience everyday and a warning that the farming life is not for everyone.

The Round of a Country Year: A Farmer's Day Book


David Kline - 2017
    Under David’s attentive gaze and in his clear, insightful prose the reader is enveloped in the rhythms of farm life; not only the planting and harvesting of crops throughout the year, but the migration patterns of birds, the health and virility of honeybees left nearly to their own devices, the songs and silences of frogs and toads, the disappearance and resurgence of praying mantises in fields-turned woodlands, the search for monarch butterflies in the milkweed. There’s rhythm in community, too—neighbors gathering to plant potatoes or to maintain an elderly friend’s tomato garden, organic farming conferences and meetings around family dining tables or university panels.At a time when America’s population is being turned toward the benefits of small, local farming practices on our health and our environment, Kline’s daybook offers a striking example of the ways in which we are connected to our environment, and the pleasure we can take in daily work and stewardship.

Mycorrhizal Planet: How Symbiotic Fungi Work with Roots to Support Plant Health and Build Soil Fertility


Michael Phillips - 2017
    These microscopic organisms partner with the root systems of approximately 95 percent of the plants on Earth, and they sequester carbon in much more meaningful ways than human "carbon offsets" will ever achieve. Pick up a handful of old-growth forest soil and you are holding 26 miles of threadlike fungal mycelia, if it could be stretched it out in a straight line. Most of these soil fungi are mycorrhizal, supporting plant health in elegant and sophisticated ways. The boost to green immune function in plants and community-wide networking turns out to be the true basis of ecosystem resiliency. A profound intelligence exists in the underground nutrient exchange between fungi and plant roots, which in turn determines the nutrient density of the foods we grow and eat.Exploring the science of symbiotic fungi in layman's terms, holistic farmer Michael Phillips (author of The Holistic Orchard and The Apple Grower) sets the stage for practical applications across the landscape. The real impetus behind no-till farming, gardening with mulches, cover cropping, digging with broadforks, shallow cultivation, forest-edge orcharding, and everything related to permaculture is to help the plants and fungi to prosper . . . which means we prosper as well.Building soil structure and fertility that lasts for ages results only once we comprehend the nondisturbance principle. As the author says, "What a grower understands, a grower will do." Mycorrhizal Planet abounds with insights into "fungal consciousness" and offers practical, regenerative techniques that are pertinent to gardeners, landscapers, orchardists, foresters, and farmers. Michael's fungal acumen will resonate with everyone who is fascinated with the unseen workings of nature and concerned about maintaining and restoring the health of our soils, our climate, and the quality of life on Earth for generations to come.

Heartwood: The art and science of growing trees for conservation and profit


Rowan Reid - 2017
    In his latest book, Heartwood: The art and science of growing trees for conservation and profit, Rowan proposes a radical new approach to forestry and Landcare that challenges the idea that harvesting trees for timber is always bad for the environment. In fact, using real examples from his own farm and others around Australia and overseas, he proves that cutting down trees for firewood, furniture and building timbers can not only be good for the environment, it can also help pay the cost of large-scale landscape restoration. This book offers landholders, governments and the conservation movement a practical commercial solution to their environmental problems.Signed copies available from the author (Australian only): www.agroforestry.net.au

Praise the Lard: Recipes and Revelations from a Legendary Life in Barbecue


Mike Mills - 2017
    Known as “The Legend,” Mike is a Barbecue Hall-of-Famer, a four-time barbecue World Champion, a three-time Grand World Champion at Memphis in May (the Super Bowl of Swine), and a founder of the Big Apple Block Party. A third-generation barbecuer, Amy is the marketing mind behind the business, a television personality, and industry expert.  Praise the Lard, named after the Mills' popular Southern Illinois cook-off, now in its thirtieth year, dispenses all the secrets of the family’s lifetime of worshipping at the temple of barbecue. At the heart of the book are almost 100 recipes from the family archives: Private Reserve Mustard Sauce, Ain’t No Thang but a Chicken Wing, Pork Belly Bites, and Prime Rib on the Pit, Tangy Pit Beans, and Blackberry Pie. With hundreds food photos, candids, and illustrations, this book is as rich as the Mills’ history.

The Greenhouse and Hoophouse Grower's Handbook: Organic Vegetable Production Using Protected Culture


Andrew Mefferd - 2017
    Why? Because they know and employ best practices for the most profitable crops: tomatoes, eggplant, cucumbers, peppers, leafy greens, lettuce, herbs, and microgreens. The Greenhouse and Hoophouse Grower's Handbook levels the playing field by revealing these practices so that all growers--large and small--can maximize the potential of their protected growing space. Whether growing in a heated greenhouse or unheated hoophouse, this book offers a decision-making framework for how to best manage crops that goes beyond a list of simple do's and don'ts.As senior trial technician for greenhouse crops at Johnny's Selected Seeds, author Andrew Mefferd spent seven years consulting for growers using protected agriculture in a wide variety of climates, soils, and conditions. The Greenhouse and Hoophouse Grower's Handbook brings his experience and expertise to bear in an in-depth guide that will help readers make their investment in greenhouse space worthwhile.Every year, more growers are turning to protected culture to deal with unpredictable weather and to meet out-of-season demand for local food, but many end up spinning their wheels, wasting time and money on unprofitable crops grown in ways that don't make the most of their precious greenhouse space. With comprehensive chapters on temperature control and crop steering, pruning and trellising, grafting, and more, Mefferd's book is full of techniques and strategies that can help farms stay profitable, satisfy customers, and become an integral part of re-localizing our food system. From seed to sale, The Greenhouse and Hoophouse Grower's Handbook is the indispensable resource for protected growing.

In the Shadow of Green Man: My Journey from Poverty and Hunger to Food Security and Hope


Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin - 2017
    All we had were stories. We listened and absorbed them, and found our own place in the narrative.” And what a narrative it is. Join the wonderfully colorful and poetic Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin, or Regi, as he weaves together stories from his upbringing in revolution-torn Guatemala, the vision of a regenerative form of farming which uplifts people, and the wandering fable of the Green Man. The result is an immensely readable, enjoyable journey that informs as it entertains and enlightens. Witnessing firsthand the human suffering caused by unjust and environmentally destructive farming practices set Regi on a path of helping people lift themselves through, of all things, tapping the natural behaviors of the lowly chicken. With the mind of an engineer, the passion of minister, and the depth of a philosopher the author has created not only a wonderful yarn, but a book for our generation asking the questions and providing many of the answers needed by millions. The author is the principal architect of the innovative poultrycentered regenerative agriculture model that is at the heart of Main Street Project’s work. His focus is on the development of multi-level strategies for building regenerative food and agriculture systems that deliver social, economic and ecological benefits.

Agroecology: Science and Politics


Peter M Rosset - 2017
    Agroecology is a solution to these increasingly urgent problems.After decades of being dismissed by mainstream institutions and defended in obscurity by grassroots movements and farmers, agroecology is suddenly in fashion. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization, government ministries and even corporations are jumping on the bandwagon. But, are they pushing the same agroecology as developed by pioneering farmers and scientists and pushed for by peasant social movements, or are they seeking to co-opt the concept and give it different content?Rosset and Altieri, two of the world's leading agroecologists, outline the principles, history and currents of agroecological thought, the scientific evidence for agroecology, the social aspects of bringing agroecology to scale and the contemporary politics of agroecology.

Julie Taboulie's Lebanese Kitchen: 125 Recipes for Fresh and Fabulous Middle Eastern Home Cooking


Julie Ann Sageer - 2017
    Just like in her Emmy-nominated cooking show Cooking with Julie Taboulie, each of her recipes comes with hands-on instructions, tips, and tricks for making homemade Middle Eastern dishes using heaps of fresh, seasonal ingredients. Here you'll find dishes that range from classics like falafel, shawarma, and (of course) taboulie, to warming Bazilla--a stew of tomato, green pea, and lamb--to honey and rosewater-infused desserts.In these 125 recipes, you'll learn how easy it is to make such Lebanese staples as fresh labneh (strained yogurt) and how to put together your own delicious, multi-purpose spice mixes. In addition to the delicious meat and chicken dishes, Lebanese cuisine offers a wide variety of vegetarian, pescatarian, vegan, and gluten-free dishes, usually with no substitutions whatsoever! Every chapter includes a multitude of dishes for eaters of all kinds and preferences, from meat-lovers to veggie-heads and everything in between.

Seasons of Wool Appliqué Folk Art: Celebrate Americana with 12 Projects to Stitch


Rebekah L Smith - 2017
    Presented in a lovely antique color palette, these simple and elegant projects include a journal cover, pillow cover, wallhangings, storage boxes, table rug, and more, perfect for your home or to give as gifts. Includes a basics chapter and an updated chapter on the collection, storage, and use of wool.

The Modern Homesteader’s Guide to Keeping Geese


Kirsten Lie-Nielsen - 2017
    The Modern Homesteader’s Guide to Keeping Geese covers everything you need to know from selecting suitable breeds, feeding, housing, and animal health, to how geese can benefit your land as workers and providers of eggs and meat.

Food Truths from Farm to Table: 25 Surprising Ways to Shop & Eat Without Guilt


Michele Payn - 2017
    Authored by Michele Payn, a leading farm and food advocate with an in-depth understanding of both sides of the plate, this intriguing book helps readers understand how food is really produced, answers food critics, and points out how food marketing and labels are often half-truths or even "less-than-half truths."These 25 food truths enable an understanding of how food is grown, providing a transparent window into today's farming and ranching practices that empowers you to make informed personal choices and determine what is right for your family. Each chapter presents a farm or ranch story, answers questions around a major issue, provides science-based information, and includes a sidebar section of food truths and myths.Readers will gain insights from a food expert who offers a viewpoint that stands in stark contrast to the typical sensationalist and often negative perspective on fashionable food accurate information that will help you to better trust the intentions and processes in farming and ranching. The revelations in this book will simplify food shopping, reduce guilt about being a consumer, and give you the freedom to enjoy your food again."

Basic Fermentation: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Cultural Manipulation (DIY)


Sandor Ellix Katz - 2017
    A great introduction to fermenting foods at home, whether you're looking to expand your kitchen repertoire into exciting new flavors or seeking to make affordable, natural, probiotic food to heal your guts and soothe your soul. Includes clear, straightforward instructions to get you started making anything fermentable, from bread to cheese to yogurt to kimchi to miso to injera to honey wine. Who knew making tasty, healthy, interesting food could be so simple?

Glorious Shade: Dazzling Plants, Design Ideas, and Proven Techniques for Your Shady Garden


Jenny Rose Carey - 2017
    This information-rich, hardworking guide is packed with everything you need to successfully garden in the shadiest corners of a yard. You'll learn how to determine what type of shade youhave and how to choose the right plants for the space. The book also shares the techniques, design and maintenance tips that are key to growing a successful shade garden. Stunning color photographs offer design inspiration and reveal the beauty of shade-loving plants. Glorious Shade is for anyone who wants to turn their shady yard into a relaxing retreat.

Savory Sweet: Simple Preserves from a Northern Kitchen


Beth Dooley - 2017
    Because those seasons can prove especially challenging in the northern heartland, Nielsen s Nordic heritage is handy as she and Dooley show cooks, first-time and experienced canners alike, how to make the most of a short growing season. Their approach combines the brightness and bold flavors of the Nordic cuisines with an emphasis on the local, the practical, and the freshest ingredients to turn each season s produce into a bounty of condiments.From corn salsa to carrot lemon marmalade with ginger and cardamom, crispy pickled red onions to garlic scape pesto with lemon thyme, and caramel apple butter with lemongrass to puttanesca sauce to Fit for a Queen Jam these recipes bring the best of the sweet and the savory to every menu. Low tech, simple, and fast, they eschew hot-water-bath methods in favor of chilling and freezing, keeping flavors and colors bold and bright; and they ease up on sugar to make way for the true savory sweetness of nature s finest food.Savory Sweet is not your grandmother s canning cookbook but it is likely to be your grandchildren s."

Fertile Ground: Scaling Agroecology from the Ground Up


Steven Brescia - 2017
    But it is still not widespread. Fertile Ground offers nine case studies, authored by agroecologists from Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, North America, and Europe, that demonstrate how the endogenous practice of agroecology can be “scaled” so that it is known by more farmers, practiced more deeply, and integrated in planning and policy.

Offal Good: Cooking from the Heart, with Guts


Chris Cosentino - 2017
    But it wasn't always this way, and it certainly shouldn't be. Offal—the organs and the under-heralded parts from tongue to trotter—are some of the most delicious, flavorful, nutritious cuts of meat, and this is your guide to mastering how to cook them. Through both traditional and wildly creative recipes, Chris Cosentino takes you from nose-to-tail, describing the basic prep and best cooking methods for every offal cut from beef, pork, lamb, and poultry. Anatomy class was never so delicious.

Ugly Little Greens: Gourmet Dishes Crafted from Foraged Ingredients


Mia Wasilevich - 2017
    Mia Wasilevich shares the notes and dishes she’s cultivated over the years while working as a professional chef and educational forager. Her detailed profiles and up close pictures (plus possible look-alikes) allow you to safely find special ingredients to bring new and exciting flavors and textures to everyday dishes. And more importantly, the ingredients are unexpectedly some of the most common and forgotten weeds growing right under your nose and waiting to be harvested from your own backyard and surrounding environment.

Biochar for Home Gardeners: A Guide to Producing, Charging, and Applying Biochar to Dramatically Improve Soil and Plant Health


Jeff Fry - 2017
    One powerful agricultural tool that can propel our soil health forwards in a hurry is biochar – a type of char used for agricultural purposes. This deceptively simple substance has unique structural and electrical properties that produce incredible benefits in our gardens. These include as much as doubling water-retention while improving water flow in sandy and clayey soils; swelling soil biology and activating its many functions; and improving nutrient holding-capacity by an eye-watering 20 times that of already healthy, loamy soil. If that were not enough, biochar is also essentially permanent, lasting thousands of years in the soil. Biochar for Home Gardeners details how to make biochar of excellent quality at home with rudimentary equipment; “charge” biochar with nutrients, including how to use it to upgrade compost and make biochar bokashi (a ferment made with various household wastes); crush biochar and apply it to soils for maximum benefit; and, additionally, how to use biochar in animal shelters and feed to improve hygiene and animal health. Biochar is perhaps best known as the magic ingredient that an ancient South American civilization used to transform their hopeless clay ground into one of the richest soils on the planet. If it can do this, properly made and applied biochar is sure to improve gardeners’ yields and the nutritional content of their crops together with heightening the beloved garden-grown aroma and flavor.

The Encyclopedia of Animal Predators: Learn about Each Predator’s Traits and Behaviors; Identify the Tracks and Signs of More Than 50 Predators; Protect Your Livestock, Poultry, and Pets


Janet Vorwald Dohner - 2017
    Fascinating profiles of more than 30 predatory mammals, birds, and reptiles teach farmers, ranchers, homesteaders, and backyard-animal raisers how to prevent their livestock, poultry, and pets from becoming prey. By understanding how predators think and behave, where and how they live, and how they attack and kill prey, you’ll be able to interpret the potential threats surrounding your home. Whether you have a vested interest in protecting your pets and livestock or are simply spellbound by wild predators, this is the book for you!

Sustenance: Writers from BC and Beyond on the Subject of Food


Rachel Rose - 2017
    Punctuated by beautiful local food photographs, interviews with and recipes from some of our top local chefs, each of these short pieces will shock, comfort, praise, entice, or invite reconciliation, all while illuminating our living history through the lens of food. Sustenance is also a community response to the needs of new arrivals or low-income families in our city. The contributors have donated their honoraria to the BC Farmers Market Nutrition Coupon Program. A portion of sales from every book will go towards providing a refugee or low-income family with fresh, locally grown produce, and at the same time will support B.C. farmers, fishers, and gardeners. Award-winning chefs, poets, and writers in Sustenance include:Frank Pabst (Chef, Blue Water Café), Renee Sarojini Saklikar, Mark Winston, Susan Musgrave, Lorna Crozier, Thomas Haas (artisan chocolatier), Meeru Dhalwalla (Chef, Vij’s and Rangoli), Ayelet Tsabari, Joan Kane, Thomas Larson, John Pass, Sarah Leavitt, Amber Dawn, Daphne Marlatt, Carleigh Baker, Russell Thornton, Evelyn Lau, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Brian Brett, Jen Currin and many, many more.

The Aquaponic Farmer: A Complete Guide to Building and Operating a Commercial Aquaponic System


Adrian Southern - 2017
    It details a proven commercial Deep Water Culture system, providing step-by-step design, construction, and management principles, based on actual production numbers from a successful aquaponic farm in British Columbia.

A Bag Worth a Pony: The Art of the Ojibwe Bandolier Bag


Marcia G Anderson - 2017
    A Bag Worth a Pony

Building Natural Ponds: Create a Clean, Algae-free Pond without Pumps, Filters, or Chemicals


Robert Pavlis - 2017
    Hardly the bucolic, natural ecosystem beloved by dragonflies, frogs, and songbirds. The antidote is a natural pond, free of hassle, cost, and complexity and designed as a fully functional ecosystem, ideal for biodiversity, swimming, irrigation, and quiet contemplation. Building Natural Ponds is the first step-by-step guide to designing and building natural ponds that use no pumps, filters, chemicals, or electricity and mimic native ponds in both aesthetics and functionality. Highly illustrated with how-to drawings and photographs, coverage includes: Understanding pond ecosystems and natural algae control Planning, design, siting, and pond aesthetics Step-by-step guidance for construction, plants and fish, and maintenance and trouble shooting Scaling up to large ponds, pools, bogs, and rain gardens. Whether you're a backyard gardener looking to add a small serene natural water feature or a homesteader with visions of a large pond for fish, swimming, and irrigation, Building Natural Ponds is the complete guide to building ponds in tune with nature, where plants, insects, and amphibians thrive in blissful serenity. Robert Pavlis , a Master Gardener with over 40 years of gardening experience, is owner and developer of Aspen Grove Gardens, a six-acre botanical garden featuring over 2,500 varieties of plants. A well-respected speaker and teacher, Robert has published articles in Mother Earth News , Ontario Gardening magazine, the widely read blog GardenMyths.com, which explodes common gardening myths and gardening information site GardenFundamentals.com.

I Am Not a Tractor!: How Florida Farmworkers Took on the Fast Food Giants and Won


Susan L Marquis - 2017
    Susan L. Marquis highlights past abuses workers suffered in Florida's tomato fields: toxic pesticide exposure, beatings, sexual assault, rampant wage theft, and even, astonishingly, modern-day slavery. Marquis unveils how, even without new legislation, regulation, or government participation, these farmworkers have dramatically improved their work conditions.Marquis credits this success to the immigrants from Mexico, Haiti, and Guatemala who formed the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a neuroscience major who takes great pride in the watermelon crew he runs, a leading farmer/grower who was once homeless, and a retired New York State judge who volunteered to stuff envelopes and ended up building a groundbreaking institution. Through the Fair Food Program that they have developed, fought for, and implemented, these people have changed the lives of more than thirty thousand field workers. I Am Not a Tractor! offers a range of solutions to a problem that is rooted in our nation's slave history and that is worsened by ongoing conflict over immigration.

Eat the Beetles!: An Exploration of Our Conflicted Relationship with Insects


David Waltner-Toews - 2017
    Since before recorded history, humans have eaten insects. While many get squeamish at the idea, entomophagy — people eating insects — is a possible way to ensure a sustainable and secure food supply for the eight billion of us on the planet.Once seen as the great enemy of human civilization, destroying our crops and spreading plagues, we now see insects as marvellous pollinators of our food crops and a potential source of commercial food supply. From upscale restaurants where black ants garnish raw salmon to grubs as pub snacks in Paris and Tokyo, from backyard cricket farming to high-tech businesses, Eat the Beetles! weaves these cultural, ecological, and evolutionary narratives to provide an accessible and humorous exploration of entomophagy.

Ecological Forecasting


Michael C. Dietze - 2017
    How can they provide the best available scientific information about what will happen in the future? Ecological Forecasting is the first book to bring together the concepts and tools needed to make ecology a more predictive science.Ecological Forecasting presents a new way of doing ecology. A closer connection between data and models can help us to project our current understanding of ecological processes into new places and times. This accessible and comprehensive book covers a wealth of topics, including Bayesian calibration and the complexities of real-world data; uncertainty quantification, partitioning, propagation, and analysis; feedbacks from models to measurements; state-space models and data fusion; iterative forecasting and the forecast cycle; and decision support.Features case studies that highlight the advances and opportunities in forecasting across a range of ecological subdisciplines, such as epidemiology, fisheries, endangered species, biodiversity, and the carbon cyclePresents a probabilistic approach to prediction and iteratively updating forecasts based on new dataDescribes statistical and informatics tools for bringing models and data together, with emphasis on: Quantifying and partitioning uncertaintiesDealing with the complexities of real-world data Feedbacks to identifying data needs, improving models, and decision supportNumerous hands-on activities in R available online

Holy Crap! I Married a Farmer!


Jolene Brown - 2017
    In these entertaining chapters, you'll discover that juggling farm life with a smile can save your sanity--and your marriage. Who better than Sisters in Agriculture to share experiences about breakdowns and parts runs, family in-laws and farm priorities, money and communication. Their caring hearts, enduring spirits, and witty wisdom will get you through the toughest days on the farm.Inside this book you'll find answers to questions we women on the farm always wondered about but had no one to ask. The stories are filled with insights and real-life reasons to laugh. As one reader shared, "Being married to a farmer is like riding a roller coaster in an amusement park. There will be peaks of joy and celebration...and valleys of stress and frustration. But in Holy Crap! I Married a Farmer! Jolene reminds me that I can enjoy the ride!"