Gives practical advice on workshop methods and tools, home maintenance, and homestead management

Gene Logsdon has long served as a voice of grounded agricultural wisdom. His wry humor and keen insights have made him a favorite among homesteaders, gardeners, orchardists, and farmers. In Gene Logsdon's Practical Skills, he turns his attention to traditional crafts and practices, reviving and documenting the homemaking, culinary, and agricultural skills handed down through generations of American farmers.This wide-ranging volume of practical instruction is divided into 5 parts, each focused on a different aspect of country life, including:Home maintenance and comfortFood preparation and domestic choresLandscaping and gardeningBarn construction and livestock managementAgricultural and woodlot land managementDevelop the skills your grandparents knew by heart. Gene Logsdon's Practical Skills is a book you can learn from for years to come. Gene Logsdon and his wife Carol have a small-scale experimental farm in Wyandot County, Ohio. Gene is the author of numerous books and magazine articles on farm-related issues, and believes sustainable pastoral farming is the solution for our stressed agricultural system.

Gene Logsdon's Practical Skills is all about the traditional crafts and practices for country living, reviving and documenting the homemaking, culinary, and agricultural skills handed down through generations of American farmers. Develop the skills your grandparents knew by heart. This is a book you can learn from for years to come.

Back in print for a new generation of fruit-growers, "Organic Orcharding" will teach you everything you need to know about planning, planting, and maintaining your very own orchard. Gene Logsdon is renowned in the agricultural community for his creative, pragmatic, and holistic take on farming of all kinds. In "Organic Orcharding" he explains how to select the best trees for your orchard's climate; which tree varieties best complement each other; when each variety blooms; and when you ought to harvest. You'll also find insightful tips on: Developing woodlots Preventing diseases in fruit and nut trees Maintaining healthy fruit and nut trees Storing your produce And more! With useful charts, tables, and diagrams for efficient referencing, "Organic Orcharding" is not to be missed. Perfect for gardeners who are interested in learning to grow fruits and nuts, orchardists who want to go organic, homesteaders, and anyone who loves the smell of an orchard in full bloom.

"In his final book of essays - completed just weeks before he died - self-described "contrary farmer" Gene Logsdon addresses the next generation of small-scale "garden farmers" seeking a better way of life."--

The Resilient Farm and Homestead is a manual for developing durable, beautiful, and highly functional human habitat systems fit to handle an age of rapid transition. Ben Falk is a land designer and site developer whose permaculture-research farm has drawn national attention. The site is a terraced paradise on a hillside in Vermont that would otherwise be overlooked by conventional farmers as unworthy farmland. Falk's wide array of fruit trees, rice paddies (relatively unheard of in the Northeast), ducks, nuts, and earth-inspired buildings is a hopeful image for the future of regenerative agriculture and modern homesteading. The book covers nearly every strategy Falk and his team have been testing at the Whole Systems Research Farm over the past decade, as well as experiments from other sites Falk has designed through his off-farm consulting business. The book includes detailed information on earthworks; gravity-fed water systems; species composition; the site-design process; site management; fuelwood hedge production and processing; human health and nutrient-dense production strategies; rapid topsoil formation and remineralization; agroforestry/silvopasture/grazing; ecosystem services, especially regarding flood mitigation; fertility management; human labor and social-systems aspects; tools/equipment/appropriate technology; and much more, complete with gorgeous photography and detailed design drawings. The Resilient Farm and Homestead is more than just a book of tricks and techniques for regenerative site development, but offers actual working results in living within complex farm-ecosystems based on research from the "great thinkers" in permaculture, and presents a viable home-scale model for an intentional food-producing ecosystem in cold climates, and beyond. Inspiring to would-be homesteaders everywhere, but especially for those who find themselves with "unlikely" farming land, Falk is an inspiration in what can be done by imitating natural systems, and making the most of what we have by re-imagining what's possible. A gorgeous case study for the homestead of the future.

At a time when food is becoming increasingly scarce in many parts of the world and food prices are skyrocketing, no industry is more important than agriculture. Humans have been farming for thousands of years, and yet agriculture has undergone more fundamental changes in the past 80 years than in the previous several centuries. In 1900, 30 million American farmers tilled the soil or tended livestock; today there are fewer than 4.5 million farmers who feed a population four times larger than it was at the beginning of the century. Fifty years ago, the planet could not have sustained a population of 6.5 billion; now, commercial and industrial agriculture ensure that millions will not die from starvation. Farmers are able to feed an exponentially growing planet because the greatest industrial revolution in history has occurred in agriculture since 1929, with U.S. farmers leading the way. Productivity on American farms has increased tenfold, even as most small farmers and tenants have been forced to find other work. Today, only 300,000 farms produce approximately ninety percent of the total output, and overproduction, largely subsidized by government programs and policies, has become the hallmark of modern agriculture. A Revolution Down on the Farm: The Transformation of American Agriculture since 1929 charts the profound changes in farming that have occurred during author Paul K. Conkin's lifetime. His personal experiences growing up on a small Tennessee farm complement compelling statistical data as he explores America's vast agricultural transformation and considers its social, political, and economic consequences. He examines the history of American agriculture, showing how New Deal innovations evolved into convoluted commodity programs following World War II. Conkin assesses the skills, new technologies, and government policies that helped transform farming in America and suggests how new legislation might affect farming in decades to come. Although the increased production and mechanization of farming has been an economic success story for Americans, the costs are becoming increasingly apparent. Small farmers are put out of business when they cannot compete with giant, non-diversified corporate farms. Caged chickens and hogs in factory-like facilities or confined dairy cattle require massive amounts of chemicals and hormones ultimately ingested by consumers. Fertilizers, new organic chemicals, manure disposal, and genetically modified seeds have introduced environmental problems that are still being discovered. A Revolution Down on the Farm concludes with an evaluation of farming in the twenty-first century and a distinctive meditation on alternatives to our present large scale, mechanized, subsidized, and fossil fuel and chemically dependent system.