| Sustainable, Organic, Family Farm & Garden: |
 |
| Grow your own survival, health & food security. |
|
|
 |
| Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). |
|
|
|
 |
| Egg-love. |
|
|
*Farmer's Market Resources*Food in Uncertain Times: How to Grow and Store the 5 Crops You Need to Surviveby Makenna Goodman & Carol Deppe
"Having food resiliency is as much about learning how to store and use food properly as it is about growing it. The key is learning interdependence not independence." *Largest Egg Recall in US History Brings Renewed Attention to Dangers of Industrial Farming
& The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy and Poultry Farms on Humans and the Environment
Amy Goodman interviews Patty Lovera & David Kirby
"The
largest egg recall in US history is bringing renewed attention to the
dangers of factory farming and to growing consolidation in the
industries responsible for the food many Americans eat. Over half a
billion eggs have been ordered off US shelves...
following an outbreak of salmonella in the Midwest. Nearly 1,300 cases
of people sickened by the eggs have been reported. Despite the size of
the recall, responsibility falls on just two factory farms: Hillandale
Farms and Wright County Egg, both from Iowa... These are the cheapest eggs on the market. The reason
they are cheap is because they are mass-produced in these giant, often
filthy factories, given substandard feed, in conditions that you would
never raise a dog or any other animal. The drive for cheap food has created a consolidated food production system that pushes out small and
independent producers that tend to produce higher-quality food. Chickens
that live in a sustainable farm produce eggs that are far less likely
to be contaminated with something like salmonella than these big
factories, which are basically allowed to police
themselves... And this is food that we feed our families!!..."*Useful Gardening Guidescompliments of Paul, Living on the Land *Chicken Condos... How to Best House Chickens in the Backcountry
by Doug Willhite
"Raising chickens
in your backyard is a relatively simple way to produce your own food
(meat and eggs), learn animal husbandry skills, hedge against a
struggling economy, and make your family more self-reliant and
financially independent... If we are to carry
on living well, we must re-learn to do some activities, such as feeding
our families, in ways that our forebears did back in the old days."
*Proven Practices for Organic Mini-Farming & Gardening
by Ken Hargesheimer
"There's a grassroots movement around the world to "buy local, buy fresh, buy organic." Organic, no-till mini-farms & gardens are ecologically sustainable, environmentally responsible,
socially just and economically viable. (There is unlimited, documented
proof.) Organic, no-till mini-farming & gardening can double your yields and reduce
your labor by half compared to traditional methods. Here's how..."
*Moral Farming is a Better Way to Raise Food
from The Christian Science Monitor
"The current industrial food system is beginning to break down." says farmer/lecturer Joel Salatin. "There is a righteous way to farm and an unrighteous way to farm. Moral farming can not only feed the world, but is the only system that can feed the world." Meet the best, loudest, Christian-libertarian-capitalist-environmentalist-lunatic farmer on the face of planet earth! While he appreciates the "bearded, beaded, braless, Woodstock revolution" set who make up the bulwark of conscious farming, he's delighted that half of those coming to visit his farm nowadays are involved in the home-school movement..."*The Differences Between Predators & Prey Animalsby John Mallon, Gentling & Training Llamas & Alpacas
"I hear people
sometimes say “I don’t like to think of myself as
a predator; “I don’t want to think of this as a
predator-prey interaction”. Fine, then, don’t; but
realize that that is how the llama or alpaca views
it, whether
we like it or not, and there is absolutely nothing
we can
do to change that simple fact. We are meat-eaters
(whether
individually vegetarian or otherwise), lamas are
meat, to
put it in its most basic light. This doesn’t mean
that
we have to approach the llama or alpaca in a
predatory fashion,
stalking and “attacking”/ it means that we have
to try to understand another creature’s point of
view,
a point of view which is far outside of our
experience..." *The Truth About Vegetarianism
by Lierre Keith, Mother Earth News
"The vast majority of people in the United States don’t
grow food, let alone hunt and gather it. We have no way to judge how
much death is embodied in a serving of salad, a bowl of fruit or a plate
of beef. We live in urban environments — in the last whisper of forests
— thousands of miles removed from the devastated rivers, prairies,
wetlands and the millions of creatures who died for our dinners. Many
inhabitants of urban industrial cultures have no point of contact with
grain, chickens, cows, or — for that matter — with topsoil. We have no
idea what nourishes plants, animals or soil, which means we have no idea
what we ourselves are eating..."
*VICTORY GARDENS...
by John Michael Greer
"The victory garden as a social response to crisis was an
invention of the twentieth century. Much before then, it would have been
a waste of time to encourage civilians in time of war to dig up their
back yards and put in vegetable gardens, because nearly everybody who
had a back yard already had a kitchen garden in it. That was originally
why houses had back yards; the household economy, which produced much of
the goods and services used by people in pre-petroleum Europe and
America, didn’t stop at the four walls of a house; garden beds, cold
frames, and henhouses in urban back yards kept pantries full, while no
self-respecting farm wife would have done without the vegetable garden
out back and the dozen or so fruit trees close by the farmhouse."
*How to Butcher a Chickenby Gene Logsden"Butchering anything is disagreeable work. But if a
person is going to eat meat, he can hardly avoid the work just for that
reason and not be a hypocrite. And because chickens are the one animal
eminently practical for all homesteads (even the smallest), knowing how
to butcher them can be a very handy skill to acquire..." *Is
Goat the New Cow?
by Sarah Newman
Goat is a great
way for people to eat locally grown, humanely raised, tasty foods. And
unlike the cattle industries, there aren't any massive, industrialized
goat farms.*Fencing Boer Meat Goats & other Livestock
by Doug & Hillary Willhite
"Boer goats are a
win-win
arrangement that can provide your family with fun, husbandry skills, increased
food security, and wildfire safety. They can substantially ease your
mowing, weed trimming, and tractor work load!... Strong, durable,
long-lasting fences are a must for Boer goat containment! A herd of
Boer goats that are hungry, horny (or both ;-) will jump up against your
fence, walk along leaning their weight hard against it in order to
scratch themselves, and ram into the fence with their horns trying to
break through..."
*What Exactly is a Family Farm? How Does it Differ from a Factory Farm?
by Alicia @ Farm Aid
"Environmental
stewardship, community involvement, and preserving the heritage of family
farming make up our ideal of what it means to be a family farmer.
Not every family farmer does all of these things, but they have the
potential to do so. In times of financial crisis, food scares, public
health crises, and climate change, protecting and fostering this
potential is one of the most important jobs we eaters can do..."*Renewing Husbandryby Wendell Berry
THE WORD “HUSBANDRY” IS THE NAME of a connection. In its
original sense, it is the name of the work of a domestic man, a man who
has accepted a bondage to the household. To husband is to use with care,
to keep, to save, to make last, to conserve. Old usage tells us that
there is a husbandry also of the land, of the soil, of the domestic
plants and animals—obviously because of the importance of these things
to the household. And there have been times, one of which is now, when
some people have tried to practice a proper human husbandry of the
nondomestic creatures, in recognition of the dependence of our
households and domestic life upon the wild world. Husbandry is the name
of all the practices that sustain life by connecting us conservingly to
our places and our world; it is the art of keeping tied all the strands
in the living network that sustains us."*Food Growing, Animal Husbandry, Medicinal Herbs & Health - Online Sources
by Paul, Living on the Land & Gourmet Gardens
*The Good Hunter & the Ethical Killing of Animals
by Jeremy Lloyd
"There are many
hidden ecological and economic costs of veganism and vegetarianism. Ted
Kerasote, in his well-researched book Bloodties, coined the term
“fossil-fuel vegetarianism” to describe what’s going on today. If
someone wishes to forgo meat — either for moral reasons or because they
believe eating meat is unhealthy — I say more power to them. But how
many vegetarians grow or gather all their own food? Practically no one
falls into that category, which means you’re buying farmed products.
Somebody has cleared land, costing many birds and animals their homes.
Maybe that land was cleared a hundred years before you were born, but
you’re a direct beneficiary of that destruction of the wild. Then there
are all the chemical fertilizers. Even if you’re using organic
fertilizer, it has to be shipped using fossil fuels. Every spring a big
diesel tractor will be used to till the soil and will smash burrows and
kill countless moles and mice and burrowing owls and even deer fawns.
This considerable carnage is all conveniently invisible..."
*Bee
Catastrophe: 1/3 of Colonies Died This Winter, Worries Grow About
Terminal Decline
The honeybee is responsible for
pollinating 90 commercial crops worldwide. What do we do if they're
gone?"Flowering plants
require insects for pollination. The most effective is the honeybee,
which pollinates 90 commercial crops worldwide. As well as most fruits
and vegetables – including apples, oranges, strawberries, onions and
carrots – they pollinate nuts, sunflowers and oil-seed rape. Coffee,
soya beans, clovers – like alfafa, which is used for cattle feed – and
even cotton are all dependent on honeybee pollination to increase
yields..."
*Wanted: Fifty Million Farmers!
by Richard Heinberg
"There was a time
not so long ago when famine was an expected, if not accepted, part of
life. Until the 19th century food came almost entirely from local sources and harvests
were variable. In good years, there was plenty enough for seasonal
feasts and for storage in anticipation of winter and hard times to come. In bad years, starvation cut down the poorest and the weakest, the very
young, the old, and the sickly. Sometimes bad years followed one upon
another, reducing the size of the population by several percent. This
was the normal condition of life in pre-industrial societies, and it
persisted for thousands of years...
The Key: More
Farmers! Re-ruralization will be the dominant
social trend of the 21st century. Thirty or forty years from now we will see a more historically normal
ratio of rural to urban population, with the majority living
in small, farming communities. More food will be produced in cities than
is the case today, but cities will be smaller. Millions more people
than today will be in the countryside growing food..."*Cow vs. Goat!Hen and Harvest.com
"If
you’re thinking about getting into dairy animals, there are two primary
choices: Cows or goats. You might think that the cow is the more
obvious of the two, but it’s said that more people in the world drink
goat’s milk than cow’s milk. There are a number of factors to consider when choosing which way to go. We’ve tried both..."
*Meat
Goats vs. Hair Sheep vs. Wool Sheep: a Comparison
By Stan Potratz
"The demand for meat from all three (and thus price/lb) is high. It's
likely to remain high for several years. So which of the above is best
for your farm or farmstead?"
*Prepare Your Family (for Hard Times)
by Doug Willhite
"If
your family is NOT feeling a burden from higher food and fuel prices,
the bursting housing bubble, wobbly Wall Street, or too much debt, then
count yourself among the very fortunate. The
good news for the rest of us is there is much we can do to help cushion
our families and stabilize our communities in the face of financial
hardships and vital resource shortages..."
*Getting Your Family on Board with Storing Food
by Sharon Astyk
"The idea of storing food isn't seeming quite so
crazy to a lot of folks in the country, but still, I hear all the
time "I want to start building up a reserve but my husband/sister/mother
in law thinks this is nuts." Ok,
I've convinced you - you need a reserve of food, you want to learn
to can and dehydrate, you want to start eating more local foods.
But you haven't done anything yet, because, well, the rest of your
household isn't on board. Before you go there, you need to convince
them. So I offer up this handy guide of answers to common protests
about food storage and preservation. I also offer up some suggestions
on what not to say, just in case you need them, mostly because
that part was fun for me to write..."
*The Garden Farm Guide to Beekeeping
by Gene Logsdon
"Locate
hives in an area where they are protected from harsh winter winds, but
where in summer they are shaded in the afternoon. Nearness to water is
not as important as some books insinuate. Bees can get plenty of water
from dew. But it is important to have your hives located near nectar
sources. The farther a bee has to fly for nectar, the less nectar it
can gather. Bees are in bad humor on cool days when they can’t find
much nectar, but when there is a good flow of nectar, as from an apple
tree in full bloom, you can brush the bees in the blossoms without
fear..."
*Farmer In Chief
by Michael Pollan, The New York Times
"We
need more highly skilled small farmers in more places all across
America -- not as a matter of nostalgia for the agrarian past but as a
matter of national security. For nations that lose the ability to
substantially feed themselves will find themselves as gravely compromised
in their international dealings as nations that depend on foreign
sources of oil presently do. But while there are alternatives to oil,
there are no alternatives to food..."
*Starting a Small Flock of Chickens
by Harvey Ussery
"Chickens
are the easiest of all livestock to raise. Their needs for feed and
shelter are easily met. The eggs and meat you can get from a home flock
will be superior to anything you can buy. And a flock of chickens is an
endless source of fascination for the whole family. Give them a try!.."
*Growing for Profit & Sustainability
by Paul & Barb, Old World Gardens
"To
be sustainable, growing must first sustain the grower. Market growing
must be profitable and practical, or few will be growing - sustainably
or otherwise. Growers profit most with a combination of best practices,
by producing more and using garden space more efficiently, and doing it
with less work and lower cost without machinery..."
*300 Seed Sources List
by Paul, Living on the Land & Gourmet Gardens
*The Integrated Homestead
by Harvey Ussery
"How we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used."
That statement (from Wendell Berry) is a potent reminder that many of
the problems we have created for ourselves derive from the fact that
eating in our time has become a great act of forgetting. Forgetting
foremost our sacred responsibility to nurture and safeguard our land..."
*The Integrated Homestead - Part 2
by Harvey Ussery
"More on season extension growing, the "forest garden," livestock, and using fungi in the homestead..."
*How to Build a Backyard Coop
by Gene Logsdon
"My
henhouse design, based on what I've learned so far by building three
coops of my own, differs from standard designs in a few ways, which you
might find interesting to think about when you build your own..."
*In Defense of the Family Farm
by Wendell Berry
"An
example known to me of an American community of small family farmers
who have not only survived but thrived during some very difficult years
are the Amish. I do not recommend, of course, that all farmers should
become Amish, nor do I want to suggest that the Amish are perfect
people or that their way of life is perfect. What I want to recommend
are some Amish principles:
1. They have preserved their families and communities.
2. They have maintained the practices of neighborhood.
3. They have maintained the domestic arts of kitchen and garden, household and homestead.
4.
They have limited their use of technology so as not to displace or
alienate available human labor or available free sources of power (the
sun, wind, water, and so on.)
5.
They have limited their farms to a scale that is compatible both with
the practice of neighborhood and with the optimum use of low-power
technology.
6. By the practices and limits already mentioned, they have limited their costs.
7. They have educated their children to live at home and serve their communities.
8. They esteem farming as both a practical art and a spiritual discipline..."
|
Sustainable Living. Backyard Homesteads. Family Farms. Links.
News, Blogs, Raising Awareness & Online Communities... (or shop below)
*Energy Bulletin
Cutting-edge
news on oil, gas, renewables, climate, transportation, biofuels,
nuclear, food, water, ecology, farming, gardening, economics, housing
& community building.
*FARM AID
family farmers, good food, a better America
*Path to Freedom
Pioneering a journey towards self-sufficiency, one step at a time.
*Mother Earth News
original guide to living wisely -- free e-newsletter
*National Sustainable Agricultural Information Services:
Introduction to Permaculture: Concepts & Resources
*More Permaculture Links
*The Oil Drum
Discussions about energy and our future
*The Modern Homestead
Educational homesteading blog with emphasis on integrated poultry farming.
*Living On the Land
Informative posts from market gardeners & others living on the land.
*Food Growing, Animal Husbandry, Medicinal Herb & Health - Online Sources
compliments of Living On the Land
*HuffPost Green
free online newspaper
*The Contrary Farmer
homestead farmer: Gene Logsdon & friends
*Food & Water Watch
*Nuclear Security Project
*Organic To Be
Organic recipes, garden/farm skills, news & opinions.
*Growing Edge.com
Sustainable garden news for growers that are growing on the cutting edge.
*Biomicry Institute
the science and art of emulating Nature's best biological ideas to solve human problems
*Causabon's Book
Ruminations on an ambiguous future.
*Hen and Harvest
sustainability - good cheer - better food
*Post Carbon Institute
reduce consumption - produce locally
*Archdruid Report
Perspectives on nature, culture and the future of industrial civilizations
*Real Climate
climate science from real climate scientists
*GRIST
a beacon in the smog
*Environmental Working Group
the Power of Information
*SurvivalBlog.com
A daily Christian weblog for prepared individual living in uncertain times
*The Sun Magazine
personal. political. provocative. ad free.
*LINK TV.org
"Global news, uncompromising documentaries & diverse cultural programs -- connecting you to the world."
Direct TV Channel 375
*Hope Dance
celebrating transition, opportunity & resilience
*Transition
California
Rebuilding community resilience and
self-reliance.
*Transition
United States
Bringing the head, heart
& hands of community together to make the transition to life beyond
oil.
*On-line
shopping for backyard homesteaders, eco-farmers & gardeners:*LEHMAN'S"Be prepared... not scared."Products for Simple,
Self-Sufficient Living
Organic
bare root fruit trees, berries, artichokes, asparagus, strawberries,
how-to books & a large selection of plants and gardening supplies.
Ortega Hwy near San Juan Capistrano, CA.
Large selection of
California native plants.
*FARMTEK
1-800-457-8887 Large selection of agriculture,
livestock, farming, gardening, greenhouse & animal husbandry
products.
|
|
|
