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Homegrown and Handmade: A Practical Guide to More Self-Reliant Living
Deborah Niemann - 2011
The incidence of diet-related diseases, including obesity, diabetes, hypertension, cancer, and heart disease, has skyrocketed to unprecedented levels. Whether you have forty acres and a mule or a condo with a balcony, you can do more than you think to safeguard your health, your money, and the planet.Homegrown and Handmade shows how making things from scratch and growing at least some of your own food can help you eliminate artificial ingredients from your diet, reduce your carbon footprint, and create a more authentic life. Whether your goal is increasing your self-reliance or becoming a full-fledged homesteader, it's packed with answers and solutions to help you:Take control of your food supply from seed to plate Raise small and medium livestock for fun, food, and fiber Rediscover traditional skills to meet more of your family's needs than you ever thought possibleThis comprehensive guide to food and fiber from scratch proves that attitude and knowledge is more important than acreage. Written from the perspective of a successful self-taught modern homesteader, this well illustrated, practical, and accessible manual will appeal to anyone who dreams of a simpler life.Deborah Niemann is a homesteader, writer, and self-sufficiency expert who presents extensively on topics including soapmaking, bread baking, cheesemaking, composting, and homeschooling. She and her family raise sheep, pigs, cattle, goats, chickens, and turkeys for meat, eggs, and dairy products, while an organic garden and orchard provides fruit and vegetables.
Projects to Get You Off the Grid: Rain Barrels, Chicken Coops, and Solar Panels
Instructables.com - 2010
Twenty Instructables illustrate just how simple it can be to make your own backyard chicken coop, or turn a wine barrel into a rainwater collector.Illustrated with dozens of full-color photographs per project accompanying easy-to-follow instructions, this Instructables collection utilizes the best that the online community has to offer, turning a far-reaching group of people into a mammoth database churning out ideas to make life better, easier, and in this case, greener, as this volume exemplifies.
Making the Most of Shade: How to Plan, Plant, and Grow a Fabulous Garden That Lightens Up the Shadows
Larry Hodgson - 2005
But how do you get plants to grow in a spot where trees and shrubs hide the sun? In this stunning volume, garden expert Larry Hodgson shows how to create a lush and lovely garden filled with plants that will flourish in the shade.The first part covers the basics of shade gardening, including planning, planting, and problem-solving. Here readers will find out how to use shade-tolerant grasses and groundcovers for the root-filled areas under trees; discover solutions for dry shade and heavy needle and leaf drop; and learn what to do if a tree should fall and a shade garden is suddenly thrust back in the sun. The second part is devoted to an encyclopedia of shade-loving plants.Complete with expert designs for five different kinds of shaded gardens, Making the Most of Shade is a splendid new gardening title by the popular author of Perennials for Every Purpose, which Susan McClure, author of Easy-Care Perennial Gardens, called "a treasure . . . the next best thing to having a friendly expert whispering in your ear as you plan, plant, and perfect your perennial garden."
The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing's Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living
Helen Nearing - 1970
This couple abandoned the city for a rural life with minimal cash and the knowledge of self reliance and good health.
Wisdom of the Last Farmer: Harvesting Legacies from the Land
David Mas Masumoto - 2009
Hailed by The New York Times as a poet of farming, Slow Food activist Masumoto weaves together stories of family and farming, life and death, to reveal age-old wisdom that is fast disappearing--and urgently needed.
Dirt to Soil: One Family's Journey Into Regenerative Agriculture
Gabe Brown - 2018
But as a series of weather-related crop disasters put Brown and his wife, Shelly, in desperate financial straits, they started making bold changes to their farm. Brown--in an effort to simply survive--began experimenting with new practices he'd learned about from reading and talking with innovative researchers and ranchers. As he and his family struggled to keep the farm viable, they found themselves on an amazing journey into a new type of farming: regenerative agriculture.
Becoming Native to This Place
Wes Jackson - 1992
Exploding the tenets of industrial agriculture, Jackson, a respected advocate for sustainable practices and the founder of The Land Institute, seeks to integrate food production with nature in a way that sustains both.Foreword / Richard C. Edwards --1. The problem --2. Visions and assumptions --3. Science and nature --4. Nature as measure --5. Becoming native to our places --6. Developing the courage of our convictions
Planting: A New Perspective
Piet Oudolf - 2013
With Planting, designers and home gardeners can recreate these plant-rich, beautiful gardens that support biodiversity and nourish the human spirit.An intimate knowledge of plants is essential to the success of modern landscape design, and Planting shares Oudolf’s considerable understanding of plant ecology, explaining how plants behave in different situations, what goes on underground, and which species make good neighbors. Extensive plant charts and planting plans will help you choose plants for their structure, color, and texture. A detailed directory shares details like each plant’s life expectancy, the persistence of its seedheads, and its propensity to self-seed.
Odd Bits: How to Cook the Rest of the Animal
Jennifer McLagan - 2011
Historically, these so-called odd bits have had a regular place on our plates and in our culinary repertoires. In fact, many are considered delicacies and routinely appear in regional specialties. So why do we eschew and waste valuable protein? When have our sensibilities become so squeamish? In short—when did we decide offal had become awful? Jennifer McLagan, award-winning author of Bones and Fat, is on a crusade to bring the nose-to-tail style of cooking and eating out of the closet and back onto to our dining tables. Her mission: restoring our respect for the whole animal, developing a taste for its lesser known parts, and learning how to approach them in the kitchen as confidently as we would a steak or a burger. Serious food lovers will delight in the sheer variety of the dishes that await, ranging from simple to challenging: • Headcheese for the Unconvinced• Veal Cheeks with Swiss Chard and Olives• Cheese and Just a Little Brain Fritters• Lamb Neck with Quince and Turnip• Brisket Braised with Caramelized Onions and Chile• Sweetbreads with Morels and Fresh Fava Beans• Moroccan-Style Braised Heart• Minted Tripe and Pea Salad• Wild Boar Shanks with Cranberries and Chocolate• Bone Marrow and Mushroom Custard Much more than a cookbook, Odd Bits delves into the rich geographical, historical, and religious roles of these unusual meats. McLagan’s enthusiasm for her subject is contagious, and with her insight and humor will convert even non-believers to the pleasure of odd bits.
Change Comes to Dinner: How Vertical Farmers, Urban Growers, and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How America Eats
Katherine Gustafson - 2012
A fascinating exploration of America's food innovators, that gives us hopeful alternatives to the industrial food system described in works like Michael Pollan's bestselling Omnivore's Dilemma Change Comes to Dinner takes readers into the farms, markets, organizations, businesses and institutions across America that are pushing for a more sustainable food system in America.Gustafson introduces food visionaries like Mark Lilly, who turned a school bus into a locally-sourced grocery store in Richmond, Virginia; Gayla Brockman, who organized a program to double the value of food stamps used at Kansas City, Missouri, farmers' markets; Myles Lewis and Josh Hottenstein, who started a business growing vegetables in shipping containers using little water and no soil; and Tony Geraci, who claimed unused land to create the Great Kids Farm, where Baltimore City public school students learn how to grow food and help Geraci decide what to order from local farmers for breakfast and lunch at the city schools.Change Comes to Dinner is a smart and engaging look into America's food revolution.
Neil Sperry's Complete Guide to Texas Gardening
Neil Sperry - 1982
#4 on Publishers Weekly's Bestselling Gardening Books list! This new, completely revised edition has over 500 new photographs, 400 new illustrations, 400 new plants and trees, the latest pest control recommendations, fruit and vegetable recommendations, new tips and plants specifically for Southern Texas, plus everything in the first edition.
The Straw Bale House
David A. Bainbridge - 1994
Welcome to the straw bale house! Whether you build an entire house or something more modest-a home office or studio, a retreat cabin or guest cottage-plastered straw bale construction is an exceptionally durable and inexpensive option. What's more, it's fun, because the technique is easy to learn and easy to do yourself. And the resulting living spaces are unusually quiet and comfortable.The Straw Bale Housedescribes the many benefits of building with straw bales:super insulation, with R-values as high as R-50 good indoor air quality and noise reduction a speedy construction process construction costs as low as $10-per-square-foot use of natural and abundant renewable resources a better solution than burning agricultural waste straw, which creates tons of air pollutants
Grass, Soil, Hope: A Journey Through Carbon Country
Courtney White - 2014
Fix creeks. Eat meat from pasture-raised animals.Scientists maintain that a mere 2 percent increase in the carbon content of the planet's soils could offset 100 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions going into the atmosphere. But how could this be accomplished? What would it cost? Is it even possible?Yes, says author Courtney White, it is not only possible, but essential for the long-term health and sustainability of our environment and our economy.Right now, the only possibility of large-scale removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere is through plant photosynthesis and related land-based carbon sequestration activities. These include a range of already existing, low-tech, and proven practices: composting, no-till farming, climate-friendly livestock practices, conserving natural habitat, restoring degraded watersheds and rangelands, increasing biodiversity, and producing local food.In Grass, Soil, Hope, the author shows how all these practical strategies can be bundled together into an economic and ecological whole, with the aim of reducing atmospheric CO2 while producing substantial co-benefits for all living things. Soil is a huge natural sink for carbon dioxide. If we can draw increasing amounts carbon out of the atmosphere and store it safely in the soil then we can significantly address all the multiple challenges that now appear so intractable.
Chicken Coops: 45 Building Ideas for Housing Your Flock
Judy Pangman - 2006
Judy Pangman presents how-to drawings and conceptual plans for 45 coops — from the strictly practical to flights of fancy — guaranteed to meet the needs of every bird owner, however big or small your flock may be. Color photographs and innovative suggestions fill this encouraging guide, while lively anecdotes profile an array of coop builders and their various construction methods. Start building the coop of your chickens’ dreams!
Grow Your Own Veg
Carol Klein - 2007
'Grow Your Own Veg' builds upon the information covered in the TV series and provides all the practical know-how to growing your own vegetables, from preparing a plot, to growing any of the 40 featured food plants.