Download or read book Farm Land s Back to the Land written by Freddie Pikovsky and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A spectacular treehouse suspended above a lush forest. A cozy cabin perched on a mountainside. A small farm growing heirloom vegetables in the high desert. These are the extraordinary stories of the modern-day back-to-the-land-movement, a movement that embraces slow living, sustainability, and the value of doing things with your own two hands. Here are remarkable narratives, essential how-tos, and hundreds of breathtaking photographs from people who have embraced lives of adventure in wild places. Delivered in a handsome volume that inspires feelings of wanderlust, this book is a must-have for outdoor enthusiasts and anyone who has ever dreamed of escaping to a simpler way of life.
Download or read book Back to the Land written by Dona Brown and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many, “going back to the land” brings to mind the 1960s and 1970s—hippie communes and the Summer of Love, The Whole Earth Catalog and Mother Earth News. More recently, the movement has reemerged in a new enthusiasm for locally produced food and more sustainable energy paths. But these latest back-to-the-landers are part of a much larger story. Americans have been dreaming of returning to the land ever since they started to leave it. In Back to the Land, Dona Brown explores the history of this recurring impulse. ? Back-to-the-landers have often been viewed as nostalgic escapists or romantic nature-lovers. But their own words reveal a more complex story. In such projects as Gustav Stickley’s Craftsman Farms, Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Broadacre City,” and Helen and Scott Nearing’s quest for “the good life,” Brown finds that the return to the farm has meant less a going-backwards than a going-forwards, a way to meet the challenges of the modern era. Progressive reformers pushed for homesteading to help impoverished workers get out of unhealthy urban slums. Depression-era back-to-the-landers, wary of the centralizing power of the New Deal, embraced a new “third way” politics of decentralism and regionalism. Later still, the movement merged with environmentalism. To understand Americans’ response to these back-to-the-land ideas, Brown turns to the fan letters of ordinary readers—retired teachers and overworked clerks, recent immigrants and single women. In seeking their rural roots, Brown argues, Americans have striven above all for the independence and self-sufficiency they associate with the agrarian ideal. Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association of School Librarians
Download or read book We Wanted a Farm written by Maurice G. Kains and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2013-06-03 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this engaging and informative memoir, the author of the classic Five Acres and Independence relates his family's experiences in realizing a dream of establishing and maintaining their own small farm.
Download or read book The Lean Farm written by Ben Hartman and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2015 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A practical, systems-based approach for a more sustainable farming operation To many people today, using the words "factory" and "farm" in the same sentence is nothing short of sacrilege. In many cases, though, the same sound business practices apply whether you are producing cars or carrots. Author Ben Hartman and other young farmers are increasingly finding that incorporating the best new ideas from business into their farming can drastically cut their wastes and increase their profits, making their farms more environmentally and economically sustainable. By explaining the lean system for identifying and eliminating waste and introducing efficiency in every aspect of the farm operation, The Lean Farm makes the case that small-scale farming can be an attractive career option for young people who are interested in growing food for their community. Working smarter, not harder, also prevents the kind of burnout that start-up farmers often encounter in the face of long, hard, backbreaking labor. Lean principles grew out of the Japanese automotive industry, but they are now being followed on progressive farms around the world. Using examples from his own family's one-acre community-supported farm in Indiana, Hartman clearly instructs other small farmers in how to incorporate lean practices in each step of their production chain, from starting a farm and harvesting crops to training employees and selling goods. While the intended audience for this book is small-scale farmers who are part of the growing local food movement, Hartman's prescriptions for high-value, low-cost production apply to farms and businesses of almost any size or scale that hope to harness the power of lean in their production processes.
Download or read book Farming While Black written by Leah Penniman and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2018 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Farming While Black is the first comprehensive "how to" guide for aspiring African-heritage growers to reclaim their dignity as agriculturists and for all farmers to understand the distinct, technical contributions of African-heritage people to sustainable agriculture. At Soul Fire Farm, author Leah Penniman co-created the Black and Latino Farmers Immersion (BLFI) program as a container for new farmers to share growing skills in a culturally relevant and supportive environment led by people of color. Farming While Black organizes and expands upon the curriculum of the BLFI to provide readers with a concise guide to all aspects of small-scale farming, from business planning to preserving the harvest. Throughout the chapters Penniman uplifts the wisdom of the African diasporic farmers and activists whose work informs the techniques described--from whole farm planning, soil fertility, seed selection, and agroecology, to using whole foods in culturally appropriate recipes, sharing stories of ancestors, and tools for healing from the trauma associated with slavery and economic exploitation on the land. Woven throughout the book is the story of Soul Fire Farm, a national leader in the food justice movement." --
Download or read book Going Over Home written by Charles Thompson, Jr. and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-03 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Booklist Editors’ Choice “Best Books of 2019” An intimate portrait of the joys and hardships of rural life, as one man searches for community, equality, and tradition in Appalachia Charles D. Thompson, Jr. was born in southwestern Virginia into an extended family of small farmers. Yet as he came of age he witnessed the demise of every farm in his family. Over the course of his own life of farming, rural education, organizing, and activism, the stories of his home place have been his constant inspiration, helping him identify with the losses of others and to fight against injustices. In Going Over Home, Thompson shares revelations and reflections, from cattle auctions with his grandfather to community gardens in the coal camps of eastern Kentucky, racial disparities of white and Black landownership in the South to recent work with migrant farm workers from Latin America. In this heartfelt first-person narrative, Thompson unpacks our country’s agricultural myths and addresses the history of racism and wealth inequality and how they have come to bear on our nation’s rural places and their people.
Download or read book Carving Out a Living on the Land written by Emmet Van Driesche and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2019 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When he first envisioned becoming a farmer, author Emmet Van Driesche never imagined his main crop would be Christmas trees, nor that such a tree farm could be more of a managed forest than the conventional grid of perfectly sheared trees. Carving Out a Living on the Land tells the story of how Van Driesche navigated changing life circumstances, took advantage of unexpected opportunities, and leveraged new and old skills to piece together an economically viable living, while at the same time respecting the land's complex ecological relationships. From spoon carving to scything, coppicing to wreath-making, Carving Out a Living on the Land proves that you don't need acres of expensive bottomland to start your land-based venture, but rather the creativity and vision to see what might be done with that rocky section or ditch or patch of trees too small to log. You can lease instead of buy; build flexible, temporary structures rather than sink money into permanent ones; and take over an existing operation rather than start from scratch. What matters are your unique circumstances, talents, and interests, which when combined with what the land is capable of producing, can create a fulfilling and meaningful farming life.
Download or read book Back from the Land written by Eleanor Agnew and published by Ivan R. Dee Publisher. This book was released on 2004 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recounts the back-to-the-land experiences of the idealists of the 1970s whose attempts to find a simpler life often led to disillusion and an eventual return to a middle-class lifestyle.
Download or read book Finding Good Farmland written by Ann Larkin Hansen and published by Storey Publishing. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Buying your first farm can be a challenge. This practical guide contains all of the information you need to have before purchasing farmland, covering everything from the characteristics of the land (soil type, slope, water sources, drainage) and the surrounding area to permits, codes, taxes, roads, loans, mortgages, government assistance programs, and more. Checklists and questionnaires are included to help you decide exactly what you need and how to find it.
Download or read book Clearing Land written by Jane Brox and published by North Point Press. This book was released on 2005-09-14 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though few of us now live close to the soil, the world we inhabit has been sculpted by our long national saga of settlement. At the heart of our identity lies the notion of the family farm, as shaped by European history and reshaped by the vast opportunities of the continent. It lies at the heart of Jane Brox's personal story, too: she is the daughter of immigrant New England farmers whose way of life she memorialized in her first two books but has not carried on. In this clear-eyed, lyrical account, Brox twines the two narratives, personal and historical, to explore the place of the family farm as it has evolved from the pilgrims' brutal progress at Plymouth to the modern world, where much of our food is produced by industrial agriculture while the small farm is both marginalized and romanticized. In considering the place of the farm, Brox also considers the rise of textile cities in America, which encroached not only upon farms and farmers but upon the sense of commonality that once sustained them; and she traces the transformation of the idea of wilderness--and its intricate connection to cultivation--which changed as our ties to the land loosened, as terror of the wild was replaced by desire for it. Exploring these strands with neither judgment nor sentimentality, Brox arrives at something beyond a biography of the farm: a vivid depiction of the half-life it carries on in our collective imagination.
Download or read book Clearing written by Wendell Berry and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P. This book was released on 1977 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sequence of poems in which Berry writes of the land he and his wife hold in trust--a farm they have tended for years and a new homestead they recently rescued from ecological disaster.
Download or read book The Law of the Land written by John Opie and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Law of the Land John Opie argues that American agriculture has been and still is controlled by erroneous and harmful historical myths. Contrary to public opinion and textbook gospel, public land policy has often worked against the independent family farmer. The public land survey and sales system, going back to 1785 and covering the western two-thirds of the United States, was supposed to be the most equitable means of making land available to small farmers. Instead, this system encouraged the transfer of land into the hands of those involved primarily in speculation and the amassing of huge profits. The small, cash-poor farmer was the loser, but was still touted as the bulwark of private enterprise. The small farmer's position was further weakened by other systems of public land distribution that favored the railroads, speculators, and state and territorial claims, to cite some examples. The Law of the Land reveals the extent ot which government actions undermined or competed with the old survey and sale system. Ironically, only major federal interventions, including the Reclamation Act in 1902 and the formation of the Soil Conservation Service in 1935, could help the independent farmer. Opie turns his attention to new programs for the protection of farmland, which are often directed toward correction or even removal of the two-hundred-year-old land survey system and its basis in private property rights. He discusses new priorities and new planning that includes farmland preserves and controlled used and development through zoning and tax plans. The Law of the Land ends on a note of urgency. The survival of the independent family farm is at stake and a good deal more.
Download or read book Call of the Reed Warbler written by Charles Massy and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2018-08-31 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Charles Massy has written a definitive masterpiece that takes its place along with the writings of Aldo Leopold, Wendell Berry, Masanobu Fukuoka, Humberto Maturana, and Michael Pollan. No work has more brilliantly defined regenerative agriculture and the breadth of its restorative impact upon human health, biodiversity, climate, and ecological intelligence." --Paul Hawken In Call of the Reed Warbler, Charles Massy explores regenerative agriculture and the vital connection between our soil and our health. It is the story of how a grassroots revolution—a true underground insurgency—can save the planet, help reduce and reverse climate change, 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. With evocative stories, he shows how other innovative and courageous farmers are finding a new way. At stake is not only a revolution in human health and in our communities, but the very survival of the planet. For farmers, backyard gardeners, food buyers, health workers, policy makers, and public leaders alike, Call of the Reed Warbler offers a tangible path forward and a powerful and moving paean of hope. It’s not too late to regenerate the earth. Call of the Reed Warbler shows the way forward for the future of our food supply, our planet, and our health.
Download or read book Who Gets to Go Back To the Land written by Valerie Padilla Carroll and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2022-12 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Who Gets to Go Back-to-the-Land?, Valerie Padilla Carroll examines a variety of media from the last century that proselytized self-sufficiency as a solution to the economic instability, environmental destruction, and perceived disintegration of modern America. In the early twentieth century, books already advocated an escape for the urban, white-collar male. The suggestion became more practical during the Great Depression, and magazines pushed self-sufficiency lifestyles. By the 1970s, the idea was reborn in newsletters and other media as a radical response to a damaged world, allowing activists to promote the simple life as environmental, gender, and queer justice. At the century's end, a great variety of media promoted self-sufficiency as the solution to a different set of problems, from survival at the millennium to wanderlust of millennials. Nevertheless, these utopian narratives are written overwhelmingly for a particular audience--one that is white, male, and white-collar. Padilla Carroll's archival research of the books, newspapers, magazines, newsletters, websites, blogs, and videos promoting the life of the agrarian smallholder illuminates how embedded race, class, gender, and heteronormative dogmas in these texts reinforce dominant power ideologies and ignore the experiences of marginalized people. Still, Padilla Carroll also highlights how those left out have continued to demand inclusion by telling their own stories of self-sufficiency, rewriting and reimagining the movement to be collaborative, inclusive, and rooted in both human and ecological justice.
Download or read book Wilding written by Isabella Tree and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2018-05-03 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘A poignant, practical and moving story of how to fix our broken land, this should be conservation's salvation; this should be its future; this is a new hope’ – Chris Packham In Wilding, Isabella Tree tells the story of the ‘Knepp experiment’, a pioneering rewilding project in West Sussex, using free-roaming grazing animals to create new habitats for wildlife. Part gripping memoir, part fascinating account of the ecology of our countryside, Wilding is, above all, an inspiring story of hope. Winner of the Richard Jefferies Society and White Horse Book Shop Literary Prize. Forced to accept that intensive farming on the heavy clay of their land at Knepp was economically unsustainable, Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell made a spectacular leap of faith: they decided to step back and let nature take over. Thanks to the introduction of free-roaming cattle, ponies, pigs and deer – proxies of the large animals that once roamed Britain – the 3,500 acre project has seen extraordinary increases in wildlife numbers and diversity in little over a decade. Extremely rare species, including turtle doves, nightingales, peregrine falcons, lesser spotted woodpeckers and purple emperor butterflies, are now breeding at Knepp, and populations of other species are rocketing. The Burrells’ degraded agricultural land has become a functioning ecosystem again, heaving with life – all by itself. Personal and inspirational, Wilding is an astonishing account of the beauty and strength of nature, when it is given as much freedom as possible. Highly Commended by the Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize.
Download or read book Miscellaneous Publication written by and published by . This book was released on 1933 with total page 1452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Five Acres and Independence A Practical Guide to the Selection and Management of the Small Farm written by Maurice G. Kains and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2015-01-13 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PEOPLE who think they "would like to have a little farm" naturally fall into two groups; those who are sure to fail and those likely to succeed. This book is written to help both! Its presentation of advantages and disadvantages, essential farming principles and practices should enable you to decide in which class you belong and whether or not you would be foolish or wise to risk making the plunge. In either case it should be worth many times its price because, on the one hand it should prevent fore-doomed failure, and on the other, show you how to avoid delay, disappointment, perhaps disaster, but attain the satisfaction that characterizes personal and well directed efforts in farming. (From the Introduction) This classic bestseller became that way because of it's very practical and honest appraisal of how a person can get from crowded, noisy, dangerous city life to a peaceful, calm, satisfaction-filled lifestyle in a rural or even suburban setting. Get Your Copy Today!
