From Golden, Colorado to Washington, D.C., the story of a small forest in New Jersey is finding admirers.Sourlands, distributed on DVD by Chelsea Green Publishing and Hundred Year Films, hits the road in 2013 as an official selection of the Colorado Environmental Film Festival, the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital, and the Princeton Environmental Film Festival.

“The film explores a timely question: With 7 billion people on Earth, how can we make sure the natural world doesn’t get squeezed into oblivion?” says director Jared Flesher.

To find answers, Flesher went to a small forest in New Jersey — the nation’s most densely populated state — and started following around the locals. The colorful subjects of the film are a diverse bunch: hunters, farmers, birders, biologists, engineers, and entrepreneurs.

“Ultimately, this isn’t a story about trees,” says Flesher. “It’s a story about regular people looking for good, meaningful work, a sense of home, and some balance in their lives.”

Flesher worked as a one-man film crew, exploring every corner of the Sourlands forest and the surrounding community over 16 months of production. He credits a 1968 book by author John McPhee, The Pine Barrens, as an inspiration for the film.

“John McPhee showed me that the best way to tell an environmental story relevant to people everywhere is, paradoxically, to tell a good story about just one small corner of the world.”

Sourlands screens at the Princeton Environmental Film Festival on Feb. 9, the Colorado Environmental Film Festival on Feb. 24, and the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital on March 13. A full listing of upcoming Sourlands screenings is available at www.sourlands.com.

Director Jared Flesher can be reached at jtflesher@gmail.com.

In an era of ebooks and digital friends, good old fashioned fellowship is still one of the best ways to share inspiring ideas, swap tips with fellow craftsmen in your field, and start learning a new skill.

Winter is the season of sustainable farming conferences where you can do just that, and several of our authors are hitting the road to share their stories and their expertise. Take a look at the full list of author conference appearances here.

Whether you’re interested in fermentation, cheesemaking, running a resilient homestead, or using horses for draft power, sustainable farming conferences are a great opportunity to get hands-on experience and find mentors to guide you. Some highlights from the coming season include:

•     Jack Lazor’s workshop on growing and processing oats in Vermont (NOFA-VT, February 15-17)
•     Gianaclis Caldwell’s workshop on managing a raw milk dairy safely (PASA, February 8-9)
•     Stephen Leslie’s workshop on The New Horse-Powered Farm (NOFA-NH, March 1-2)
•     Eliot Coleman’s seminar on keeping the farm in the family (NOFA-VT, February 15-17)

In addition to our authors, Chelsea Green staff will be at many of these winter conferences, and many of our books will be available to browse in-person. We love getting a chance to talk face to face with our readers, so please stop by to say hello.

We hope to see you out there!

P.S. Have you ‘liked’ us yet? Our Facebook page is a great way to stay connected to our authors, find out about special events, get how-to tips for gardening, as well as plenty of news about the politics and practice of sustainability. So, if you haven’t yet, click on over, and let us know how much you ‘like‘ us!

Winter Conference Kick Off Sale: 35% off 

 Books on sale until February 15th.

If you’re a visual learner, a book full of text can sometimes leave you scratching your head. What did he mean when he said use the hive-smoker with short, fast puffs? Or, where exactly is that ramial mulch supposed to go in relation to the trunk of the apple tree?If this describes your state of mind as you peruse our how-to titles, you’re in luck. We have several new DVDs that serve as visual companions to some of our recent, best-selling how-to books, all narrated by the farmer-authors you know and love.

Natural Beekeeping with Ross Conrad

In this filmed workshop, noted Vermont beekeeper Ross Conrad flips the script on traditional approaches by proposing a program of selective breeding and natural hive management. The video presents a comprehensive survey of natural beekeeping methods and challenges, including segments filmed in thefield. It offers practical information that every aspiring beekeeper needs to know—everything from basic hive equipment to working with your bees to harvesting and processing honey.

Also available with the new, fully-illustrated second edition of Conrad’s essential text Natural Beekeeping as a convenient set.

Perennial Vegetable Gardening with Eric Toensmeier

In this DVD—a culmination of workshops recorded in Mexico, Florida, and Massachusetts—plant specialist Eric Toensmeier introduces gardeners to more than 100 species of little-known, underappreciated plants. Ranging beyond the usual suspects (asparagus, rhubarb, and artichoke) to include such delights as ground cherry, ramps, air potatoes, the fragrant spring tree, and the much-sought-after, antioxidant-rich wolfberry (also known as the goji berry), Toensmeier explains how to raise, tend, harvest, and cook with plants that yield great crops and culinary satisfaction. Toensmeier also takes viewers on a plant-by-plant tour of his garden in Massachusetts.

Also available alongside Perennial Vegetables as a book/DVD set.

Top-Bar Beekeeping with Les Crowder and Heather Harrell

In this instructive video, New Mexico beekeeper Les Crowder shares his thirty years’ experience in developing best practices for working with bees in top-bar hives. Les and Heather Harrell, authors of Top-Bar Beekeeping (Chelsea Green, 2012) discuss everything from hive management techniques to how to harvest and process honey and beeswax to the best plants to grow for the foraging bees.

Get the book, Top-Bar Beekeeping, and the DVD together.

COMING SOON! Holistic Orcharding with Michael Phillips

Michael Phillips is a pioneering author and orchardist whose books include The Holistic Orchard and The Apple Grower. In this video, he leads viewers through a year in his own orchard, demonstrating basic horticultural skills like grafting and pruning, but also revealing groundbreaking and field-tested strategies for growing apples and other tree fruits not just organically, but holistically. With this information in hand, there’s now every reason to confidently plant that very first fruit tree!

In addition to the DVDs we publish ourselves, we also distribute DVDs from other publishers and independent filmmakers that are central to our mission of sustainability. The videos below are some of our latest distributed titles.

Genetic Roulette

Monsanto’s strong-arm tactics, the FDA’s fraudulent policies, and how the USDA ignores a growing health emergency are also laid bare. This sometimes shocking film may change your diet, help you protect your family, and accelerate the consumer tipping point against genetically modified organisms (GMOs). A film not to be missed.

Sourlands

In the Sourlands, farmers struggle against high land prices, high property taxes, and increasingly erratic weather patterns. A local entrepreneur struggles to find a market for his innovative product. But pay close attention, and the challenges facing this community look a lot like the challenges facing ecosystems, farmers, and visionary entrepreneurs everywhere. The message of cautious hope presented in the film is just as universal: To start solving complicated environmental problems, we need to forgo quick fixes and start restoring the natural world—and people’s connection to it—from the forest floor up.

The year 2012 was one of major milestones at Chelsea Green: We took a significant step toward securing our long-term resiliency by becoming employee-owned, landed our fourth book (in less than 10 years) on The New York Times Bestseller List, and we set a new, all-time sales record.

To celebrate, this week we’re featuring our 2012 best-sellers. Some, like Gaia’s Garden, are perennial favorites, and some, like The Art of Fermentation, are brand new hits.

All our titles, are available for a 35% discount through January 31st, as part of our extended holiday sale. Just use the promotional code: CGFL12 when you check out.

We look forward to bringing you more inspiring tools and resources in 2013 as new crops of books arrive. Available soon will be Paradise Lot by Eric Toensmeier and Jonathan Bates, and Rebuilding the Foodshed by Phillip Ackerman-Leist. We’ll have more details about all of our exciting 2013 titles in upcoming e-newsletters.

In case you missed them at the end of the year, check out the recently-released Organic Seed Grower by John Navazio, and Farms with a Future by Rebecca Thistlethwaite. Both promise to be must-haves for the seed grower or fledgling farmer.

Happy reading from the folks at Chelsea Green Publishing!

P.S. Don’t forget, free shipping on orders over $100.*

The Art of Fermentation: An In-Depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from Around the World

Retail Price: $39.95Discount Price: $25.97

The Art of Fermentation is, quite simply, the most comprehensive guide to do-it-yourself home fermentation ever published. And it single-handedly drove our annual sales through the roof, even spending a couple of weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List. Who knew sauerkraut was such a rock star!

Sandor Katz presents the concepts and processes behind fermentation in ways that are simple enough to guide a reader through their first experience making sauerkraut or yogurt, and in-depth enough to provide experienced practitioners with deeper understanding of their ferments. Also available as part of a book/DVD set.

Try a sample recipe for fermented “Roots” Beer…

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Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, Second Edition

Retail Price: $29.95 Discount Price: $19.47

The first edition of Gaia’s Garden sparked the imagination of America’s home gardeners, introducing permaculture’s central message: working with nature instead of against her results in more beautiful, abundant, and forgiving gardens.

This extensively revised and expanded second edition broadens the reach and depth of the permaculture approach for urban and suburban growers.

Read an excerpt: Building an Apple-Centered Guild…

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Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners

Retail Price: $24.95 Discount Price: $16.22

Seed to Seed is widely acknowledged as the best guide available for home gardeners to learn effective ways to produce and store seeds on a small scale.

The book contains detailed information about each vegetable, including its means of pollination, required population size, isolation distance, techniques for hand-pollination, and proper methods for harvesting, drying, cleaning, and storing the seeds.

Browse the Table of Contents…

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Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era

Retail Price: $34.95Discount Price: $22.72

In Reinventing Fire, Amory Lovins and Rocky Mountain Institute offer a new vision to revitalize business models, end-run Washington gridlock, and win the clean energy race—not forced by public policy but led by business for enduring profit.

Grounded in 30 years’ practical experience, this ground-breaking, peer-reviewed analysis includes market-based solutions for transportation, buildings, industry, and electricity.

Reinventing Fire was named ForeWord Reviews’s Book of the Year in Business and Economics.

Watch Amory Lovins’ TED Talk on Reinventing Fire…

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The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year-Round Vegetable Production Using Deep-Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses

Retail Price: $29.95Discount Price: $19.47

From Eliot Coleman, the bestselling author of The New Organic Grower and Four-Season Harvest, comes an in-depth guide to year-round production of fresh, organic vegetables—with little or no energy inputs.

In The Winter Harvest Handbook, Coleman offers information on greenhouse construction and maintenance, planting schedules, crop management, harvesting practices, and even marketing ideas in this complete, fully-illustrated guide. Want to learn even more from the master? Check out the Eliot Coleman Set.

Browse the entire book online…

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Local Dollars, Local Sense: How to Shift Your Money from Wall Street to Main Street and Achieve Real Prosperity

Retail Price: $17.95Discount Price: $11.67

In Local Dollars, Local Sense, Michael Shuman shows small-scale investors how to put their money into building local businesses and resilient regional economies—and profit in the process.

Shuman demystifies the growing realm of local investment choices—from institutional lending to investment clubs and networks, local investment funds, community ownership, direct public offerings, local stock exchanges, crowdfunding, and more. This book is part of the Community Resilience Guides series, a partnership with the Post Carbon Institute.

Read an Excerpt: Investing in Yourself…

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The Seed Underground: A Growing Revolution to Save Food

Retail Price: $17.95Discount Price: $11.67

With a quiet urgency The Seed Underground reminds us that while our health, food security, and sovereignty are at stake as seeds disappear to industrial agriculture’s homogenization, so, too, are the stories, heritage, and history that pass between people as seeds are passed from hand to hand.

From rural Maine to Oregon’s Palouse, Janisse Ray introduces readers to dozens of seed savers. Through this compelling book, meet the eccentric sociology professor she dubs “Tomato Man”, Maine farmer Will Bonsall, the “Noah” of seed saving, and many others.

The Seed Underground was named one of Booklist’s Top Ten Gardening and Crafts Books of 2012!

Read the Introduction…

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More New and Noteworthy Titles On Sale

Several classic Chelsea Green books are now available as convenient sets at discounted prices. By combining books that are commonly purchased together, we make it easier and more affordable to add these valuable titles to your library, or give them as gifts.

In addition to putting their expertise down on paper in our books, several of our authors have also produced instructional DVDs, and we are now offering book/DVD sets for a complete educational experience.

The Eliot Coleman Set: If you love the joys of eating home-garden vegetables but always thought those joys had to stop at the end of summer, this set of three books by master organic farmer Eliot Coleman is for you. Includes The New Organic Grower, Four-Season Harvest, and The Winter Harvest Handbook, all for just $51.90 .

The Preserving the Harvest Set: If you’re a dedicated gardener you probably know about hot-water-bath canning and pickling, but there are many other ways to preserve the bounty of your harvest so it will last the whole year. This set combines Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning (a classic book on simple methods of food preservation), with The Resilient Gardener, a new book on gardening that includes some innovative preservation methods. Set price: $35.72

The Sandor Katz Fermentation Set: This set combines Sandor Ellix Katz’s two classic books on fermentation with a DVD of one of his popular fermentation workshops. Last year’s The Art of Fermentation was a runaway hit, reaching the New York Times Bestseller list and helping Chelsea Green to record sales. It’s the most comprehensive guide to fermentation ever published, and complements Katz’s earlier book Wild Fermentation (which is much more like a typical cookbook) nicely. This set also includes a DVD of one of Katz’s popular fermentation workshops, in which he discusses the cultural implications of fermentation, and guides you step-by-step through a few easy ferments. Price for the set: $64.94

COMING SOON! Top Bar Beekeeping Set: This book + DVD set combines the new book Top-Bar Beekeeping by Les Crowder and Heather Harrell, with an instructional DVD on how to use top-bar hives, which require more care than box hives, but produce more valuable beeswax while keeping bees healthy. With top-bar hives the bees naturally construct their own wax combs rather than relying on prefabricated frames of plastic cell foundation in a typical box-type hive. And top-bar hives are now being used to raise healthy bees organically, without the use of antibiotics, miticides, or other chemical inputs. Set price: $34.95

Perennial Vegetables Set: Imagine growing vegetables that require just about the same amount of care as perennial flowers and shrubs, need no annual tilling or planting, yet thrive and produce abundant and nutritious crops throughout the season.

Get the best information on growing these easy and interesting crops from Eric Toensmeier’s award-winning book Perennial Vegetables, and tour his own lush forest garden in the new DVD, Perennial Vegetable Gardening with Eric Toensmeier. Set Price:$59.95

COMING SOON! Natural Beekeeping Set: Today’s beekeepers face unprecedented challenges, a fact that is now front-page news with the spread of “colony collapse disorder.” Newly introduced pests like varroa and tracheal mites have made chemical treatment of hives standard practice, but pest resistance is building, which in turn creates demand for new and even more toxic chemicals. In fact, there is evidence that chemical treatments are making matters worse.

It’s time for a new approach. In this set, which includes the new, full-color, Natural Beekeping, Revised and Expanded Edition, and a DVD workshop, Ross Conrad brings together the best “do no harm” strategies for keeping honeybees healthy and productive, all of which are covered in a thoughtful, matter-of-fact way. Set price: $54.95

The holidays may be over, but our holiday sale has been extended through January 31, 2013!

That means you can still save 35% on any purchase from chelseagreen.com by using the discount code CGFL12 when you checkout.

This sale is a great time to stock your library. If you’ve had your eye on our runaway hit, New York Times Bestseller The Art of Fermentation, now is a great time to grab it. Or if you’ve been tempted to pick up some some gardening classics like Eliot Coleman’s The Winter Harvest Handbook or Carol Deppe’s The Resilient Gardener, or books to help improve your small farm like Richard Wiswall’s The Organic Farmer’s Business Handbook, or Joel Salatin’s Pastured Poultry Profits — this sale is a great chance to get them for a low price. Be sure to check out our new book/DVD sets as well. This is a nice time to snap them up for a great price.

Books like the two-volume series Edible Forest Gardens are usually $75 apiece and $150 as a set. With the 35% discount they would only cost you $48.75 each, or $97.50 for the set. That’s a great deal for some of the best resources available on cultivating forests of food using natural methods!

The recently released Natural Building Companion is another great deal. Part of a new series from Yestermorrow Design-Build School, the book includes information on almost any natural building technique you can imagine, from straw bale to cob, and much more, plus a DVD to help you learn. Normally $59.95 amount, during the sale you can get The Natural Building Companion for just $38.97.

Likewise, Passive Solar Architecture, a comprehensive book on building to utilize the readily available power of the sun to both heat and cool your home. The book normally costs $85.00 but during our sale you can get it for just $55.25.

If you’re a small farmer interested in producing your own seeds, check out our new book, The Organic Seed Grower by John Navazio. Funded partially by a USDA SARE grant, this beautiful and easy-to-use book is a guide to producing seed organically, including botanical information, planting distances, how to harvest, prepare, and store seed, and so much more. The book’s full price is $49.95, sale price $32.47.

These books are particularly nice to get during our sale, but the discount code applies to every book in our catalog, except for any that are already on sale. Remember to use the code CGFL12 when you checkout, and happy shopping!

If you follow the farming blog Honest Meat, you already know who Rebecca Thistlethwaite is. Thistlethwaite and her husband have traveled the country visiting farms and documenting their travels on Honest Meat. They once were farmers themselves, but decided to stop for a while to do some on-the-ground research to answer the most important question they knew: what makes a farm truly sustainable? 

Thistlethwaite’s brand new book, Farms with a Future, poses many answers to that question, gleaned from successful, innovative small farmers around the nation.

Recently, Grist.org interviewed Rebecca about her farming journey, the challenges farmers face, and the lessons she learned while traveling and writing Farms with a Future. Read an excerpt from the interview below, and the entire interview here.

~

By Twilight Greenaway

A few years ago, Rebecca Thistlethwaite and her husband were working 80 hours a week running a large pastured meat and egg operation called TLC Ranch on rented land. The couple had spent six years barely making ends meet. They wanted to buy their own ranch, but the cost of land in Monterey County, Calif., was astronomical. Getting their meat processed presented several challenges (as it does for many small producers) and many of their loyal customers were cutting back on local and ethically produced food after the economic downturn. So, the couple decided to sell the farm and throw in the towel. Kind of.

In October of 2010, Thistlethwaite wrote on her blog Honest Meat:

… we are off to live in an RV for the next couple years, volunteer on farms and ranches around the country that we admire and hope to learn from, write a little blog about our adventure, and have some fun too.

And that’s exactly what they did. The result of this adventure is Thistlethwaite’s new book, Farms with a Future: Creating and Growing a Sustainable Farm Business. As she sees it, the book is a “practical, accessible guide that doesn’t sugarcoat the challenges of farming, but gives people some good ideas.” It’s chock full of concrete suggestions based on Thistlethwaite’s year of research and observation, the kind of book you write precisely because you need just such a guide yourself but can’t find it anywhere. And it will probably help a lot of young farmers. It might also dissuade some from jumping headfirst into a business that is not for the faint of heart — but Thistlethwaite is fine with that.

We spoke with Thistlethwaite recently about the book, the journey, and the farm she hopes to start next.

Q. Do you want to talk a little about why you and your husband chose to sell your ranch?

A. We decided to take a break because we felt like the conditions under which we were operating were just not conducive to running a successful farm. We were paying some of the highest land rent in the country. And we were leasing land, so we really never knew what was going to happen the following year. We were also living in an area with a lot of crime. We had animals and equipment stolen; that made it really hard to run a business.

We didn’t want to quit farming, but we wanted to change where and how we were going to do it. So we thought we’d learn about how other farming operations around the country were doing it, how they are grafting together sustainable business models that meet their quality-of-life goals while being good for the earth and economically viable. It was a way to get inspired and learn. And it was a much-needed vacation!

We visited and interviewed about 19 farms total. And I think 14 of them ended up in our book.

Q. And where did you end up after the trip?

A. Now we’re located in the Columbia River Gorge on the Washington side.

Q. Do you want to speak about the challenge you and the farmers you visited face when it comes to conveying the value of sustainably produced food?

A. With the contraction of the economy, consumers are actually looking for more than cheap food. They’re looking for something that is affordable, but also embodies their other values — whether it be environmental values, social values, or the value of supporting their local economy.

So even if you’re a wholesale farmer, I think it’s really important to get your brand and your values across to your eventual customers. To just be an anonymous farmer producing an anonymous commodity doesn’t give you a chance to let your customers know who you are and what your story is. Telling that story and getting it all the way to the end user is really important. And you will be rewarded if it’s done right.

Keep reading over at Grist…

Photo Credit: Jen Jones

Our holiday sale has been such a success we’ve decided to extend it through January 31st, 2013! The holidays may have passed, but you can still save 35% with discount code CGFL12 when you checkout at chelseagreen.com (plus free shipping if you spend over $100).

The start of the New Year is always a great time to reflect on the past year. Here at Chelsea Green we have a lot to celebrate from 2012:

• We became an employee owned company! Take a look at this recent article by Truthout about the move.
• The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz hit the New York Times Bestseller list, making it the fourth book from our shelves to have done so since 1985.
• In partnership with the Post Carbon Institute, we launched the Community Resilience Guides Series with the books Local Dollars, Local Sense, and Power from the People. Next up in the series is Rebuilding the Foodshed, coming out at the end of the month (Jan. 2013).
• Amongst many accolades for our books, we’re proud of Taste, Memory for being named one of Amazon.com’s Top Ten Food Literature books of 2012.

If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to take back control of your food supply, we recommend preserving food. Whether you grow it yourself or buy it from local farmers, learning to pickle, dry, ferment, oil-cure, or can fresh fruits and vegetables is a great way to kick your locavore game up a notch.

And produce isn’t the only realm of food preservation we can help you explore. Shannon Hayes’s new book Long Way on a Little will help you use meat frugally and deliciously, including recipes for broth and confit. And Gianaclis Caldwell’s new book Mastering Artisan Cheesemaking will introduce you to traditional methods of making cheese (thus making milk magically last for months).

Happy Holidays from the proud Employee Owners at Chelsea Green!

P.S. We’ve highlighted some books below but you can always broose our full eco-food selection here.

Preserving Food and Eco-Food: 

Please keep in mind that discount codes do not combine with other offers—our books

already on sale for example. Free shipping for orders $100 or more is applied after the

discount is applied.  Phone orders please call 800-639-4099.

Well, congratulations, readers! We made it through the Mayan apocalypse, the solstice, the holiday shopping season, holiday travel with its inevitable weather hazards, and family get-togethers, with their inevitable emotional hazards.

The warmth of spring may still seem far off, but we’re hard at work on the next round of Chelsea Green books. To inspire you to keep on trucking through the cold months, here are a few highlights from our Spring list.

It’s not often that someone stumbles into entrepreneurship and ends up reviving a community and starting a national economic-reform movement. But that’s what happened when, in 1983, Judy Wicks founded the White Dog Café on the first floor of her house on a row of Victorian brownstones in West Philadelphia.

Good Morning, Beautiful Business is BALLE founder Wicks’s memoir, tracing the roots of her career and exploring what it takes to marry social change with commerce to do business differently. Passionate, fun, and inspirational, Good Morning, Beautiful Business explores the way entrepreneurs can follow both mind and heart, do what’s right, and do well by doing good.

If you think farming with horses instead of tractors sounds merely quaint or old-fashioned — think again.

Small farmers across the country have quietly been perfecting the age-old skills of draft horse farming, and our forthcoming book The New Horse-Powered Farm shows off all they’ve done to preserve and advance this ancient and inherently sustainable skill set. Author Stephen Leslie shares tips on getting started with horses, care of the work horse, different horse-training systems, and the merits of different draft breeds.

Never before have so many Americans been more frustrated with our economic system, more fearful that it is failing, or more open to fresh ideas about a new one. The seeds of a new movement demanding change are forming.

In What Then Must We Do?, Gar Alperovitz proposes a possible next system that is not corporate capitalism, not state socialism, but something else—something entirely American. Alperovitz’s new system would democratize the ownership of wealth, strengthen communities in diverse ways, and be governed by policies and institutions sophisticated enough to manage a large-scale, powerful economy.

How could something as innocent as a glass of milk be the cause heavily-armed federal officers to raid a California farmstand? In David Gumpert’s new book, Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Food Rights, you’ll find out.

Journey with Gumpert from Maine to California through a netherworld of Amish farmers paying big fees to questionable advisers to avoid the quagmire of America’s legal system, secret food police lurking in vans at farmers markets, cultish activists preaching the benefits of pathogens, U.S. Justice Department lawyers clashing with local sheriffs, small Maine towns passing ordinances to ban regulation, and suburban moms worried enough about the dangers of supermarket food that they’ll risk fines and jail to feed their children unprocessed, and unregulated, foods of their choosing.

Ross Conrad’s book Natural Beekeeping was an instant classic when it was first published in 2007. Now, a full-color, revised and expanded second edition will introduce a new generation of small farmers and gardeners to the best in safe and organic practices for raising healthy bees.

New sections in this expanded edition include: the basics of bee biology and anatomy, urban beekeeping, identifying and working with queens, parasitic mite control, and hive diseases.

Also forthcoming this spring is a DVD of one of Conrad’s popular beekeeping workshops. Learn from the master himself, with none of the hassle of traveling to a workshop, plus the oh-so-modern ability to pause and rewind if he talks too fast. The new edition of Natural Beekeeping and the DVD will also be available as a set.

Imagine growing vegetables that require just about the same amount of care as perennial flowers and shrubs, need no annual tilling or planting, yet thrive and produce abundant and nutritious crops throughout the season.

Get the best information on growing these easy and interesting crops from Eric Toensmeier’s award-winning book Perennial Vegetables, and tour his own lush forest garden in the new DVD, Perennial Vegetable Gardening with Eric Toensmeier. The book and DVD are now available in a convenient set.

About Perennial Vegetables:

In Toensmeier’s book, Perennial Vegetables (Chelsea Green, 2007), the adventurous gardener will find information, tips, and sound advice on less-common edibles that will make any garden a perpetual, low-maintenance source of food. In his book, readers will find perennial vegetables are perfect as part of an edible-landscape plan or permaculture garden. Profiling more than a hundred species, 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.

About Perennial Vegetable Gardening with Eric Toensmeier (DVD):

In the DVD—a culmination of workshops recorded in Mexico, Florida, and Massachusetts—plant specialist Eric Toensmeier introduces gardeners to more than 100 species of little-known, underappreciated plants. Ranging beyond the usual suspects (asparagus, rhubarb, and artichoke) to include such delights as ground cherry, ramps, air potatoes, the fragrant spring tree, and the much-sought-after, antioxidant-rich wolfberry (also known as the goji berry), Toensmeier explains how to raise, tend, harvest, and cook with plants that yield great crops and culinary satisfaction. Toensmeier also takes viewers on a plant-by-plant tour of his garden in Massachusetts. Get a sneak peek in this video:

Toensemeier has been gardening in Holyoke, Massachusetts for more than a decade, and has turned his tenth of an acre lot into a lush paradise full of delicious fruits and vegetables — many of them perennials. His newest book, Paradise Lot, tells the story of developing the garden, and hoping for love as well. Paradise Lot is available for pre-order now.