From constructing coops to rearing chicks, you’ll learn everything you need to know to make sure your chickens stay happy and healthy all year round.Which breed of chicken is right for you? What’s the best coop-bedding material? What sort of feed should you use? Let expert chicken keeper Anne Kuo answer these questions—and many others—in The Beginner’s Guide to Raising Chickens.The Beginner’s Guide to Raising Chickens includes: All cooped up—Create the perfect home for raising chickens using detailed backyard coop designs and construction guides. From chickens to eggs—Find out how to pick the right breed, raise chicks, collect eggs, keep your birds safe from predators, and more. Learn to speak bird—Start talking the talk thanks to an extensive glossary of common chicken-keeping terms. Get your own flock started in no time—The Beginner’s Guide to Raising Chickens shows you how.

    From a windowsill to a sprawling backyard, these are all places we can grow vegetables, make homes for animals, and fill our cupboards with canned decadence, all the while flashing our personal style and taste.

    Culled from dozens of respected books from Stackpole, the industry's leader in outdoor adventure, this massive collection of wilderness know-how leaves absolutely nothing to chance when it comes to surviving and thriving in the wilderness—and appreciating every minute of it. Topics include Building Outdoor Shelter, Tracking Animals, Winter Camping, Tying Knots, Orienteering, Reading the Weather, Identifying Edible Plants and Berries, Surviving in the Desert, Bird Watching, Fishing and Ice Fishing, Hunting and Trapping, Canoeing, Kayaking, and White Water Rafting, First Aid, Wild Animals, Cookery, and much more. Useful illustrations and photos throughout make it easy to browse and use. With contributions by the experts at the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) as well as the editors of Stackpole's Discover Nature series, Survival Wisdom & Know-How is the definitive, must-have reference for the great outdoors.

    Long before Whole Foods organic produce was available at your local supermarket, Berry was farming with the purity of food in mind. For the last five decades, Berry has embodied mindful eating through his land practices and his writing. In recognition of that influence, Michael Pollan here offers an introduction to this wonderful collection.Drawn from over thirty years of work, this collection joins bestsellers The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Pollan, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver, as essential reading for anyone who cares about what they eat. The essays address such concerns as: How does organic measure up against locally grown? What are the differences between small and large farms, and how does that affect what you put on your dinner table? What can you do to support sustainable agriculture?A progenitor of the Slow Food movement, Wendell Berry reminds us all to take the time to understand the basics of what we ingest. “Eating is an agriculture act,” he writes. Indeed, we are all players in the food economy.

    He and his wife moved to a seventy-five acre goat farm in a small southern Vermont town, where they planned to make a living raising goats and making cheese. They never looked back. Now Kessler adds to his numerous accomplishments (winner of the 2007 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, 2007 Whiting Award for Writers of Exceptional Promise, and a 2008 Rome Prize) an array of cheeses that have already been highly praised by Artisanal, the renowned cheese restaurant in New York City. In his transformation from staunch urbanite to countrified goat farmer, Kessler explores the rustic roots of so many aspects of Western culture, and how our diet, alphabet, reli- gions, poetry, and economy all grew out of a pastoral setting. With Goat Song, he demonstrates yet another dimension to his writing talent, showcasing his expertise as food writer, in a compelling, beautifully written account of living by nature?s rules.

    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.

    A fresh take on modern homemaking, this is a practical (and sometimes sassy) guide to maximizing your time, effort, and energy in the kitchen and beyond. With a focus on less consumerism, it will teach you how to organize your kitchen and home to make the best use of your time. For those yearning to live a more ecologically minded, grounded lifestyle, this book is full of practical, no-nonsense advice, fabulous recipes, and time- and money-saving techniques.

    With Medicinal Herbs: A Beginner's Guide, Gladstar offers a fresh introduction for a new generation of gardeners and natural health and self-sufficiency enthusiasts.Thirty-three of the most common and versatile healing plants are profiled in depth to get the budding herbalist off on the right foot. Readers will learn how to grow, harvest, prepare, and use each herb. Step-by-step instructions explain how to prepare herbal teas, salves, syrups, tinctures, oils, and liniments to stock the home medicine chest. Simple recipes explore each plant's healing qualities - aloe lotion for poison ivy, dandelion-burdock tincture for sluggish digestion, and lavender-lemon balm tea for stress relief. Gladstar shows how easy it is to make safe, all-natural, low-cost healing remedies for common ailments.

    Author Rosalind Creasy, a landscape designer and leading authority on edible landscaping, provides all the information necessary to plan, plant, and maintain ornamental edible landscapes, with specific designs for all geographic and climatic regions of the country. Drawing on years of research into the most decorative and flavorful species—from the exotic water chestnut to the ever-popular apple—Creasy shows how edibles can form the basis for a beautiful home landscape or can be integrated with traditional ornamentals. An outstanding feature is the 160-page "Encyclopedia of Edibles"—a book in itself—which alphabetically lists more than 120 edible species, with detailed horticultural information, landscaping and culinary uses, seed sources, and recipes. Other valuable features include an abundance of how-to illustrations, photographs, and landscape diagrams designed for beginners and experts alike, plus a list of mail-order nurseries, a climate zone map, and extensive appendices.

    In these beautifully illustrated pages, Kris Bordessa offers DIY lovers an indispensable home reference for sustainability in the 21st century, using tried-and-true advice, 50 enticing recipes, and step-by-step directions for creating fun, cost-efficient projects that will bring out your inner pioneer. Filled with 340 color photographs, this relatable, comprehensive book contains time honored-wisdom and modern know-how for getting back to basics in a beautiful, accessible package.

    But not anymore. With soaring food prices and the increasing popularity of all things domestic and DIY, there’s never been a better time to revisit the centuries-old techniques of preserving food at home.<!--?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /-->This hip, modern handbook is filled with fresh and new ways to preserve nature’s bounty throughout the year. Organized by season and illustrated with beautiful photographs, it offers detailed instructions and recipes for making more than 150 canned, pickled, dried, and frozen foods, as well as 50 inventive recipes for dishes using these foods. Basic information on canning techniques and lively sidebars round out this refreshing take on a classic cooking tradition. Praise for Canning For a New Generation: "A seasonal guide to putting up produce, with innovative recipes that incorporate the fruits (and vegetables) of your labor." -The New York Times

    Healthy soil is teeming with life — not just earthworms and insects, but a staggering multitude of bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms. When we use chemical fertilizers, we injure the microbial life that sustains healthy plants, and thus become increasingly dependent on an arsenal of artificial substances, many of them toxic to humans as well as other forms of life. But there is an alternative to this vicious circle: to garden in a way that strengthens, rather than destroys, the soil food web — the complex world of soil-dwelling organisms whose interactions create a nurturing environment for plants. By eschewing jargon and overly technical language, the authors make the benefits of cultivating the soil food web available to a wide audience, from devotees of organic gardening techniques to weekend gardeners who simply want to grow healthy, vigorous plants without resorting to chemicals.

    In other words, this book may be a lifesaver.Inside you'll find 10 steps to an affordable food storage program plus how to:•Prepare a home "grocery store" and "pharmacy" •Use what you store and store what you use •Store water safely and provide for sanitation needs •Create a first-aid kit, car kit, and 72-hour emergency kit for the whole family •And many more invaluable hints and tips"This clear, concise, step-by-step program is not only affordable and doable, it's essential in these uncertain times. Now, everyone from apartment dwellers to basement owners can store a three-month supply of the essentials, including peace of mind!" — Joni Hilton, author of Once-a-Week Cooking Plan and Cooking Secrets My Mother Never Taught Me

    Breed selection, year-round care and feeding, safe housing, humane handling, and disease prevention and treatment are all addressed.This is the classic, comprehensive, essential reference for all rabbit raisers.

    D. C. Beard explains how to construct a variety of worry-free shelters appropriate to a natural environment that is by turns both friendly and foreboding. Included are a sod house for the lawn, a treetop house, over-water camps, and an American log cabin. Fully recognizing that the Outdoorsman builds a shelter with the intention of inhabiting it, Beard explains how to build hearths and chimneys, notched log ladders, and even how to rig secret locks. Illustrated throughout with instructional line drawings, "Shelters, Shacks and Shanties" harkens back to the can-do spirit of the American frontier and belongs in the knapsack of every modern scout, young and old alike.