A Grain Raising Book That Will Keep You Up Nights
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“Did you know that you can grow sufficient grains to feed your family and many of your animals all year on less than an acre of land with just a few hand tools?”
—Hank Will, Grit
More than thirty years after its first publication, Gene Logsdon’s classic Small-Scale Grain Raising: An Organic Guide to Growing, Processing, and Using Nutritious Whole Grains for Home Gardeners and Local Farmers is back in an updated and expanded edition.
Most people don’t think about grains when they think backyard-scale agriculture to supplement their families’ diets. But grain raising doesn’t have to require a massive outlay for tools and equipment. And it’s not even that difficult.
I was thrilled to take a look at Gene Logsdon’s updated 2009 edition of an old favorite of mine, Small Scale Grain Raising. Now in its second edition, the book is even more apropos today than the first edition was in 1977, when I was a budding young agriculturist. I devoured the first edition in the lab between analytical chemistry procedures and dreamed of growing all kinds of grains on a small-scale level. When I obtained a copy of the second edition, which was released last April, I devoured it in five evenings, between chores and bedtime. Actually it kept me up late one night – apologies to the GRIT staff for my fatigue the other day.
Small Scale Grain Raising is a stellar work that will inspire gardeners, farmers, dreamers and just about anyone else who cares about good food, good flavors and asking questions. Most small-scale agriculturists and gardeners never even consider adding grains other than corn (maize) to their crop rotation. This is in part because producing small grains like wheat and barley, or even pseudo-grains like buckwheat, is considered to be an arduous task at best that requires seed drills and combines to accomplish. Heck, the capital outlay for equipment is enough to turn off even medium-sized farmers who are tapped into the corn-soybean rotation. But it doesn’t have to be so. And Logsdon shows you how to make it happen on a backyard scale. Did you know that you can grow sufficient grains to feed your family and many of your animals all year on less than an acre of land with just a few hand tools?
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