I’ve been reading a lot of farming books for the last year (as the members of my book club can attest). Inspired by the wonderful annotated lists at 49th Shelf, I wanted to share my own selections for essential tomes on my Gardening, Farming and Food Shelf. (I’ve also thrown in a few documentaries, just for fun.) Not surprisingly, my list got pretty long, so I’ll break it down into a three posts:
Song of Myself, by Walt Whitman
Because this is jubilant poetry to be read in the ecstasy of summer, lying in the grass (and naked if you can manage it). This kind of love for the land and all its people is my heartsong.
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Walden, by Henry David Thoreau
Though first published in 1854, Thoreau is still an essential text for today’s self-sufficiency movement. In this collection of essays written while living in the woods (if barely), Thoreau emphasizes self-sufficiency, return to nature, solitude, and the spiritual discovery that comes from all of these choices. “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when [...]
