REFERENCE LIBRARY
A Slice of Organic Life by Sheherazade Goldsmith Featuring over 80 self-contained projects, from growing your own organic food, cooking home-grown produce, keeping selected livestock, and leading a more sustainable lifestyle, Slice of Organic Life is the perfect start for someone looking to go "green."
Growing and Propagating Wild Flowers by Harry R. Phillips Practical, easy-to-follow methods for raising native plants from seeds, cuttings, and divisions.
Root Cellaring Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables by Mike and Nancy Bubel Root cellaring, as many people remember but only a few people still practice, is a way of using the earth's naturally cool, stable temperature to store perishable fruits and vegetables. Root cellaring, as Mike and Nancy Bubel explain here, is a no-cost, simple, low-technology, energy-saving way to keep the harvest fresh all year long.
In Root Cellaring, the Bubels tell how to successfully use this natural storage approach. It's the first book devoted entirely to the subject, and it covers the subject with a thoroughness that makes it the only book you'll ever need on root cellaring.
The Living Landscape by Rick Darke & Doug Tallamy Many gardeners today want a home landscape that nourishes and fosters wildlife. But they also want beauty, a space for the kids to play, privacy, and maybe even a vegetable patch. Sure, it’s a tall order, but The Living Landscape shows how to do it. By combining the insights of two outstanding authors, it offers a model that anyone can follow. Inspired by its examples, you’ll learn the strategies for making and maintaining a diverse, layered landscape—one that offers beauty on many levels, provides outdoor rooms and turf areas for children and pets, incorporates fragrance and edible plants, and provides cover, shelter, and sustenance for wildlife. Richly illustrated with superb photographs and informed by both a keen eye for design and an understanding of how healthy ecologies work, The Living Landscape will enable you to create a garden that is full of life and that fulfills both human needs and the needs of wildlife communities.
The Natural Habitat Garden by Ken Druse Shows American gardeners how to create beautiful native-plant gardens. Through 500 color photographs of 35 gardens across the country, Ken Druse introduces nature's original communities--grasslands, drylands, wetlands, and woodlands. Listings of plant sources, places to visit, and societies and organizations have been updated for this edition.
The Xerces Society Guide Attracting Native Pollinators This is a comprehensive guidebook for gardeners, small farmers, orchardists, beekeepers, naturalists, environmentalists, and public land managers on how to protect and encourage the activity of the native pollinators of North America. Written by staff of the Xerces Society, an international nonprofit organization that is leading the way in pollinator conservation, this book presents a thorough overview of the problem along with positive solutions for how to provide bountiful harvests on farms and gardens, maintain healthy plant communinities in wildlands, provide food for wildlife, and beautify the landscape with flowers.
Traditional Iroquois Its History, Cultivation, and Use by Jane Mt.Pleasant Corn is so ordinary and ubiquitous in contemporary life that we often overlook its profound, transformative powers. We drive by mile after mile of cornfields on a summer day, seldom even glancing at this strange, yet incredibly productive plant that has shaped human history in the Western Hemisphere for more than five thousand years. Traditional Iroquois Corn provides a more intimate look at corn in Iroquoia, an area that stretches from Ontario, Canada south to the Applachian Region and west to the Ohio Valley.
Trees & Shrubs of Kentucky by Mary E. Wharton & Roger W. Barbour Unfortunately many Kentuckians who appreciate trees and shrubs in general do not realize the great beauty and variety of our native species. The more one knows about them the fuller is his enjoyment of them, and the more persons there are with such knowledge, the more likely will our nature heritage be perpetuated.
Urban & Suburban Meadows by Catherine Zimmerman The book provides plant lists and resource sections for nine regions across the United States along with local sources to assist the meadow creator in bringing diversity back to urban and suburban landscapes. Meadows can be big or small, short or tall. However large, the benefits are great. Meadows sequester carbon, retain water, filter pollutants, eliminate the need for fertilizers or pesticides and provide habitat for wildlife. Reduce your carbon footprint. Improve your neighborhood. Enjoy a meadow in your backyard!
AGRICULTURE RELATED READING
Bringing the Food Economy Home by Helena Norberg-Hodge, Todd Merrifield and Steven Gorelick If the many social, environmental, and economic crises facing the planet are to be reversed, local food economies must be rebuilt. Given the constant demand for food, even miniscule changes in its production and marketing can offer immense benefits for farmers, consumers, the economy and the environment.
Fields That Dream A Journey to the Roots of Our Food by Jenny Kurzweil The first book completely devoted to exploring the lives and experiences of small-scale sustainable farmers, Fields That Dream describes the current state of American agriculture while cultivating a deep appreciation for the work and lives of the farmers who are a growing minority in the American economy. This is a quick read that gives a perspective from the small-scale producer in Seattle, Washington.
GARDEN RELATED READING
The Vintage Books Every Organic Gardener Must Own These nine classics chronicle the rise of sustainable agriculture in the 20th century from a fringe idea to mainstream success.
Weedless Gardening by Lee Reich Introducing a system of gardening from the top down that protects the soil, eliminates heavy work, and reduces water needs. This is a quick read offering a system that's good for plants and good for people. This is very applicable to the home gardener but has limited application on a direct market production basis since the build up of mulch materials encourages overwintering of pest populations which lead to the need to rototill to disrupt the pest life cycle.
PREPAREDNESS RELATED READING
A Year Without the Grocery Store: A Step by Step Guide to Acquiring, Organizing, and Cooking Food Storage by Karen Morris Do you hate to grocery shop? Do you detest incessant menu planning, or do you spend more on your family’s food needs than you do on your mortgage? Feel as if you’re running to the grocery store before a storm or other potentially disruptive event because you need to stock up? Food storage is the answer to each of those problems. My name’s Karen, and I care about making sure my family’s dietary needs are met, no matter what. One way I do this is through our year’s worth of personal food storage, and now I’m here to show you how to easily store a year’s worth of food as well. In A Year Without the Grocery Store, I walk you through a step-by-step plan which: - Incorporates the meals your family already loves. - Takes into account your family’s unique food allergies, intolerances, and preferences. - Teaches you how to economically store food, and shows you how, if necessary, you could feed each member of your family for around $160/year. - Provides you with recipes that take your food storage from edible to delicious. - Discusses alternate ways to cook your food storage in case you encounter a power outage. - Discusses properly storing water. - Points out pitfalls and holes in most people’s food storage and crafts a plan for how to avoid them. If you thought the idea of a year’s worth of food storage was a little crazy, take another look at healthy meals, money savings, not having to run to the grocery store before winter storms, and peace of mind that comes with knowing that you’ve planned and prepared and that your family can now go a year without the grocery store.