http://thegreenbackpack.net/banana-leaf-sheet-mulch

My wonderful friend and fellow Permaculturist Matthew Lynch and his incredible blog.

Why we do the work that we do...

Window Gardens...

Britta Riley wanted to grow her own food (in her tiny apartment). So she and her friends developed a system for growing plants in discarded plastic bottles — researching, testing and tweaking the system using social media, trying many variations at once and quickly arriving at the optimal system. Call it distributed DIY. And the results? Delicious.


Britta Riley is an artist and technologist who makes crowdsourced R&D solutions for environmental issues. Her company, Windowfarms.org was named one of the top 100 businesses to watch in 2010 by Entrepreneur Magazine. Windowfarms makes vertical hydroponic platforms for growing food in city windows, designed in conjunction with a online citizen science web platform for with over 16,000 community members worldwide.

Documentaries and lectures to expand your mind and love of Permaculture

• Introduction to Permaculture - 40 hours of Free video lectures - This course will explore, through lectures, discussions, field trips, and required projects, a design/thinking methodology that seeks to profide for our physical needs, food, water, shelter, energy, etc., while doing so in an environmentally friendly, sustainable manner.
  
  
  
  Keyline Farming in 1955 - short documentary - This is perhaps one of the oldest known films on the Keyline concept filmed on PA Yeomans' former farm 'Nevallan' circa 1955.
  
  
  Rwanda - Forests of Hope - Permaculture observation and action in Rwanda - John Liu, who was involved in the massive Chinese Loess Plateau restoration project, now turns his eyes towards Rwanda in this inspiring example of permaculture observation and action.
  
  
  Permaculture in Cambodia - Full-length version of documentary focusing on a Permaculture Design Course conducted by Rico Zook in Cambodia during December 2008.
  
  
  
  Agroforestry, Forest Farming - Documentary Film - Agroforestry is an integrated approach of using the interactive benefits from combining trees and shrubs with crops and/or livestock. It combines agricultural and forestry technologies to create more diverse, productive, profitable, healthy and sustainable land-use systems.
  
  
  
  Systems of Change: Edible Forest Gardening - Documentary of edible forest garden installation at the Evergreen State College by filmmaker Phred Swain-Sugarman. Edible forest gardens are perennial polycultures of food-bearing and other useful species. Includes interviews with volunteers and project coordinator.
  
  Permaculture Documentary Costa Rica
  
  "Permaculture Trio"- Forest Gardening, Edible Landscapes & Urban Permaculture (mini-documentaries)
  
  
  Dirt! The Movie (2009) - takes you inside the wonders of the soil. It tells the story of Earth's most valuable and underappreciated source of fertility--from its miraculous beginning to its crippling degradation. The opening scenes of the film dive into the wonderment of the soil. Made from the same elements as the stars, plants and animals, and us, "dirt is very much alive." Though, in modern industrial pursuits and clamor for both profit and natural resources, our human connection to and respect for soil has been disrupted.
  
  
  
  Sepp Holzer - The Agro Rebel: Permaculture in Salzburg Alps (Der Agrar-Rebel) - Sepp Holzer, the Austrian farmer and forester practices "permaculture" a different kind of farming on his mountain property. With this certain form of organic-agriculture, he is very convincing and successfully. Contrary to all conventional rules and despite annual average temperatures of 4.5°C and an altitude of between 900m-1400m, he cultivates cherries, apples, mushrooms, kiwis, lemons, pumpkins, potatoes and zucchinis. This year he also started big permaculture-projects in Brazil, Columbia, Peru and Venezuela.
  
  
  
  Permaculture - A Quiet Revolution - This timely documentary offers practical steps on how to 'permaculturize' our lives. It invites viewers into a permaculture community that spans the globe. Most importantly, it gives the critical inspiration needed to turn our backs on that which is failing us, and to create a sustainable future of our own making.
  
  
  HEAVEN ON EARTH - Permaculture with Rico Zook - Heaven On Earth is a video travelogue documenting the work of permaculturist Rico Zook. Join us as we travel with Rico to the Northern most part of India in the shade of the towering Himalayas, to glimpse the future through Rico's eyes and learn what permaculture is, and what it has to offer both humanity and the planet. Is it possible we might find heaven on earth here, and now? Watch and see.
  
  Perma Kultcha - Permaculture and Organic Farming in South Africa - This 30-minute documentary focuses on Permaculture and Organic Farming in South Africa and what it can do to transform society at a grass roots level, to create sustainable lives for individuals, communities and South Africa as a whole.
  
  
  Sepp Holzer's Permaculture: Farming with Nature - A Case Study of Successful Temperate Permaculture - He has also done original work in the use of Hugelkultur and natural branch development (not pruning) to allow fruit trees to survive high altitudes and harsh winters. He is currently conducting permaculture ("Holzer Permaculture") seminars both at his der krameterhof farm and worldwide, while continuing to work on his alpine farm.
  
  Practical Permaculture in Britain documentary by Malcolm Baldwin
  
  
  The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil - “The Power of Community” is creating excitement in localization groups, and with good reason. In this film, individual Cubans tell us how they responded to an artificially imposed “Peak Oil” in the 1990s, when the fall of the Soviet Union caused the loss of most food and oil imports. Their stories serve as a valuable model for a world facing Peak Oil on a global scale. Cuba’s transition to a low-energy society is hopeful and instructive.
  
  
  
  Food, Inc. (2008) - filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment.
  
  
  
  Satoyama: Japan's Secret Watergarden (BBC Natural World) - Over a thousand years, towns and villages have developed a unique system to make springs and water part of their homes. From inside their houses, the stream pours into Japan’s largest fresh water lake, near the ancient capital of Kyoto. This is a habitat so precious, the Japanese have a special word for it, satoyama, villages where mountains give way to plains. They are exceptional environments essential to both the people who maintain them and to the wildlife that now share them.
  
  Eco-Centric - short documentary film about permaculture co-originator David Holmgren - a story by reporter Tim Lee from the 2004 ABC program 'Landline' about permaculture co-originator David Holmgren, whose "pivotal role in developing permaculture has scarcely been recognised"
  
  Bill Mollison - Global Gardener - II - "Dry lands"
  
  Masanobu Fukuoka - Making Seedballs
  
  Bill Mollison - Global Gardener - I - "In the tropics" - BILL MOLLISON is a practical visionary. For nearly two decades he has traveled the globe spreading the word about permaculture, the method of sustainable agriculture that he devised. Permaculture weaves together microclimate, annual and perennial plants, animals, soils, water management and human needs into intricately connected productive communities. Mollison has proved that even in the most difficult conditions permaculture empowers people to turn wastelands into food forests.
  
  
  
  Backyard permaculture - documentary online - Gardening Australia - ABC’s Gardening Australia weekly show is enormously popular and has been focussing on permaculture and organic gardening for many years. One of the best advocates of permaculture in popular media today.
  
  The World According to Monsanto - The World According to Monsanto tells the little-known yet shocking story of this agribusiness giant--the world's leading producer of GMOs (genetically modified organisms)--and how its new "green" face is no less malign than its PCB- and Agent Orange-soaked past.
  
  Killing Fields - the Battle to Feed Factory Farms (short documentary) - This ground breaking short film investigates the impacts of growing soy in South America to feed factory farms in Europe.
  
  
  
  Natural World – A Farm for the Future - With her father close to retirement, Rebecca returns to her family's wildlife-friendly farm in Devon, to become the next generation to farm the land. But last year's high fuel prices were a wake-up call for Rebecca. Realising that all food production in the UK is completely dependent on abundant cheap fossil fuel, particularly oil, she sets out to discover just how secure this oil supply is.
  
  
  
  How To Terraform the Desert: Dryland Permaculture Strategies with Bill Mollison - In this video series the father of modern Permaculture takes us along on some visits to projects where desolate, arid, environments are being revitalized and brought to life through passive water collection and soil restoration.
  
  Greening the Desert II: Greening the Middle East (Permaculture) - This half hour video documents the ongoing work of Permaculture Gurus, Geoff and Nadia Lawton, in the Dead Sea Valley. It begins with the famous original 'Greening the Desert' five minute video clip, and then continues into Part II, a 2009 update to the 2001 original.

Awesomeness Voluntourism Day at the Homeless Resource Center

Taking massive action on massive dreams amidst massive uncertainties is where everyone had to start.

We were blessed to have the perfect ladies show up to work with the Hui Malama kids...Naada and Kelsey are young powerful entrepreneurs who worked, sang, and mentored the girls while they planted a future together.  

Hui Malama kids, Awesomeness Mentors and KHAKO residents all working together....for GROWTH. 

Mahalo to Hui Malama, Kelsey and Naada for such an amazing workday!

Alexandra Cattonis mother and Step-father (Bill- left) came to lend a hand to planting more fruit trees, veggies and berbs at the Homeless Shelters Garden with Neil from Awesomeness fest and Hui Malama staff and students.  

The highlight of the day was having Lisa Nichols come and speak to the Hui Malama kids and KHAKO staff after the workday...it will be a memory I will hold onto for the rest of my life.

Making sure to keep having fun while we work

COMPOST!!!

BE THE BEST VERSION OF YOURSELF>>>

Seeing all the goodness already in these kids...what an amazing day!  

Favorite books of all TIME for Permaculture and beyond...

Gaia's Garden, Second Edition: A Guide To Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway - The first edition of Gaia’s Gardensparked the imagination of America’s home gardeners, introducing permaculture’s central message: Working with Nature, not against her, results in more beautiful, abundant, and forgiving gardens. 

This revised and updated edition also features a new chapter on urban permaculture, designed especially for people in cities and suburbs who have very limited growing space. Whatever size yard or garden you have to work with, you can apply basic permaculture principles to make it more diverse, more natural, more productive, and more beautiful. Best of all, once it’s established, an ecological garden will reduce or eliminate most of the backbreaking work that’s needed to maintain the typical lawn and garden.

eBook preview: Gaia's Garden, Second Edition

Introduction to Permaculture by Bill Mollison - Abundantly illustrated with detailed diagrams and line drawings throughout. Includes a listing of useful Permaculture plants with descriptions and uses, and a further species list in useful categories. The book is set out as a step-by-step introduction to Permaculture with detailed instructions. Using simple language it describes the range of Permaculture for general consumption.
Full eBook online: Bill Mollison - Permaculture Design Courses Series
+ see also: Permaculture, a Beginners Guide by Graham Burnett - Free exerpts online 

The Basics Of Permaculture Design by Ross Mars - Packed with useful tips, clear illustrations, and a wealth of experience, it guides you through designs for gardens, urban and rural properties, water harvesting systems, animal systems, permaculture in small spaces like balconies and patios, farms, schools, and ecovillages. This is both a do-it-yourself guide for the enthusiast and a useful reference for permaculture designers.

Permaculture in a Nutshellby Patrick Whitefield - is a concise and accessible introduction to the principles and practice of permaculture in temperate climates. It covers how permaculture works in the city, the country and on the farm and explores ways in which people can work together to recreate real communities. This inspiring book clearly describes how we can live fruitfully and sustainably and is essential reading for anyone wishing to reduce their environmental impact.
eBook preview: Permaculture in a Nutshell 

Getting Started In Permaculture: 50 Practical Projects to Build and Design Productive Gardens byRoss Mars, Jenny Mars - delivers step-by-step knowledge for a variety of useful projects including: making herb fertilizers, compost, organic sprays for pest control, and much, much more. It also includes how to recycle your soft drink bottles, waste paper, and tires in a number of useful projects such as ponds, fruit fly traps, retailing walls, and solar stills. Permaculture experts Ross and Jenny Mars outline the steps to transform your garden into a productive living system.

The Permaculture Way: Practical Steps to Create a Self-Sustaining World by Graham Bell - shows us how to consciously design a lifestyle which is low in environmental impact and highly productive. It demonstrates how to meet our needs, make the most of resources by minimizing waste and maximizing potential, and still leave the Earth richer than we found it. Graham Bell is the former editor of Permaculture News.

.Earth User's Guide to Permaculture byRosemary Morrow - Fundamentally, permaculture is design science and in this new edition design is emphasised. This book will be most beneficial if you apply it to the space where you live and work. The same principles apply for becoming more sustainable and living lightly whether you live in a small city apartment with a balcony, in a house with a garden in the suburbs, or on acreage in the country.

        


Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability by David Holmgren - For students and teachers of Permaculture this book provides something more fundamental and distilled than Mollison's encyclopedic Designers Manual. For the general reader it provides refreshing perspectives on a range of environmental issues and shows how permaculture is much more than just a system of gardening. For anyone seriously interested in understanding the foundations of sustainable design and culture, this book is essential reading. Although a book of ideas, the big picture is repeatedly grounded by reference to Holmgren's own place, Melliodora, and other practical examples.









Permaculture: A Designers' Manual by Bill Mollison - This is the definitive Permaculture design manual in print since 1988. It is the textbook and curriculum for the 72-hour Certificate course in Permaculture Design. Written for teachers, students and designers, it follows on and greatly enlarges on the initial introductory texts, permaculture One (1978) and Permaculture Two (1979) both of which are still in demand over twenty years after publication. It covers design methodologies and strategies for both urban and rural applications, describing property design and natural farming techniques.

Full eBook online: Bill Mollison - Permaculture Design Courses Series






The Earth Care Manual: A Permaculture Handbook For Britain & Other Temperate Climates by Patrick Whitefield - The long-awaited exploration of permaculture specifically for cooler Northern Hemisphere climates is finally here! Already regarded as the definitive book on the subject, The Earth Care Manual is accessible to the curious novice as much as it is essential for the knowledgeable practitioner. Patrick Whitefield is a permaculture teacher, writer, designer, and consulting editor for Permaculture Magazine. He is the author of the mini-classic Permaculture in a Nutshell, which has been translated into four languages.
eBook preview: The Earth Care Manual










Sepp Holzer's Permaculture: A Practical Guide to Small-Scale, Integrative Farming and Gardening - 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. 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.





Permaculture Pioneers: Stories from the New Frontier - This book charts a history of the first three decades of permaculture, through the personal stories of Australian permaculturists. From permaculture co-originator David Holmgren, to ABC TV's Gardening Australia presenter Josh Byrne, the authors span the generations and the continent.

These stories represent the scope, depth and diversity of permaculture in Australia and around the world. They explore some of the influences on those who have embraced it, record milestones and highlight recurring themes.




Bioshelter Market Garden: A Permaculture Farm by Darrell Frey - At the heart of Three Sisters is its bioshelter—a solar greenhouse that integrates growing facilities, poultry housing, a potting room, storage, kitchen facilities, compost bins, a reference library, and classroom area. Bioshelter Market Garden examines how the bioshelter promotes greater biodiversity and is an energy-efficient method of extending crop production through Pennsylvania's cold winter months. Both visionary and practical, this fully illustrated book contains a wealth of information on the application of permaculture principles.
eBook preview: Bioshelter Market Garden



Chicken Tractor: The Permaculture Guide to Happy Hens and Healthy Soil, Homestead (3rd) Edition byAndy Lee- This is the book that tells you how to integrate small flocks of poultry in with family food production. There is a back to the land movement happening across the world, and it's happening in backyards and on small parcels of land. Chicken tractor systems have become so popular that the term chicken tractor; is a household word. This is the definitive book that leads the way.









The Permaculture Handbook: Garden Farming for Town and Country by Peter Bane - The Permaculture Handbook is a step-by-step, beautifully illustrated guide to creating resilient and prosperous households and neighborhoods, complemented by extensive case studies of three successful farmsteads and market gardens. This comprehensive manual casts garden farming as both an economic opportunity and a strategy for living well with less money.












Forest Gardening



Edible Forest Gardens (2 volume set) by Dave Jacke, Eric Toensmeier - is a groundbreaking two-volume work that spells out and explores the key concepts of forest ecology and applies them to the needs of natural gardeners in temperate climates.

Volume I lays out the vision of the forest garden and explains the basic ecological principles that make it work.

In Volume II, Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier move on to practical considerations: concrete ways to design, establish, and maintain your own forest garden. Along the way they present case studies and examples, as well as tables, illustrations, and a uniquely valuable "plant matrix" that lists hundreds of the best edible and useful species.
Edible Forest Gardens, Vol. 1: Ecological Vision, Theory For Temperate Climate Permaculture
Edible Forest Gardens, Vol. 2: Ecological Design And Practice For Temperate Climate Permaculture


Taken together, the two volumes of Edible Forest Gardens offer an advanced course in ecological gardening—one that will forever change the way you look at plants and your environment.

Buy Edible Forest Gardens directly from authors here:http://www.edibleforestgardens.com/


Creating a Forest Garden: Working with Nature to Grow Edible Crops by Martin Crawford - tells you everything you need to know - whether you want to plant a small area in your back garden or develop a larger plot. It includes advice on planning, design (using permaculture principles), planting and maintenance, and a comprehensive directory of over 450 trees, shrubs, herbaceous perennials, herbs, annuals, root crops and climbers - almost all of them edible and many very unusual. Forest gardens offer one solution for a long-term, sustainable way of growing food without compromising soil quality, food quality or biodiversity.










Forest Gardening: Cultivating an Edible Landscape byRobert Hart - An English classic revised and expanded for North America - Forest Gardening is a way of working alongside nature—an approach that results in great productivity with minimal maintenance, and a method for transforming even a small cottage garden into a diverse and inviting habitat for songbirds, butterflies, and other wildlife. Based on the model of a natural woodland, a forest garden incorporates a wide variety of useful plants, including fruit and nut trees, perennial herbs, and vegetables.
eBook preview: Forest Gardening







                                                                                                         How to Make a Forest Garden by Patrick Whitefield - A forest garden is a food-producing garden, based on the model of a natural woodland or forest. It is made up of fruit and nut trees, fruit bushes, perennial vegetables and herbs. It can be tailored to fit any space, from a tiny urban back yard to a large rural garden. This highly practical, yet inspiring book gives you everything you need to know in order to create a beautiful and productive forest garden. It is also a low-maintenance way of gardening. Once established there is none of the digging, sowing, planting out and hoeing of the conventional kitchen garden. The main task is picking up the produce!
eBook preview: How to Make a Forest Garden

Organic Gardening

The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times by Carol Deppe - Scientist and expert gardener Carol Deppe draws from emerging science in many fields to develop the general principles of gardening for resilience. Gardeners will learn through Deppe's detailed instructions on growing, storing, and using the five crops central to self-reliance: potatoes, corn, beans, squash, and eggs. The Resilient Gardenerpresents gardening techniques that stand up to challenges ranging from health problems, financial problems, and special dietary needs to serious disasters and climate change.
eBook preview: The Resilient Gardener









Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables From Your Home Garden All Year Long by Eliot Coleman- This story of sunshine, weather patterns, old limitations and expectations, and new realities is delightfully innovative in the best gardening tradition. Four-Season Harvest will have you feasting on fresh produce from your garden all through the winter. If you love the joys of eating home-garden vegetables but always thought those joys had to stop at the end of summer, this book is for you.
eBook preview: Four-Season Harvest












The Backyard Homestead: Produce all the food you need on just a quarter acre! by Carleen Madigan - From a quarter of an acre, you can harvest 1,400 eggs, 50 pounds of wheat, 60 pounds of fruit, 2,000 pounds of vegetables, 280 pounds of pork, 75 pounds of nuts. The Backyard Homestead shows you how it's done. And when the harvest is in, you'll learn how to cook, preserve, cure, brew, or pickle the fruits of your labor.















All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew - Square foot gardening - it's an ingenious planting method based on using square foot blocks of garden space instead of rows. Gardeners build up, not down, so there's no digging and no tilling after the first year. And the method requires less thinning, less weeding, and less watering. When he created the "square foot gardening" method, Mel Bartholomew, a retired engineer and efficiency expert, found the solution to the frustrations of most gardeners.
eBook preview: All New Square Foot Gardening





.Aquaponic Gardening: A Step-By-Step Guide to Raising Vegetables and Fish Together by Sylvia Bernstein - is the definitive do-it-yourself home manual, focused on giving you all the tools you need to create your own aquaponic system and enjoy healthy, safe, fresh, and delicious food all year round. Aquaponics systems are completely organic. They are four to six times more productive and use ninety percent less water than conventional gardens. Other advantages include no weeds, fewer pests, and no watering, fertilizing, bending, digging, or heavy lifting--in fact, there really is no downside! Anyone interested in taking the next step towards self-sufficiency will be fascinated by this practical, accessible, and well-illustrated guide.

Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners by Suzanne Ashworth, Kent Whealy - is a complete seed-saving guide that describes specific techniques for saving the seeds of 160 different vegetables. This book contains detailed information about each vegetable, including its botanical classification, flower structure and means of pollination, required population size, isolation distance, techniques for caging or hand-pollination, and also the proper methods for harvesting, drying, cleaning, and storing the seeds.











Greenhouse Gardener's Companion, Revised: Growing Food & Flowers in Your Greenhouse or Sunspace by Shane Smith - The most comprehensive book on greenhouse gardening available today. Today, greenhouses and sunrooms are real living spaces where gardeners spend as much time with a book and a cup of coffee as they do with a watering can and a pair of pruning shears. In this fully revised edition of a best-selling classic, veteran gardener Shane Smith embraces this new "lifestyle" approach to greenhouse gardening.

eBook preview: Greenhouse Gardener's Companion









The Organic Gardener's Handbook of Natural Pest and Disease Control: A Complete Guide to Maintaining a Healthy Garden and Yard the Earth-Friendly Way by Fern Marshall Bradley, Barbara W. Ellis, Deborah L. Martin - The plant-by-plant guide features symptoms and solutions for 200 popular plants, including flowers, vegetables, trees, shrubs, and fruits. The insect-and-disease encyclopedia includes a photo identification guide and detailed descriptions of damage readers may see. The extensive coverage of the most up-to-date organic control techniques and products, presented in order of lowest impact to most intensive intervention, makes it easy to choose the best control.

Organic Farming

The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming by Masanobu Fukuoka - Call it “Zen and the Art of Farming” or a “Little Green Book,” Masanobu Fukuoka’s manifesto about farming, eating, and the limits of human knowledge presents a radical challenge to the global systems we rely on for our food. At the same time, it is a spiritual memoir of a man whose innovative system of cultivating the earth reflects a deep faith in the wholeness and balance of the natural world. Whether you’re a guerrilla gardener or a kitchen gardener, dedicated to slow food or simply looking to live a healthier life, you will find something here—you may even be moved to start a revolution of your own.





The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses by Eliot Coleman - A passionate advocate for the revival of small-scale sustainable farming, Coleman provides a practical model for supplying fresh, locally grown produce during the winter season, even in climates where conventional wisdom says it "just can't be done." Building on the techniques that hundreds of thousands of farmers and gardeners adopted from The New Organic Grower and Four-Season Harvest, this new book focuses on growing produce of unparalleled freshness and quality in customized unheated or, in some cases, minimally heated, movable plastic greenhouses.





The Organic Farming Manual: A Comprehensive Guide to Starting and Running a Certified Organic Farm by Ann Larkin Hansen - is a comprehensive guide to growing, certifying, and marketing organic produce, grains, meat, and dairy. Beginning farmers committed to launching an organic operation and experienced farmers hoping to transition from traditional farming techniques will find all the information they need. The organic certification process is lengthy and demanding, but author Ann Larkin Hansen clarifies every USDA requirement and offers complete advice on selecting equipment, tending the land, caring for animals, and marketing farm products.




Small-Scale Grain Raising: An Organic Guide to Growing, Processing, and Using Nutritious Whole Grains, for Home Gardeners and Local Farmers byGene Logsdon - offers an entirely new generation of readers the best introduction to a wide range of both common and lesser-known specialty grains and related field crops, from corn, wheat, and rye to buckwheat, millet, rice, spelt, flax, and even beans and sunflowers. In this book, Gene Logsdon proves that anyone who has access to a large garden or small farm can (and should) think outside the agribusiness box and learn to grow healthy whole grains or beans--the base of our culinary food pyramid--alongside their fruits and vegetables.
eBook preview: Small-Scale Grain Raising




The Apple Grower: A Guide for the Organic Orchardist by Michael Phillips - Phillips presents intriguing ideas about orchard soils. Since people started growing apples in orchards, those orchard soils have largely been bacterially based, meaning that fertility has been maintained by the addition of bacteria-laden manure. Sheep and cattle were allowed to graze the grass and eat dropped apples, adding manure to the soils, and often the orchard was formerly pasture or hayfield, where manure was regularly added to maintain fertility. Bacteria-based soils are great for grasses and hay crops, but not necessarily for trees.
eBook preview: The Apple Grower











The Biochar Solution: Carbon Farming and Climate Change by Albert Bates - explores the dual function of biochar as a carbon-negative energy source and a potent soil-builder. Created by burning biomass in the absence of oxygen, this material has the unique ability to hold carbon back from the atmosphere while simultaneously enhancing soil fertility. Author Albert Bates traces the evolution of this extraordinary substance from the ancient black soils of the Amazon to its reappearance as a modern carbon sequestration strategy. Combining practical techniques for the production and use of biochar with an overview of the development and future of carbon farming, The Biochar Solution describes how a new agricultural revolution can reduce net greenhouse gas emissions to below zero while increasing world food reserves and creating energy from biomass wastes.
eBook preview: The Biochar Solution



Farmers of Forty Centuries: Organic Farming in China, Korea, and Japan by F. H. King - Professor King provides intriguing glimpses of Japan, China, Manchuria, and Korea, with information about the customs of the common people; utilization of waste; methods of irrigation, reforestation, and land reclamation; and the cultivation of rice, silk, and tea. An invaluable, profusely illustrated resource for organic gardeners, farmers, and conservationists.
Full eBook online: Farmers of Forty Centuries

Soil & Composting

Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World by Paul Stamets - is a manual for the mycological rescue of the planet. That’s right: growing more mushrooms may be the best thing we can do to save the environment, and in this groundbreaking text from mushroom expert Paul Stamets, you’ll find out how.

The basic science goes like this: Microscopic cells called “mycelium”--the fruit of which are mushrooms--recycle carbon, nitrogen, and other essential elements as they break down plant and animal debris in the creation of rich new soil. What Stamets has discovered is that we can capitalize on mycelium’s digestive power and target it to decompose toxic wastes and pollutants (mycoremediation), catch and reduce silt from streambeds and pathogens from agricultural watersheds (mycofiltration), control insect populations (mycopesticides), and generally enhance the health of our forests and gardens (mycoforestry and myco-gardening).

In this comprehensive guide, you’ll find chapters detailing each of these four exciting branches of what Stamets has coined “mycorestoration,” as well as chapters on the medicinal and nutritional properties of mushrooms, inoculation methods, log and stump culture, and species selection for various environmental purposes. Heavily referenced and beautifully illustrated, this book is destined to be a classic reference for bemushroomed generations to come.




Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web by Jeff Lowenfels, Wayne Lewis - By eschewing jargon and overly technical language, the authors make the benefits of cultivating the soil food web available to a wide audience, from devotees of organic gardening techniques to weekend gardeners who simply want to grow healthy, vigorous plants without resorting to chemicals. Healthy soil is teeming with life — not just earthworms and insects, but a staggering multitude of bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms.
eBook preview: Teaming with Microbes












The Soul of Soil: A Soil-Building Guide for Master Gardeners and Farmers by Grace Gershuny - Now back in print, this eminently sensible and wonderfully well-focused book provides essential information about one of the most significant challenges for those attempting to grow delicious organic vegetables: the creation and maintenance of healthy soil. The Soul of Soil offers everyone a basic understanding of what soil is and what we can do to improve our own patch of it. Seen in this light, this practical handbook will be an inspiration as well.
eBook preview: The Soul of Soil






Life in the Soil: A Guide for Naturalists and Gardeners by James B. Nardi - Lavishly illustrated with nearly three hundred color illustrations and masterfully-rendered black and white drawings throughout, Life in the Soil invites naturalists and gardeners alike to dig in and discover the diverse community of creatures living in the dirt below us. Biologist and acclaimed natural history artist James B. Nardi begins with an introduction to soil ecosystems, revealing the unseen labors of underground organisms maintaining the rich fertility of the earth as they recycle nutrients between the living and mineral worlds.
eBook preview: Life in the Soil






Secrets to Great Soil: A Grower's Guide to Composting, Mulching, and Creating Healthy, Fertile Soil for Your Garden and Lawn by Elizabeth Stell - In easy-to-understand terms, Elizabeth Stell teaches readers all about the properties and value of good garden soil. She explains how to improve soil health with amendments and fertilizer and gives tips for customizing soil for a variety of vegetables, flowers, fruits, trees, shrubs, and lawns.















The Rodale Book of Composting: Easy Methods for Every Gardener - The broad spectrum of information given will be useful from backyard urban gardening on up to industrial, municipal, and farm recycling. The first quarter of the book gives you all you ever wanted to know on the science of composting--and more--along with some history. A discussion of materials, methods, structures, equipment, and uses is followed by a brief look at large-scale composting.

















The Worm Book: The Complete Guide to Gardening and Composting with Worms by Loren Nancarrow, Janet Hogan Taylor - Worms are the latest (as well as, of course, perhaps the oldest!) trend in earth-friendly gardening, and in this handy guide, the authors of DEAD SNAILS LEAVE NO TRAILS demystify the world of worm wrangling, with everything you need to know to build your own worm bin, make your garden worm-friendly, pamper your soil, and much much more.









The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure by Joseph Jenkins - Written by a humanure composter with over thirty years experience, this classic work now includes illustrated, step-by-step instructions on how to build a "$25 humanure toilet," a chapter on alternative graywater systems, photos of owner-built humanure toilets from around the world, and an overview of commercial composting toilets and systems.
Full eBook online: The Humanure Handbook










Holy Shit: Managing Manure To Save Mankind byGene Logsdon - In his insightful new book, Holy Shit, Managing Manure To Save Mankind, contrary farmer Gene Logsdon provides the inside story of manure—our greatest, yet most misunderstood, natural resource. He begins by lamenting a modern society that not only throws away both animal and human manure—worth billions of dollars in fertilizer value—but that spends a staggering amount of money to do so. This wastefulness makes even less sense as the supply of mined or chemically synthesized fertilizers dwindles and their cost skyrockets.
eBook preview: Holy Shit

Plants & Vegetables

Perennial Vegetables: From Artichokes to Zuiki Taro, A Gardener's Guide to Over 100 Delicious and Easy to Grow Ediblesby Eric Toensmeier - Perennial vegetables are perfect as part of an edible landscape plan or permaculture garden. Profiling more than 100 species, illustrated with dozens of color photographs and illustrations, and filled with valuable growing tips, recipes, and resources,Perennial Vegetables is a groundbreaking and ground-healing book that will open the eyes of gardeners everywhere to the exciting world of edible perennials.


Eric Toensmeier (Edible Forest Gardens) introduces gardeners to a world of little-known and wholly underappreciated plants.
eBook preview: Perennial Vegetables






Permaculture Plants: A Selection by Jeff Nugent - This is an easy-to-use guide to selecting hundreds of perennial species. It is indispensable for growers and designers working in subtropical and warm temperate/arid climates, and also includes some cool-tolerant species. Permaculture Plants: A Selectiondetails hundreds of common and unusual edible, medicinal, and useful plants.
eBook preview: Permaculture Plants: Agaves and Cacti
see also Full eBook: Plants For A Future: Survey and Research Project on 'The Field'








.What's Wrong With My Plant? (And How Do I Fix It?): A Visual Guide to Easy Diagnosis and Organic Remedies by David Deardorff, Kathryn Wadsworth - provides an easy system for visually diagnosing any problem, and matching it to the right cure. Whether your garden consists of herbs on a kitchen windowsill, a vegetable garden, an elaborate backyard border, or a container on a patio, What's Wrong With My Plant? is an indispensable resource. If you can see it, you can fix it. Curing a sick plant just doesn't get any easier.
eBook preview: What's Wrong With My Plant? (And How Do I Fix It?)






Roots Demystified: Change Your Gardening Habits to Help Roots Thrive by Robert Kourik - explains simple solutions about growing healthy roots and, thereby, healthier plants. The book explores the subterranean part of every gardener's world, revealing how roots really grow while dispelling myths such as where most gardeners apply water, mulch, and fertilizer or compost. This is the first and only book in print for gardeners with such an extensive number of illustrations of garden and orchard roots. The roots covered are: lawns, prairies, shrubs, vegetables, fruit trees, and native and ornamental trees. Practical tips for how a gardener might use this new information to create more abundant vegetables, better lawns and sturdier trees and shrubs are offered with each of the 70 illustrations.

Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties: The Gardener's & Farmer's Guide to Plant Breeding & Seed Saving by Carol Deppe - In this one-size-fits-all world of multinational seed companies, plant patents, and biotech monopolies, more and more gardeners and farmers are recognizing that they need to "take back their seeds." They need to save more of their own seed, grow and maintain the best traditional and regional varieties, and develop more of their own unique new varieties. Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties shows the way, and offers an exciting introduction to a whole new gardening adventure.





The New Seed Starter's Handbook by Nancy Bubel - For the most complete, up-to-date information on starting plants from seed, turn to The New Seed-Starter's Handbook. Written by a gardener with 30 years of experience, this easy-to-use reference explains everything you need to know to start seeds and raise healthy seedlings successfully. An encyclopedia section lists more than 200 plants--including vegetables and fruits, garden flowers, wildflowers, herbs, trees, and shrubs--with details on how to start each from seed.














The Lost Language of Plants: The Ecological Importance of Plant Medicines for Life on Earth by Stephen Harrod Buhner - The book will affect readers on rational and emotional planes. It is grounded in both a New Age spiritual sensibility and hard science. The overall impact is a powerful, eye-opening expos' of the threat that our allopathic Western medical system, in combination with our unquestioning faith in science and technology, poses to the primary life-support systems of the planet. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned about the state of the environment, the state of health care, and our cultural sanity.
eBook preview: The Lost Language of Plants


Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms byPaul Stamets - With updated production techniques for home and commercial cultivation, detailed growth parameters for 31 mushroom species, a trouble-shooting guide, and handy gardening tips, this revised and updated handbook will make your mycological landscapes the envy of the neighborhood. After years of living in awe of the mysterious fungi known as mushrooms-chefs, health enthusiasts, and home cooks alike can't get enough of these rich, delicate morsels.

Water / Rainwater harvesting

Water For Every Farm: Yeomans Keyline Plan by P. A. Yeomans - Keyline methods enable the rapid development of deep biologically fertile soil by converting subsoil into living topsoil. Keyline pattern cultivation enables the rapid flood irrigation of undulating land without terracing. Incidental results are the healing of soil erosion, bio-adsorption of salinity and the long term storage of atmospheric carbon in the soil as humus. The Keyline Scale of Permanence provides a priority guide to planning the various factors of broad scale development.This is a recommended text for Permaculture students.


Free eBooks by P. A. Yeomans:
The Challenge of Landscape: The Development and Practice of Keyline
The City Forest: The Keyline Plan for the Human Environment Revolution







Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands (Vol. 1): Guiding Principles to Welcome Rain into Your Life And Landscape by Brad Lancaster - is the first volume of three-volume guide on how to conceptualize, design, and implement sustainable water-harvesting systems for your home, landscape, and community. This book enables you to assess your on-site resources, gives you a diverse array of strategies to maximize their potential, and empowers you with guiding principles to create an integrated, multi-functional water-harvesting plan specific to your site and needs.

Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond (Vol. 2): Water-Harvesting Earthworks by Brad Lancaster - Building on the information presented in Volume 1, this book shows you how to select, place, size, construct, and plant your chosen water-harvesting earthworks. It presents detailed how-to information and variations of a diverse array of earthworks, including chapters on mulch, vegetation, and greywater recycling so you can customize the techniques to the unique requirements of your site.




Design for Water: Rainwater Harvesting, Stormwater Catchment, and Alternate Water Reuse by Heather Kinkade-Levario - is an accessible and clearly written guide to alternate water collection, with a focus on rainwater harvesting in the urban environment. All aspects of rainwater harvesting are outlined, including passive and active system setup, storage, storm water reuse, distribution, purification, analysis, and filtration. There is even a section on rainwater harvesting for wildlife. The book will especially appeal to engineers, landscape architects, municipal decision-makers, developers, and landowners.
eBook preview: Design for Water






Harvest the Rain: How to Enrich Your Life by seeing Every Storm as a Resource by Nate Downey - presents a wealth of opportunities for enriching your life. Now that you've found this book, you can reap the benefits and ensure that future generations inherit a better world. This book will not only make you a true believer in the regenerative power of harvesting rain--it will show you how. Harvest the Rain is full of practical solutions to our water shortages and points the way to a climate-resilient future.
Ebook preview: Harvest the Rain











Water Storage: Tanks, Cisterns, Aquifers, and Ponds for Domestic Supply, Fire and Emergency Use - Includes How to Make Ferrocement Water Tanks by Art Ludwig - A do-it-yourself guide to designing, building, and maintaining water tanks, cisterns and ponds, and sustainably managing groundwater storage. It will help you with your independent water system, fire protection, and disaster preparedness, at low cost and using principles of ecological design. Includes building instructions for several styles of ferro cement water tanks.

Urban Gardening

Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community byHeather Coburn Flores - This joyful permaculture lifestyle manual inspires readers to apply the principles of the paradise garden—simplicity, resourcefulness, creativity, mindfulness, and community—to all aspects of life.

Plant "guerilla gardens" in barren intersections and medians; organize community meals; start a street theater troupe or host a local art swap; free your kitchen from refrigeration and enjoy truly fresh, nourishing foods from your own plot of land; work with children to create garden play spaces.

Activist and urban gardener Heather Flores shares her nine-step permaculture design to help farmsteaders and city dwellers alike build fertile soil, promote biodiversity, and increase natural habitat in their own "paradise gardens."
eBook preview: Food Not Lawns

The Quarter-Acre Farm: How I Kept the Patio, Lost the Lawn, and Fed My Family for a Year by Spring Warren - Full of tips and recipes to help anyone interested in growing and preparing at least a small part of their diet at home, The Quarter-Acre Farm is a warm, witty tale about family, food, and the incredible gratification that accompanies self-sufficiency. The Quarter-Acre Farm is Warren’s account of deciding—despite all resistance—to take control of her family’s food choices, get her hands dirty, and create a garden in her suburban yard. It’s a story of bugs, worms, rot, and failure; of learning, replanting, harvesting, and eating.
eBook preview: The Quarter-Acre Farm




On Guerrilla Gardening: A Handbook for Gardening Without Boundaries by Richard Reynolds - is a lively colourful treatise about why people illicitly cultivate land and how to do it. Reynolds has researched the subject with guerrilla gardeners from thirty different countries and compiles their advice on what to grow, how to cope with adverse environmental conditions, how to seed bomb effectively and to use propaganda to win support. On Guerrilla Gardening gives entertaining inspiration, practical reference and no excuses for not getting out there and gardening.
eBook preview: On Guerrilla Gardening
eBook preview: Guerrilla Gardening - A Manualfesto











The Edible Front Yard: The Mow-Less, Grow-More Plan for a Beautiful, Bountiful Garden byIvette Soler - offers step-by-step instructions for converting all or part of a lawn into an edible paradise; specific guidelines for selecting and planting the most attractive edible plants; and design advice and plans for the best placement and for combining edibles with ornamentals in pleasing ways. Inspiring and accessible, The Edible Front Yard is a one-stop resource for a front-and-center edible garden that is both beautiful and bountiful all year-round.
eBook preview: The Edible Front Yard








Fresh Food from Small Spaces: The Square-Inch Gardener's Guide to Year-Round Growing, Fermenting, and Sprouting by R.J. Ruppenthal - Readers will learn how to transform their balconies and windowsills into productive vegetable gardens, their countertops and storage lockers into commercial-quality sprout and mushroom farms, and their outside nooks and crannies into whatever they can imagine, including sustainable nurseries for honeybees and chickens. Free space for the city gardener might be no more than a cramped patio, balcony, rooftop, windowsill, hanging rafter, dark cabinet, garage, or storage area, but no space is too small or too dark to raise food.
eBook preview: Fresh Food from Small Spaces







Garden Up! Smart Vertical Gardening for Small and Large Spaces by Susan Lee Morrison, Rebecca Sweet - Filled with design tips, plant ideas and over 200 photos, Garden Up! offers inspiration and how-to information for enhancing any outdoor space with vertical elements. In chapters like 'Arbors and Trellises' and 'Garden Secrets', the book offers a wealth of design advice and problem solving solutions for traditional gardeners. Small space gardeners, DIYers and those looking to incorporate the latest vertical techniques into their gardens will appreciate sections that examine 'skinny space' planting beds, urban gardens, edibles and living walls.
eBook preview: Garden Up! Smart Vertical Gardening for Small and Large Spaces

Renewable Energy

Solar Electricity Handbook - 2011 Edition: A Simple Practical Guide to Solar Energy - Designing and Installing Photovoltaic Solar Electric Systems by Michael Boxwell - is a simple, practical guide to using electric solar panels and designing and installing photovoltaic PV systems. The 2011 edition has been extensively revised, with new chapters, new information on grid-tie systems and financial incentive schemes, new diagrams and more example projects.

The book explains how solar panels work and how they can be used. It explains the advantages of solar energy and the drawbacks that you need to take into account when designing a solar power system. As well as explaining the underlying principles, it provides a step-by-step guide so that you can successfully design and install a photovoltaic solar system from scratch.

Accompanying the book is one of the most comprehensive solar resource websites in the world. It contains powerful online tools such as the Solar Project Analysis toolkit, which provides a full feasibility and cost document for your project; Solar Irradiance Tables and Solar Angle Calculators for every major town and city in every country in the world; lists of suppliers and a Contact the Author form if you have any questions about your specific project.
eBook preview: Solar Electricity Handbook - 2011 Edition


Wind Power: Renewable Energy for Home, Farm, and Business by Paul Gipe - Wind Power guides us through the emergent, sometimes daunting discourse on wind technology, giving frank explanations of how to use wind technology wisely and sound advice on how to avoid common mistakes. With chapters on output and economics, Wind Power discloses how much you can expect from each method of wind technology, both in terms of energy and financial savings. The book’s updated models, graphics, and weighty appendixes make it an invaluable reference for everyone interested in the emerging trend of wind power and renewable energy.
eBook preview: Wind Power




Cooking with Sunshine: The Complete Guide to Solar Cuisine with 150 Easy Sun-Cooked Recipes byLorraine Anderson, Rick Palkovic - provide everything you need to know to cook great sun-fueled meals. They describe how to build your own inexpensive solar cooker, explain how solar cooking works and its benefits over traditional methods, offer more than 100 tasty recipes emphasizing healthy ingredients, and suggest a month's worth of menu ideas.

eBook preview: Cooking with Sunshine






The Citizen-Powered Energy Handbook: Community Solutions to a Global Crisis by Greg Pahl - provides a clear-eyed view of the current energy situation and points toward a sustainable path forward. Greg Pahl examines renewable energy technologies currently available and homes in on strategies that can be adopted by individuals and, especially, communities. Such cooperative initiatives have been common in Europe for years and are beginning to gain a foothold in the U.S. because these medium-scale projects successfully bring people together to create collective energy security for a neighborhood, town, or region while strengthening the local economy.

Each chapter focuses on a different renewable energy sector--solar, wind, water, biomass, liquid biofuels, and geothermal--then reviews their advantages and disadvantages and describes numerous examples of proven local initiatives.
eBook preview: The Citizen-Powered Energy Handbook

Transition Towns & Peak Oil

The Transition Companion: Making Your Community More Resilient in Uncertain Times by Rob Hopkins - picks up the story today, drawing on the experience of one of the most fascinating experiments under way in the world. It tells inspiring tales of communities working for a future where local economies are valued and nurtured; where lower energy use is seen as a benefit; and where enterprise, creativity, and the building of resilience have become cornerstones of a new economy.

The first part discusses where we are now in terms of resilience and vulnerability in the face of rising oil prices, climate change, and economic challenge. It presents a vision of the future if we do not address these issues, and how things might change if we start to do so.

The book then looks in detail at the process a community in transition goes through, calling on the experience of those who have already embarked on this journey. These examples show how much can be achieved when people harness energy and imagination to create projects that will make their communities more resilient.The Transition Companion combines practical advice--the tools needed to start and maintain a Transition initiative--with numerous inspiring stories from local groups worldwide.
eBook preview: The Transition Companion


The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience by Rob Hopkins - shows how the inevitable and profound changes ahead can have a positive outcome. These changes can lead to the rebirth of local communities that will grow more of their own food, generate their own power, and build their own houses using local materials. They can also encourage the development of local currencies to keep money in the local area. If your town is not a transition town, this upbeat guide offers you the tools for starting the process.








Future Scenarios: How Communities Can Adapt to Peak Oil and Climate Change by David Holmgren - In Future Scenarios, permaculture co-originator and leading sustainability innovator David Holmgren outlines four scenarios that bring to life the likely cultural, political, agricultural, and economic implications of peak oil and climate change, and the generations-long era of “energy descent” that faces us. “Scenario planning,” Holmgren explains, “allows us to use stories about the future as a reference point for imagining how particular strategies and structures might thrive, fail, or be transformed.”
eBook preview: Future Scenarios












The Post Carbon Reader: Managing the 21st Century's Sustainability Crises - features articles by some of the world's most provocative thinkers on the key drivers shaping this new century, from renewable energy and urban agriculture to social justice and systems resilience. This unprecedented collection takes a hard-nosed look at the interconnected threats of our global sustainability quandary--as well as the most promising responses. The Post Carbon Reader is a valuable resource for policymakers, college classrooms, and concerned citizens.
DOWNLOAD CHAPTERS (free)












The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century by James Howard Kunstler - tells us just what to expect after we pass the point of global peak oil production and the honeymoon of affordable energy is over, preparing us for economic, political, and social changes of an unimaginable scale. Riveting and authoritative, The Long Emergency is a devastating indictment that brings new urgency and accessibility to the critical issues that will shape our future, and that we can no longer afford to ignore.
Read Full eBook: The Long Emergency












The Crash Course: The Unsustainable Future Of Our Economy, Energy, And Environment by Chris Martenson - This book is written for those who are motivated to learn about the root causes of our predicaments, protect themselves and their families, mitigate risks as much as possible, and control what effects they can. With challenge comes opportunity, and The Crash Course offers a positive vision for how to reshape our lives to be more balanced, resilient, and sustainable.
eBook preview: The Crash Course














When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergencyby Matthew Stein - You'll learn how to start a fire and keep warm if you've been left temporarily homeless, as well as the basics of installing a renewable energy system for your home or business. You'll learn how to find and sterilize water in the face of utility failure, as well as practical information for dealing with water-quality issues even when the public tap water is still flowing. You'll learn alternative techniques for healing equally suited to an era of profit-driven malpractice as to situations of social calamity.

Each chapter (a survey of the risks to the status quo; supplies and preparation for short- and long-term emergencies; emergency measures for survival; water; food; shelter; clothing; first aid, low-tech medicine, and healing; energy, heat, and power; metalworking; utensils and storage; low-tech chemistry; and engineering, machines, and materials) offers the same approach, describing skills for self-reliance in good times and bad.
eBook preview: When Technology Fails


                                                                                      Navigating The Coming Chaos: A Handbook For Inner Transition by Carolyn Baker - Just as the Transition Handbook of 2008, provided specific strategies for addressing these changes logistically, Navigating The Coming Chaos, provides a toolkit of emotional and spiritual preparation for an uncertain future. It offers us an opportunity to step across an evolutionary threshold in order to become a new kind of human being living in conscious self-awareness of our intimate connection with all life in the universe.
eBook preview: Navigating The Coming Chaos

Local Economy & Community

Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered by E. F. Schumacher - is the perfect antidote to the economics of globalization. As relevant today as when it was first published, this is a landmark set of essays on humanistic economics. Small Is Beautiful is Oxford-trained economist E. F. Schumacher’s classic call for the end of excessive consumption. Schumacher inspired such movements as “Buy Locally” and “Fair Trade,” while voicing strong opposition to “casino capitalism” and wasteful corporate behemoths. Named one of the Times Literary Supplement’s 100 Most Influential Books Since World War II, Small Is Beautiful presents eminently logical arguments for building our economies around the needs of communities, not corporations.




Inquiries Into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered by Woody Tasch - presents an essential new strategy for investing in local food systems and introduces a group of fiduciary activists who are exploring what should come after industrial finance and industrial agriculture. Theirs is a vision for investing that puts soil fertility into return-on-investment calculations and serves people and place as much at it serves industry sectors and markets. Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money is a call to action for designing capital markets built around not extraction and consumption but preservation and restoration.
eBook preview: Inquiries Into the Nature of Slow Money







Sharing the Harvest: A Citizen's Guide to Community Supported Agriculture by Elizabeth Henderson, Robyn Van En - In this thoroughly revised and expanded edition of a Chelsea Green classic, authors Henderson and Van En provide new insight into making CSA not only a viable economic model, but the right choice for food lovers and farmers alike. Thinking and buying local is quickly moving from a novel idea to a mainstream activity. The groundbreaking first edition helped spark a movement and, with this revised edition, Sharing the Harvest is poised to lead the way toward a revitalized agriculture.
eBook preview: Sharing the Harvest










Superbia: 31 Ways to Create Sustainable Neighborhoods by Dan Chiras, Dave Wann - is a book of practical ideas for creating more socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable neighborhoods. It is about remaking suburban and urban neighborhoods to serve people better and to reduce human impact on the environment. Well-illustrated and reader-friendly, Superbia! is written primarily for the millions who live in urban areas or existing suburbs. It will also be of major interest to environmentalists, planners, and all who want to create a more humane and nurturing lifestyle.
eBook preview: Superbia



The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life & Build Community by Janelle Orsi Attorney - is a timely practical and legal guide that explains how to create and maintain successful sharing arrangements while addressing common concerns about liability, communication, and more. The ultimate beauty of sharing is that it's a solution we create for ourselves. It's not a government program, nor is it the "latest and greatest" product marketed to us on billboards. It's a solution based on our own needs and lifestyles, in our own communities. It's a way for each of us to shape our own lives in positive ways and simultaneously benefit the world as a whole. In that respect, sharing is more than a simple trend: Some might even say our society is moving toward a sharing revolution.
eBook preview: The Sharing Solution




What's Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption by Rachel Botsman - is about Collaborative Consumption, a new, emerging economy made possible by online social networks and fueled by increasing cost consciousness and environmental necessity. Collaborative Consumption occurs when people participate in organized sharing, bartering, trading, renting, swapping, and collectives to get the same pleasures of ownership with reduced personal cost and burden, and lower environmental impact. In this book the authors travel among the quiet revolutionaries (consumers and companies) from all around the world. They explore how businesses will both prosper and fail in this environment, and, in particular, they examine how it has the potential to help create the mass sustainable change in consumer behaviors this planet so desperately needs.





All That We Share: How to Save the Economy, the Environment, the Internet, Democracy, Our Communities and Everything Else that Belongs to All of Us by Jay Walljasper - is an indispensable introduction to fresh ideas that touch all of us. Filled with practical solutions for today's economic, political, and cultural issues, it's a much-needed and thoroughly accessible field guide to the new world of the commons. Including success stories from communities across the country and around the world, this book is for anyone seeking new ways of thinking about our shared values.











Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities by Diana Leafe Christian - is the only resource available that provides step-by-step practical information distilled from numerous firsthand sources on how to establish an intentional community. It deals in depth with structural, interpersonal and leadership issues, decision-making methods, vision statements, and the development of a legal structure, as well as profiling well-established model communities. This exhaustive guide includes excellent sample documents among its wealth of resources.
eBook preview: Creating a Life Together







EcoVillage at Ithaca: Pioneering a Sustainable Cultureby Liz Walker - This book tells the story of life at EcoVillage at Ithaca, an internationally recognized example of sustainable development. It transports the reader into the midst of a vibrant community that includes co-housing neighborhoods, small-scale organic farming, land preservation, green building, energy alternatives and hands-on education. By integrating proven social and environmental alternatives into a living model, EcoVillage at Ithaca provides a rare glimpse into one possible—and positive—future for the planet.
eBook preview: EcoVillage at Ithaca









Simple Living & Self-sufficiency





Walden; Or, Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau - Thoreau’s literary classic, an elegantly written record of his experiment in simple living, has engaged readers and thinkers for a century and a half. Encompassing aspects of autobiography, spiritual treatise, political declaration, and historical commentary, Henry David Thoreau's Walden is one of the classic greats to be revisited by all audiences as an example of achievement in both breadth and beauty. Thoreau masterfully blends his personal opinions on topics from economy and education with elegant prose describing his peaceful paradise at Walden. Walden makes the rare presentation of an idealist viewpoint in a far from ideal world.
Free AudioBook: Walden



Possum Living: How to Live Well Without a Job and with (Almost) No Money by Dolly Freed - After discussing reasons why you should or shouldn't give up your job, Possum Living gives you details about the cheapest ways with the best results to buy and maintain your home, dress well, cope with the law, stay healthy, and keep up a middle-class facade — whether you live in the city, in the suburbs, or in a small town. In a delightful, straightforward style Dolly Freed explains how to be lazy, proud, miserly, and honest, live well and enjoy leisure. If you ever wondered what it would be like to be in greater control of your own life, Possum Living will show you — and help you do it for yourself.







Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World by Kelly Coyne, Knutzen Erik - The projects range from simple to ambitious and include activities done in the home, in the garden, and out in the streets. With step-by-step instructions for a wide range of projects—from growing food in an apartment and building a ninety-nine-cent solar oven to creating safe, effective laundry soap for pennies a gallon and fishing in urban waterways—Making It will be the go-to source for post-consumer living activities that are fun, inexpensive, and eminently doable. Within hours of buying this book, readers will be able to start transitioning into a creative, sustainable mode of living that is not just a temporary fad but a cultural revolution.







Twelve by Twelve: A One-Room Cabin Off the Grid and Beyond the American Dream by William Powers - Why would a successful American physician choose to live in a twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot cabin without running water or electricity? To find out, writer and activist William Powers visited Dr. Jackie Benton in rural North Carolina. No Name Creek gurgled through Benton’s permaculture farm, and she stroked honeybees’ wings as she shared her wildcrafter philosophy of living on a planet in crisis. Powers, just back from a decade of international aid work, then accepted Benton’s offer to stay at the cabin for a season while she traveled. There, he befriended her eclectic neighbors — organic farmers, biofuel brewers, eco-developers — and discovered a sustainable but imperiled way of life.
eBook preview: Twelve by Twelve





Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life byBarbara Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Their good-humored search yields surprising discoveries about turkey sex life and overly zealous zucchini plants, en route to a food culture that's better for the neighborhood and also better on the table. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet.







Choosing Simplicity: Real People Finding Peace and Fulfillment in a Complex World by Linda Breen Pierce- This ground breaking work goes beyond the books that tell you how to simplify your life. This book reveals what has happened in the lives of real people who have done it. Based on the author's three-year study of over 200 people from 40 states and eight countries, Choosing Simplicity is a delightful and rich blend of real-life profiles and guidelines on simplicity. Interwoven throughout the stories are the author'ss insights and lessons to guide those who want to explore simplicity and to sustain those who have already embarked on this journey.
eBook preview: Choosing Simplicity












The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery - the most complete source of information available about growing, processing, cooking, and preserving homegrown foods from the garden, orchard, field, or barnyard. For more than 30 years, people have relied on its practical, step-by-step advice on basic self-sufficiency skills such as how to cultivate a garden, buy land, bake bread, raise farm animals, make sausage, milk a goat, grow herbs, churn butter, build a chicken coop, cook on a wood stove, and much, much more.










Natural Beekeeping: Organic Approaches to Modern Apiculture by Ross Conrad - brings together the best organic and natural approaches to keeping honeybees healthy and productive here in one book. Readers will learn about nontoxic methods of controlling mites, eliminating American foulbrood disease (without the use of antibiotics), breeding strategies, and many other tips and techniques for maintaining healthy hives. Conrad's reservoir of knowledge comes from years of experience and a far-flung community of fellow beekeepers who are all interested in ecologically sustainable apiculture. Specific concepts and detailed management techniques are covered in a matter-of-fact, easy to implement way.
eBook preview: Natural Beekeeping





The Human-Powered Home: Choosing Muscles Over Motors by Tamara Dean - This book discusses the science and history of human power and examines the common elements of human-powered devices. It offers plans for making specific devices, grouped by area of use, and features dozens of individuals who share technical details and photos of their inventions. For those who want to apply their own ingenuity, or for those who have never heard of human-powered machines, this book is an excellent reference. For those who are beginning to understand the importance of a life of reduced dependency on fossil fuels, this book could be a catalyst for change.
eBook preview: The Human-Powered Home









Toolbox for Sustainable City Living: A do-it-Ourselves Guide by Scott Kellogg, Stacy Pettigrew - is a DIY guide for creating locally-based, ecologically sustainable communities in today's cities. Its straightforward text, vibrant illustrations and accessible diagrams explain how urbanites can have local access and control over life's essential resources: food production, water security, waste management, autonomous energy, and bioremediation of toxic soils. Written for people with limited financial means, the book emphasizes building these systems with cheap, salvaged and recycled materials when possible. This book will be an essential tool for transitioning into a sustainable future threatened by the converging trends of global warming and energy depletion.
eBook preview: Toolbox for Sustainable City Living

Independence Days: A Guide to Sustainable Food Storage & Preservation by Sharon Astyk - Independence Days tackles both the nuts and bolts of food preservation, as well as the host of broader issues tied to the creation of local diets. In addition, it focuses on how to live on a pantry diet year-round, how to preserve food on a community scale, and how to reduce reliance on industrial agriculture by creating vibrant local economies. Better food, plentiful food, at a lower cost and with less energy expended: Independence Days is for all who want to build a sustainable food system and keep eating—even in hard times.
eBook preview: Independence Days

Magazines

Permaculture Magazine - Subtitled ""Solutions for Sustainable Living,"" Permaculture Magazine offers advice and practical guidance on organic gardening, sustainable agriculture, agroforestry, eco-villages, alternative technology, eco-architecture and building, community development, and more.
Website: Permaculture Magazine

















The Permaculture Activist - Our purpose is to supply information that enables people everywhere to provide for their own & their communities' needs for food, energy, shelter, & a decent life without exploitation or pollution & from the smallest practical area of land.
Website: The Permaculture Activist


















Permaculture Drylands Magazine - Founded by Scott Pittman circa 1986, PDJ was (and remains) the only publication in the world with the specific focus on Drylands Permaculture. Published for 11 years (1986 - 1997) by the Permaculture Drylands Institute, operating out of Arizona and New Mexico, this publication has lots to offer to permaculture students even 10 years after its final issue was delivered.
Best of the Permaculture Drylands Magazine - Now Online!



Mother Earth News - This is a country lifestyle service magazine focused on do-it-yourself living, personal achievement, outdoor recreation, thrift and the blending of the old-fashioned with modern ingenuity. Its articles cover equipment, tools, gardening, health and home remedies, home building and repair, fishing, natural food and cooking environmentally-friendly products, recycling, country lore and small scale farming.
Website: Mother Earth News













Organic Gardening Magazine - Since 1942, Organic Gardening has been delivering well-researched, practical and timely information and useful products and services. As the essential resource for any gardener, it provides current and authoritative information, with a focus on making the process of gardening fun and easy.
Website: Organic Gardening
Organic Gardening Magazine - Free 19 issues Online






So....Here is my list of my top 100 Resources...whether you are a seasoned Permie- or you are just getting your fingers in the soil for the first time....these books are sure to make you fall in love over and over again with the art of Growing.  If you see any books or resources you want to add to the list, please leave a comment and I will make sure to get them in.  Mahalo- and Happy Growing to you all.