Readers will learn about non-toxic methos of controlling mites, breeding strategies, and many other tips and techniques for maintaining healthy hives.

    Whether you want to dabble or immerse yourself completely in the do-it-yourself, back-to-basics lifestyle, Welcome to the Farm is a comprehensive, fully illustrated guide to growing the very best food right in your own backyard. Shaye Elliott takes readers on a journey that teaches them how to harvest baskets full of organic produce, milk a dairy cow (and make butter), plant a homestead orchard, can jams and jellies, and even raise chickens and bees. From her experience running The Elliott Homestead, Shaye provides all the how-to wisdom you need to know about: The benefits of a home gardenThe basics of seed startingBuilding your own greenhouseWhat belongs in the winter gardenCanning, freezing, and dehydrating techniques and recipesThe pros and cons of caged vs. free-change chickensKeeping a dairy cow and what to do with all the milkRaising animals for meatMaking your own cider and wineAnd so much more!Welcome to the Farm is aimed to serve homesteaders and urban-farmers alike, guiding them through the beginning stages of small-area farming and utilizing whatever amount of space they have available for optimal and delicious food production.

    She quit her job, acquired her own bees, built her own hives, harvested honey, earned a certificate in apitherapy, studied wine tasting in order to transfer those skills to honey tasting, and eventually opened her own honey business. Today, Red Bee® Honey sells artisanal honey and honey-related products to shops and restaurants all over the country. More than an inspiring story of one woman's transformative relationship with honeybees (some of nature's most fascinating creatures), Honeybee is also bursting with information about all aspects of bees, beekeeping, and honey? Including life inside the hive; the role of the queen, workers, and drones; pollination and its importance to sustaining all life; the culinary pleasures of honey; hiving and keeping honeybees; the ancient practice of apitherapy, or healing with honey, pollen, and bee venom; and much more. Recipes for food and personal care products appear throughout. Also included is an excellent, one-of-a-kind appendix that lists 75 different honey varietals, with information on provenance, tasting notes, and food-and-wine pairings.

    Livestock expert Carol Ekarius helps you create a viable farm plan, choose suitable livestock, care for your animals’ health, and confidently manage housing, fencing, and feeding. Case studies of successful farmers provide inspiration as you learn everything you need to know to run a prosperous livestock farm and make the lifestyle of your dreams a reality.

    The Quarter-Acre Farm is Warren's account of deciding, despite all resistance, to take control of her family's food choices, get her hands dirty, and create a garden in her suburban yard. It's a story of bugs, worms, rot, and failure; of learning, replanting, harvesting, and eating. The road is long and riddled with mistakes, but by the end of her yearlong experiment, Warren's sons and husband have become her biggest fans, in fact, they're even eager to help harvest (and eat) the beautiful bounty she brings in.Full of tips and recipes to help anyone interested in growing and preparing at least a small part of their diet at home, The Quarter-Acre Farm is a warm, witty tale about family, food, and the incredible gratification that accompanies self-sufficiency.

    As if you were standing by her side in the kitchen, Aliza offers a thorough course on the art of making pasta, from selecting ingredients and mastering different types of doughs to making a range of classic and creative shapes and flavors. This foundation combined with helpful tips from her many years of experience and bits of history on pasta traditions in Italy and around the world make this the only pasta-making book you’ll need.  Making Artisan Pasta features:Recipes for pasta doughs made completely from scratch, with delicious ingredients including buckwheat and whole wheat flour, roasted red pepper, asparagus, squash, porcini mushroom, and even squid ink and chocolateFully illustrated step-by-step instructions for rolling, shaping, and stuffing dough for gnocchi, lasagna, cannelloni, pappardelle, tagliatelle, ravioli, and dozens of other styles of pastaDetailed instructions on how to make the ultimate in pasta: hand-stretched doughChinese pot stickers, Polish pierogi, Turkish manti, and other delectable pastas from beyond its traditional Italian bordersArtisan tips to help anyone, from novice to experienced, make unforgettable pastaMaking Artisan Pasta brings to you the satisfying pleasure of working with your hands using simple tools to create fresh artisan pasta to share with your family and friends.

    Forced into a radical life change, she returned to her native rural Michigan.  There she learned to live on a limited budget while remaining true to her culinary principles of eating well and as locally as possible. In The Feast Nearby, Mather chronicles her year-long project: preparing and consuming three home-cooked, totally seasonal, and local meals a day--all on forty dollars a week.  With insight and humor, Mather explores the confusion and needful compromises in eating locally. She examines why local often trumps organic, and wonders why the USDA recommends white bread, powdered milk, and instant orange drinks as part of its “low-cost” food budget program.  Through local eating, Mather forges connections with the farmers, vendors, and growers who provide her with sustenance. She becomes more closely attuned to the nuances of each season, inhabiting her little corner of the world more fully, and building a life richer than she imagined it could be.  The Feast Nearby celebrates small pleasures: home-roasted coffee, a pantry stocked with home-canned green beans and homemade preserves, and the contented clucking of laying hens in the backyard. Mather also draws on her rich culinary knowledge to present nearly one hundred seasonal recipes that are inspiring, enticing, and economical--cooking goals that don’t always overlap--such as Pickled Asparagus with Lemon, Tarragon, and Garlic; Cider-Braised Pork Loin with Apples and Onions; and Cardamom-Coffee Toffee Bars.  Mather’s poignant, reflective narrative shares encouraging advice for aspiring locavores everywhere, and combines the virtues of kitchen thrift with the pleasures of cooking--and eating--well.

    Eliot Coleman introduces the surprising fact that most of the United States has more winter sunshine than the south of France. He shows how North American gardeners can successfully use that sun to raise a wide variety of traditional winter vegetables in backyard cold frames and plastic covered tunnel greenhouses without supplementary heat. Coleman expands upon his own experiences with new ideas learned on a winter-vegetable pilgrimage across the ocean to the acknowledged kingdom of vegetable cuisine, the southern part of France, which lies on the 44th parallel, the same latitude as his farm in Maine.This story of sunshine, weather patterns, old limitations and expectations, and new realities is delightfully innovative in the best gardening tradition. Four-Season Harvest will have you feasting on fresh produce from your garden all through the winter.To learn more about the possibility of a four-season farm, please visit Coleman's website www.fourseasonfarm.com.

    Even if you have never been a farmer or a gardener, this book covers everything you need to know to get started: buying and saving seeds, starting seedlings, establishing raised beds, soil fertility practices, composting, dealing with pest and disease problems, crop rotation, farm planning, and much more. Because self-suf?ciency is the objective, subjects such as raising backyard chickens and home canning are also covered along with numerous methods for keeping costs down and production high. Materials, tools, and techniques are detailed with photographs, tables, diagrams, and illustrations.

    Logically organized and packed with step photography, this will be the ultimate one-stop resource for both shopping and cooking.Have you ever wished that your kitchen came with instructions? Let the experts at America's most trusted test kitchen show you the ropes in this new illustrated compendium of techniques, tips, tricks, recipes, and reviews for the home cook. This is a handbook for everyone, beginner to expert, that is not only useful but also entertaining, thought-provoking, and utterly unique. It will appeal to longtime fans of the magazine who want to see behind the scenes as well as to novice cooks who want to get everything right in the kitchen from the beginning. Never before has America's Test Kitchen revealed the secrets behind our extensive testing procedures and exacting recipe development process; in this new book, come behind the scenes to see how we pick the best equipment and ingredients and create the most foolproof recipes out there. With dozens of equipment recommendations, hundreds of ingredient entries, mini lessons on basic cooking skills and useful kitchen science, plus illustrated step-by-step instructions for 50 of our most essential recipes.

    She lives in a home not unlike the average home in a neighborhood that is, more or less, typically suburban. What sets her apart from the rest of us is that she thinks more deeply - and in more eloquent detail- about food. In sharing her ponderings, she sets a delightful example for those of us who seek the healthiest, most pleasurable lifestyle within an environment determined to propel us in the opposite direct. Joan is a suburbanite with a green thumb, but also a feisty, defiant spirit with a relentlessly positive outlook.This Organic Life begins with Joan and her husband Alan's trials and tribulations growing vegetables for their own table while coping with careers and a sprawling Victorian house in Congers, New York. Motivated to go "off -the-grid" of the global food system in their later years, the Gussows find and fall in love with a dilapidated Odd Fellows Hall on the banks of the Hudson River. Joan's often hilarious accounts of the "renovation" of the "dream" (some would say "nightmare") house and the creation of their new gardens are spiced by extracts from her own journal, and over thirty wonderful recipes using fresh, seasonal fruits and vegetables.There is also an occasion pontification about a food distribution system run amok! At the heart of This Organic Life is the premise that locally grown food eaten in season makes sense economically, ecologically, and gastronomically. Transporting produce to New York from California -- not to mention Central and South America, Australia, or Europe -- consumes more energy in transit than it yields in calories. (It costs 435 fossil fuel calories to fly a 5-calorie strawberry from California to New York.) Add in the deleterious effects of agribusiness, such as the endless cycle of pesticide, herbicide, and chemical fertilizers; the loss of topsoil from erosion of over-tilled croplands; depleted aquifers and soil salinization from over-irrigation; and the arguments in favor of "this organic life" become overwhelmingly convincing.

    By reflecting on four seasons of activity at his beloved Quail Hill Farm in eastern Long Island, Scott Chaskey offers stirring insight into the connections between land and the human family. Whether writing about the voice of a small wren nesting in the lemon balm or a meadow of oats, millet, and peas rising to silver and green after a fresh rain, this poet-farmer's contagious sense of wonder brings us back to our bond with the soil.

    In FOLKS, THIS AIN'T NORMAL, he discusses how far removed we are from the simple, sustainable joy that comes from living close to the land and the people we love. Salatin has many thoughts on what normal is and shares practical and philosophical ideas for changing our lives in small ways that have big impact.Salatin, hailed by the New York Times as "Virginia's most multifaceted agrarian since Thomas Jefferson [and] the high priest of the pasture" and profiled in the Academy Award nominated documentary Food, Inc. and the bestselling book The Omnivore's Dilemma, understands what food should be: Wholesome, seasonal, raised naturally, procured locally, prepared lovingly, and eaten with a profound reverence for the circle of life. And his message doesn't stop there. From child-rearing, to creating quality family time, to respecting the environment, Salatin writes with a wicked sense of humor and true storyteller's knack for the revealing anecdote. Salatin's crucial message and distinctive voice--practical, provocative, scientific, and down-home philosophical in equal measure--make FOLKS, THIS AIN'T NORMAL a must-read book.

    Whether your goal is to eat healthier, save money, live more sustainably, or a combination of these, Backyard Farming on an Acre (More or Less) can help you get there.Part 1 - Why it's important and what to keep in mind getting started. Part 2 - Gardening tips, foundation, and growing guides. Part 3 - The livestock of a backyard farm and how to raise the animals respectfully. Part 4 - Enjoying the bounty through seasonal eating and preserving the harvest. Part 5- The lost arts of homesteading recaptured with additional crafts and hobbies from the backyard harvest.

    But after years in professional basketball and as an executive for Kentucky Fried Chicken and Procter & Gamble, Allen cashed in his retirement fund for a two-acre plot a half mile away from Milwaukee’s largest public housing project. The area was a food desert with only convenience stores and fast-food restaurants to serve the needs of local residents.In the face of financial challenges and daunting odds, Allen built the country’s preeminent urban farm—a food and educational center that now produces enough vegetables and fish year-round to feed thousands of people. Employing young people from the neighboring housing project and community, Growing Power has sought to prove that local food systems can help troubled youths, dismantle racism, create jobs, bring urban and rural communities closer together, and improve public health. Today, Allen’s organization helps develop community food systems across the country.An eco-classic in the making, The Good Food Revolution is the story of Will’s personal journey, the lives he has touched, and a grassroots movement that is changing the way our nation eats.