Essential Media for your Research  / Design Library

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NEW! The Small-Scale Poultry Flock: An All-Natural Approach to Raising Chickens and Other Fowl for Home and Market Growers--With information on building ... feed, and working with poultry in the garden
By Harvey Ussery, 2011, 394pp, $39

The most comprehensive guide to date on raising all-natural poultry for the small-scale farmer, homesteader, and professional grower. The Small-Scale Poultry Flock offers a practical and integrative model for working with chickens and other domestic fowl, based entirely on natural systems.
Readers will find information on growing (and sourcing) feed on a small scale, brooding (and breeding) at home, and using poultry as insect and weed managers in the garden and orchard. Ussery's model presents an entirely sustainable system that can be adapted and utilized in a variety of scales, and will prove invaluable for beginner homesteaders, growers looking to incorporate poultry into their farm, or poultry farmers seeking to close their loop.

Ussery offers extensive information on:
- The definition of an integrated poultry flock (imitation of natural systems, integrating patterns, and closing the circle)
- Everything you need to know about your basic chicken (including distinctive points about anatomy and behavior that are critical to management)
- Extended information on poultry health and holistic health care, with a focus on prevention
- Planning your flock (flock size, choosing breeds, fowl useful for egg vs. meat production, sourcing stock)
- How to breed and brood the flock (including breeding for genetic conservation), including the most complete guide to working with broody hens available anywhere
- Making and mixing your own feed (with tips on equipment, storage, basic ingredients, technique, grinding and mixing)
- Providing more of the flock's feed from sources grown or self-foraged on the homestead or farm, including production of live protein feeds using earthworms and soldier grubs
- Using poultry to increase soil fertility, control crop damaging insects, and to make compost-including systems for pasturing and for tillage of cover crops and weeds
- Recipes for great egg and poultry dishes (including Ussery's famous chicken stock!)
- And one of the best step-by-step poultry butchering guides available, complete with extensive illustrative photos.
No other book on raising poultry takes an entirely whole-systems approach, or discusses producing homegrown feed and breeding in such detail. This is a truly invaluable guide that will lead farmers and homesteaders into a new world of self-reliance and enjoyment.

NEW! Sepp Holzer's Permaculture:
A Practical Guide to Small-Scale Integrative Farming & Gardening, 2011, 256pp, $30

Sepp Holzer farms steep mountainsides in Austria 1,500 meters above sea level. His farm is an intricate network of terraces, raised beds, ponds, waterways and tracks, well covered with productive fruit trees and other vegetation, with the farmhouse neatly nestling amongst them. This is in dramatic contrast to his neighbors’ spruce monocultures.

In this book, Holzer shares the skill and knowledge acquired over his lifetime. He covers every aspect of his farming methods, not just how to create a holistic system on the farm itself, but how to make a living from it. Holzer writes about everything from the overall concepts, down to the practical details.

In Sepp Holzer’s Permaculture readers will learn:

* How he sets up a permaculture system
* The fruit varieties he has found best for permaculture growing
* How to construct terraces, ponds, and waterways
* How to build shelters for animals and how to work with them on the land
* How to cultivate edible mushrooms in the garden and on the farm
* and much more!

Holzer offers a wealth of information for the gardener, smallholder or alternative farmer yet the book’s greatest value is the attitudes it teaches. He reveals the thinking processes based on principles found in nature that create his productive systems. These can be applied anywhere.

NEW! Meat: A Benign Extravagance by Simon Fairlie
336pp, $25

Meat is a groundbreaking exploration of the difficult environmental, ethical and health issues surrounding the human consumption of animals. Garnering huge praise in the UK, this is a book that answers the question: should we be farming animals, or not? Not a simple answer, but one that takes all views on meat eating into account. It lays out in detail the reasons why we must indeed decrease the amount of meat we eat, both for the planet and for ourselves, and yet explores how different forms of agriculture--including livestock--shape our landscape and culture.
At the heart of this book, Simon Fairlie argues that society needs to re-orient itself back to the land, both physically and spiritually, and explains why an agriculture that can most readily achieve this is one that includes a measure of livestock farming. It is a well-researched look at agricultural and environmental theory from a fabulous writer and a farmer, and is sure to take off where other books on vegetarianism and veganism have fallen short in their global scope.

If you are just getting started with chickens, this charming book has the fresh, natural voice of a wise old neighbor sharing a lifetime of experience and skill. As Minnie Rose Lovgreen explains, chickens are the gardner's best friends, eagerly eating weeds, seeds, and bugs. They fluff up soil beautifully, enriching it with their homemade fertilizer as they make it ready to plant. This book will be a splendid guide for beginners and an absolute delight for chicken lovers everywhere.

"The main thing is to keep them happy."

NEW! The Biochar Solution: Carbon Farming & Climate Change by Albert Bates
208pp, $18

Civilization as we know it is at a crossroads. For the past 10,000 years, we have turned a growing understanding of physics, chemistry and biology to our advantage in producing more energy and more food and as a consequence have produced exponential population surges, resource depletion, ocean acidification, desertification and climate change.

The path we are following began with long-ago discoveries in agriculture, but it divided into two branches, about 8,000 years ago. The branch we have been following for the most part is conventional farming -- irrigation, tilling the soil, and removing weeds and pests. That branch has degraded soil carbon levels by as much as 80 percent in most of the world's breadbaskets, sending all that carbon skyward with each pass of the plow.

The other branch disappeared from our view some 500 years ago, although archaeologists are starting to pick up its trail now.

At one time it achieved success as great as the agriculture that we know, producing exponential population surges and great cities, but all that was lost in a fluke historical event borne of a single genetic quirk.It vanished when European and Asian diseases arrived in the Americas.

From excavations on the banks of the Amazon river, clearings of the savanna/gallery forests in the Upper Xingu, and ethnographic studies of Mesoamerican milpas, science has now re-traced the path of the second great agriculture, and, to its astonishment, found it more sustainable and productive that what we are currently pursuing.

While conventional agriculture leads to deserts, blowing parched dirt across the globe and melting ice caps, this other, older style, brings fertile soils, plant and animal diversity and birdsong. While the agriculture we use has been shifting Earth's carbon balance from soil and living vegetation to atmosphere and ocean, the agriculture that was nearly lost moves carbon from sky to soil and crops. The needed shift, once embarked upon, can be profound and immediate. We could once more become a garden planet, with deep black earths and forests of fruit and nuts where deserts now stand. We can heal our atmosphere and oceans.

"Reads like a detective story but marked by impressive scholarship. New historical evidence that climate is remarkably responsive to human impacts had me gripping the edge of my seat." --Peter Bane

Small-Scale Livestock Farming:
A Grass-Based Approach for Health, Sustainability, and Profit
by Carol Ekarius 1999, 217pp, $19

A natural, organic, grass-based approach to livestock management for healthier animals, reduced feed and healthcare costs, and maximum profitability.

Through case studies of successful farmers, nitty-gritty details on every facet of livestock farming, and fascinating insights for working with nature instead of against it, you'll learn to make your farm thrive.

This wonderfully illustrated book is full of "I wish somebody had told me that!" information, from the "big picture" of small-scale-farming to mathematical equations for figuring feeds and feeding or interest and payments. The book is divided into sections on: The Roots of Grass-Based Farming, Animal Husbandry, Marketing, and Planning.

Ekarius has been a full-time livestock farmer for over a decade, in addition to writing for a variety of newspapers and magazines. This book is a wonderful meld of those skills. It is for "those people who are still in the dreaming phase, and for those who have recently taken the plunge." But Ekarious does such a good job of laying out her information that even city slickers will enjoy browsing through this book and picking up interesting bits of information such as how to use an animal's point of balance to move it backwards or forwards, or the anatomy of a goat.

Roots Demystified
by Robert Kourik  2008, 165pp, $25

Roots Demystified is the only book in print for gardeners with such an extensive variety of root illustrations. There are twenty-five meticulous drawings produced by horticultural researchers who actually dug, troweled, dusted, mapped, and drew their way through entire growing root systems, down to the tiniest root. The resulting illustrations are a revelation of the beauty contained in the actual patterns, and habits of rooting plants. Guidelines also provide a home gardener with tips for the practical use of the new information.

The Backyard Vintner: An Enthusiast's Guide to Growing Grapes
and Making Wine at Home
by Jim Law 2005, 176pp., $20

Anyone who ever wanted to have homemade wine and never thought they had the space or ability to make it will love this book. The Backyard Vintner is a handy guide to at-home wine making that teaches readers the tips and tricks of the trade. It is perfect for those who want to bring the feeling of wine country right into their own backyard.

Basic approaches to Tanks, Rainwater Catchment, Ram Pumps, Ground Recharge, Urban Stormwater, Ponds, Dowsing

Building Living Soil booklet
32pp., $7

Basic understanding of and approaches to soil health. Soil fertility, Earthworms, Cover Cropping, Getting the Most out of Your Compost Pile, the Art and Science of Sheet Mulching, Rhizosphere Wars: Tree & Soil Health, Keyline Planning for Soil Improvement, Very Intensive Beds, Silt as a Resource, Roof Gardens Using Leaves, Soil Pesticide Detox.

161 pp., 2006, $30

"Aside from some particularly thoughtful frogs and phragmites, no one on earth knows more about ponds than Tim Matson." -- Michael Pollan,

One of America's most beloved garden writers reflects on life with a pond. Whether it's fishing by moonlight, planting iris and weeping willows, catching crawfish, or supervising an unruly crowd of ducks, Louise Riotte knows how to get the most fun out of a family pond. She shares her experiences in this entertaining book, presented with her trademark mix of facts, anecdotes, lore, and lively humor. Includes:

• How the Riotte family built a pond
• Tips on fish farming with catfish, bass, or trout
• Creating a backyard pool for frogs and water lilies
• Waterside plants -- beneficial and harmful
• Recipes, stories, and fascinating asides