The Bee People was written by Margaret Warner Morley in 1905 as a book for children about honeybees; their biology, their social habits, their work as pollinators, and their honey. I picked it up as a curiosity but you know what? It’s a pretty solid bee book for kids. Read More
Without Joyce and Mike from Allsun Farm, we probably wouldn’t have a market garden. These two firey spirits have been growing good stuff and passing on their knowledge for decades. We feel lucky to know them and we love to see other folks writing about them. Read More
Bees deserve more study than they get, seems to me. No matter if you’re a budding beekeeper or just a responsible citizen, these ladies and their ongoing work are responsible for one in every three bites of food we eat. They deserve both our joyful respect and a deeper understanding.
The two books above are top of Tim Malfroy’s list of essential bee texts, and this summer we’re reading them, and gleaning much goodness. Read More
The Urban Farming Guidebook is a free pdf resource for helping local governments to plan the growing of food in their cities. Given that we’re all about bottom-up action, we feel that it’s best placed in the hands of potential growers, so they can get on with creating local food systems!
And that means you. This guide was written for Canadian councils in BC, but that doesn’t make it any less interesting, or useful, for the rest of us. There’s 4 case studies of successful urban farms in BC, and plenty of inspiration and workable ideas for more… Read More
This new pdf resource is free to download and a great document for anyone wanting to ensure their garden, verge, community patch or farm is as pollinator friendly as it can possibly be.
It’s a guide put out by Rural Industries Research and Development, and is a fantastic resource covering ideas for bee-friendly plantings in both urban and rural areas. It’s chock-full of planting guides, nectary calendars for different Australian climates, and pollinator garden design… Read More
If you’re looking for a good resource on the actual practicalities of taking on market gardening, get a copy of this book. It’s full of deeply practical insights and uses multiple small-scale, successful vegetable growers direct experiences as templates for it’s planting and financial guides.
In the ways of synergies, Crop Planning for Organic Vegetable Growers actually recommends Allan Savory’s holistic goal setting (developed for Holistic Management of cattle, but applicable to many situations) as an approach to planning your farm’s financial management. Because if you go broke, it doesn’t matter how awesome your veggies are, you probably can’t keep growing them for a living. Read More
This is my favorite tinyhouse book that the moment. Even in the age of instant access to a gazillion glossy photos of natural building, tinyhouses and all the rest, this publication stands apart as a book worth having, because of its composition and its coming together of so many different strands of knowledge and knowing.
It’s written by one of the great publishers of natural building, Lloyd Kahn, who back in 1973 wrote the seminal Shelter, a user-friendly overview of traditional building techniques from across the globe. Tiny Homes is both a progression of that book, but also an important book for where natural building is at, right now. Read More
This is such a beautiful book – perfect for those dreaming of farming (on whatever scale). While it’s been written for adults, I’ve discovered it’s also a great book for small fry – full of fun, accurate illustrations about interesting stuff like different cloud formations and roosters both.
Being questionably blessed with a 3 year old who already corrects me on my naming of tractor parts, this book is being well received at our farm, with its entries on ham curing, chicken comb styles, the history of the tractor and the innards of the artichoke… Read More
The Greenhorns: 50 dispatches from the new farmers movement is a collection of 50 essays by beginner farmers, and sits as a companion to The Greenhorns documentary. I seriously enjoyed this book more than anything I’ve read in a long time.
The book is loosely divided into subjects: family, crops, tools, finances, animals, access to land, part-time farming etc. All 50 of these essays are short pieces written from the heart, with all the joy and tooth-exploding frustration that is learning to farm. But it was the subtlety of some of the insights that got me the most. Read More
Calling all meat eaters who are curious and committed to learning how to cook all parts of an animal in the name of ethics (produce no waste), flavor and, most importantly, adventure: Farmstead Meatsmith are writing a book on how the heck to cook all the tricky bits.
“If the pastured meat on your plate is dry and chewy, it is because it was cooked improperly, wasting the milky grass fat marbling it took the steer two years to develop. The worst of it is that poorly cooked pastured beef will taste no better, if not worse than the factory beef, and there can be no greater insult to the cow’s sacrifice and the farmer’s labor.
If we are going to ensure that pasturing livestock responsibly can endure, we have got to stop burning steaks.” Read More
