Let the Chicken Whisperer (poultry personality Andy Schneider) teach you everything he knows…and everything you need to know…about raising a backyard flock! Ditch the super-technical manuals and enjoy Andy's unique, common-sense perspective in The Chicken Whisperer's Guide to Keeping Chickens. This fun, comprehensive guide is a perfect fit for your busy lifestyle.Inside, you’ll learn:—The Benefits of a Backyard Chicken Flock—So You're Eggspecting: The Art of Incubation— The Art of Brooding—Home Sweet Home: Coops & Runs—Nutrition, Health, and Wellness…and much more!

    The Suburban Micro-Farm will show you how to grow healthy food for your table in only 15 minutes a day, proving that you can have a garden even on a limited schedule. With tips for creating an edible and ecologically friendly landscape, learn how to garden while maintaining aesthetics. You'll find simple tricks for growing food even in the worst yards. Worried about follow-through? This book is a gold mine of life hacks, guides, and tools to help you reap a harvest as well as a sense of accomplishment for your efforts.

    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.

    Food in America is cheap and abundant, yet the vast majority of it is diminished in terms of flavor and nutrition, anonymous and mysterious after being shipped thousands of miles and passing through inscrutable supply chains, and controlled by multinational corporations. In our system of globalized food commodities, convenience replaces quality and a connection to the source of our food. Most of us know almost nothing about how our food is grown or produced, where it comes from, and what health value it really has. It is food as pure corporate commodity. We all deserve much better than that. In The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, author Sandor Ellix Katz (Wild Fermentation, Chelsea Green 2003) profiles grassroots activists who are taking on Big Food, creating meaningful alternatives, and challenging the way many Americans think about food. From community-supported local farmers, community gardeners, and seed saving activists, to underground distribution networks of contraband foods and food resources rescued from the waste stream, this book shows how ordinary people can resist the dominant system, revive community-based food production, and take direct responsibility for their own health and nutrition.

    They have most of the usual modern conveniences: fridge, freezer, washer, computer, cell phone, hot tub, vacuum, hair dryer, flat screen TV with surround sound...and they do it all without plugging into the power grid. Their house is wood-heated, their fuel is non-petrol; they grow their own food, put up their harvest, make their own wine, and drop fresh canned peaches into the solar-powered blender for the morning smoothies... It's a simple life that works: zero waste, total recycling, and no “unnecessary necessities.” Others have done this, but the Carns' are doing it in such a dramatic, inventive way that people flock to their astonishing Stone Camp home to learn Ted's secrets. More than a dozen universities and colleges in the Tri-State/Mid-Atlantic area bring professors and students to Stone Camp every year to observe first-hand the remarkable lifestyle of Ted and Kathy Carns. Off...On Our Own is Ted's manual for living off-grid, told with Mark Twainesque humor and irreverence: how he created the various systems that power the Stone Camp (includes a how-to chapter)...and what he thinks about oil, self-reliance, waste, nature and reducing one's carbon footprint to walk more gently on the earth. The book is illustrated throughout with more than 60 black and white photos.

    And while mastery of the classical language may not be a prerequisite for pruning perennials, all gardeners stand to benefit from learning a bit of Latin and its conventions in the field. Without it, they might buy a Hellebores foetidus and be unprepared for its fetid smell, or a Potentilla reptans with the expectation that it will stand straight as a sentinel rather than creep along the ground.An essential addition to the gardener’s library, this colorful, fully illustrated book details the history of naming plants, provides an overview of Latin naming conventions, and offers guidelines for pronunciation. Readers will learn to identify Latin terms that indicate the provenance of a given plant and provide clues to its color, shape, fragrance, taste, behavior, functions, and more.  Full of expert instruction and practical guidance, Latin for Gardeners will allow novices and green thumbs alike to better appreciate the seemingly esoteric names behind the plants they work with, and to expertly converse with fellow enthusiasts. Soon they will realize that having a basic understanding of Latin before trips to the nursery or botanic garden is like possessing some knowledge of French before traveling to Paris; it enriches the whole experience.

    The Small-Scale Poultry Flock offers a practical and integrative model for working with chickens and other domestic fowl, based entirely on natural systems.Readers will find information on growing (and sourcing) feed on a small scale, brooding (and breeding) at home, and using poultry as insect and weed managers in the garden and orchard. Ussery's model presents an entirely sustainable system that can be adapted and utilized in a variety of scales, and will prove invaluable for beginner homesteaders, growers looking to incorporate poultry into their farm, or poultry farmers seeking to close their loop. Ussery offers extensive information on:The definition of an integrated poultry flock (imitation of natural systems, integrating patterns, and closing the circle)Everything you need to know about your basic chicken (including distinctive points about anatomy and behavior that are critical to management) Extended information on poultry health and holistic health care, with a focus on preventionPlanning your flock (flock size, choosing breeds, fowl useful for egg vs. meat production, sourcing stock)How to breed and brood the flock (including breeding for genetic conservation), including the most complete guide to working with broody hens available anywhereMaking and mixing your own feed (with tips on equipment, storage, basic ingredients, technique, grinding and mixing)Providing more of the flock's feed from sources grown or self-foraged on the homestead or farm, including production of live protein feeds using earthworms and soldier grubsUsing poultry to increase soil fertility, control crop damaging insects, and to make compost-including systems for pasturing and for tillage of cover crops and weedsRecipes for great egg and poultry dishes (including Ussery's famous chicken stock!)And one of the best step-by-step poultry butchering guides available, complete with extensive illustrative photos.No other book on raising poultry takes an entirely whole-systems approach, or discusses producing homegrown feed and breeding in such detail. This is a truly invaluable guide that will lead farmers and homesteaders into a new world of self-reliance and enjoyment.

    Our Modern Way series of six books has sold more than 1,000,000 copies. In an effort to provide readers with the best how-to animal books on the market we are completely updating all six Modern Way titles and reintroducing them as part of our Guide to Raising series. Written by experts, these guides give novice and experienced livestock farmers all they need to know to successfully keep and profit from animals. Each book includes information on selection, housing, space requirements, breeding and birthing techniques, feeding, behavior, and health concerns and remedies for illness. The books also address the business of raising animals -- processing meat, milk, eggs, and more. The authors were chosen not only for their expertise but also for their ability to explain the ins and outs of animal husbandry in an inviting and authoritative manner.Whether readers are ready to start an entire herd or flock or are considering purchasing their first animal, Storey's Guide to Raising series offers vital information; each book is an indispensable reference.

    Our bodies, thoughts, minds, and spirits are affected by the whole of nature, and they affect this whole in return. In this time of crisis, how can we best live upon our imperiled, beloved earth?Award-winning writer Lyanda Lynn Haupt’s highly personal new book is a brilliant invitation to live with the earth in both simple and profound ways—from walking barefoot in the woods and reimagining our relationship with animals and trees, to examining the very language we use to describe and think about nature. She invokes rootedness as a way of being in concert with the wilderness—and wildness—that sustains humans and all of life.In the tradition of Rachel Carson, Elizabeth Kolbert, and Mary Oliver, Haupt writes with urgency and grace, reminding us that at the crossroads of science, nature, and spirit we find true hope. Each chapter provides tools for bringing our unique gifts to the fore and transforming our sense of belonging within the magic and wonder of the natural world.

    John J. Mettler Jr. provides easy-to-follow instructions that walk you through every step of the slaughtering and butchering process, as well as plenty of advice on everything from how to dress game in a field to salting, smoking, and curing techniques. You’ll soon be enjoying the satisfyingly superior flavors that come with butchering your own meat.

    Mendel in the Kitchen provides a clear and balanced picture of this tangled, tricky (and very timely) topic.Any farmer you talk to could tell you that we've been playing with the genetic makeup of our food for millennia, carefully coaxing nature to do our bidding. The practice officially dates back to Gregor Mendel--who was not a renowned scientist, but a 19th century Augustinian monk. Mendel spent many hours toiling in his garden, testing and cultivating more than 28,000 pea plants, selectively determining very specific characteristics of the peas that were produced, ultimately giving birth to the idea of heredity--and the now very common practice of artificially modifying our food.But as science takes the helm, steering common field practices into the laboratory, the world is now keenly aware of how adept we have become at tinkering with nature--which in turn has produced a variety of questions. Are genetically modified foods really safe? Will the foods ultimately make us sick, perhaps in ways we can't even imagine? Isn't it genuinely dangerous to change the nature of nature itself?Nina Fedoroff, a leading geneticist and recognized expert in biotechnology, answers these questions, and more. Addressing the fear and mistrust that is rapidly spreading, Federoff and her co-author, science writer Nancy Brown, weave a narrative rich in history, technology, and science to dispel myths and misunderstandings.In the end, Fedoroff arues, plant biotechnology can help us to become better stewards of the earth while permitting us to feed ourselves and generations of children to come. Indeed, this new approach to agriculture holds the promise of being the most environmentally conservative way to increase our food supply.

    But because of that, the banana we love is dangerously susceptible to a pathogen that might wipe them out. That's the story of our food today: Modern science has brought us produce in perpetual abundance once-rare fruits are seemingly never out of season, and we breed and clone the hardiest, best-tasting varieties of the crops we rely on most. As a result, a smaller proportion of people on earth go hungry today than at any other moment in the last thousand years, and the streamlining of our food supply guarantees that the food we buy, from bananas to coffee to wheat, tastes the same every single time. Our corporate food system has nearly perfected the process of turning sunlight, water and nutrients into food. But our crops themselves remain susceptible to the nature's fury. And nature always wins. Authoritative, urgent, and filled with fascinating heroes and villains from around the world, Never Out of Season is the story of the crops we depend on most and the scientists racing to preserve the diversity of life, in order to save our food supply, and us.

    From rural outposts to city streets, they are sowing, growing, selling, and eating food produced close to home--and they are crying out for agricultural reform. All this has made "local food" into everything from a movement buzzword to the newest darling of food trendsters.But now it's time to take the conversation to the next level. That's exactly what Philip Ackerman-Leist does in Rebuilding the Foodshed, in which he refocuses the local-food lens on the broad issue of rebuilding regional food systems that can replace the destructive aspects of industrial agriculture, meet food demands affordably and sustainably, and be resilient enough to endure potentially rough times ahead.Changing our foodscapes raises a host of questions. How far away is local? How do you decide the size and geography of a regional foodshed? How do you tackle tough issues that plague food systems large and small--issues like inefficient transportation, high energy demands, and rampant food waste? How do you grow what you need with minimum environmental impact? And how do you create a foodshed that's resilient enough if fuel grows scarce, weather gets more severe, and traditional supply chains are hampered?Showcasing some of the most promising, replicable models for growing, processing, and distributing sustainably grown food, this book points the reader toward the next stages of the food revolution. It also covers the full landscape of the burgeoning local-food movement, from rural to suburban to urban, and from backyard gardens to large-scale food enterprises.

    Color photographs and line drawings help you identify and learn about the fascinating plants of the Pacific Northwest coast. Engaging notes on each species describe aboriginal and other local uses of plants for food, medicine and implements, along with the unique characteristics of each plant and name origins.

    Department of Agriculture. King traveled to Asia in the early 1900s to learn how farmers in China, Korea, and Japan were able to achieve successful harvests century after century without exhausting the soil — one of their most valuable natural resources. This book is the result of his extraordinary mission.A fascinating study of waste-free methods of cultivation, this work reveals the secrets of ancient farming methods and, at the same time, chronicles the travels and observations of a remarkable man. A well-trained observer who studied the actual conditions of life among agricultural peoples, King provides intriguing glimpses of Japan, China, Manchuria, and Korea; customs of the common people; the utilization of waste; methods of irrigation, reforestation, and land reclamation; the cultivation of rice, silk, and tea; and related topics.Enhanced with more than 240 illustrations (most of them photographs), this book represents an invaluable resource for organic gardeners, farmer, and conservationists. It remains "one of the richest sources of information about peasant agriculture [and] one of the pioneer books on organic farming." — The LastWhole Earth Catalog.