By JK, on April 26th, 2012 The back cover of The Backyard Homestead claims you can harvest 1,400 eggs, 50 pounds of wheat, 60 pounds of fruit, 2,000 pounds of vegetables, 280 pounds of pork, and 75 pounds of pork for a quarter of an acre of land. Whether this is an and/or situation is unclear (an “and” situation seems impossible), but the philosophy of getting the maximum yield from a small space is the guiding principle of the book itself, which is practically bursting at the seams with information.
It’s almost overwhelming, actually. While books like The City Homesteader allowed me to cruise through and get a general idea for things, this book goes even deeper, covering more categories and breaking things down in more detail. Sometimes that’s still not enough: I wouldn’t want to start canning or keep bees relying on this book alone (in fact, the author takes care to tell you you shouldn’t), but you get a pretty realistic picture of what might be involved.
Since I don’t know a lot about wine making or animal husbandry, I always use the gardening sections as the yardstick for the book. In this case, you get enough detail to grow your veg relying on this book [...]
By JK, on April 24th, 2012 Anyone who’s been in my garden, talked gardening with me, or even been a frequent guest on this site, will know of my love for Gayla Trail’s gardening books and blog. Steph and I could get WWGD (What Would Gayla Do?) bracelets, we refer to her so often. This spring she brought out a new book, Easy Growing, which focuses on herbs and edible flowers. While we grew some herbs last year, this book was probably the push that got us to embrace edible flowers this year. (We’re taking the easy route to start, using Urban Harvest’s edible flowers mix.) Like my perennial favourite Grow Great Grub, Easy Growing is packed with essential info and gorgeous photographs, but really stands out from other garden writing because of its grounded advice that keeps it real and makes gardening a possibility for anyone. (Yes, anyone.)
JK: I learned to garden from you, but where did you pick up your initial gardening know-how?
GT: Oh wow. You’ve already made me a bit teary. I grew my first successful in-ground food garden while I lived in a student house in the summer of 1993 without consulting anything at all. I do believe that we got [...]
By JK, on April 13th, 2012
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 [...]
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