While the industrial food system is busy pioneering plows guided by satellite, and engineering transgenic frankencrops to pair with their ever more toxic pesticides, a quiet revolution is taking place. If you don’t know what you’re looking at, you might think there’s a sudden boom in the cutesy historical re-enactment industry, but the truth is far more interesting.

“It may seem strange to link the adjective ‘ultra-modern’ with the noun ‘horse-farming,’ but that’s exactly what this new book does with unimpeachable justification.” — Gene Logsdon, author of A Sanctuary of Trees and Small-Scale Grain Raising

Small farmers today are rediscovering a cutting edge technology that was nearly lost to the past: horse-power. And The New Horse-Powered Farm by Stephen Leslie is arriving at just the right time to provide a long-awaited guide to farmers who want to use this age-old skill. The book is on sale this week: 35% off.

Marketing Director of Horse Progress Days Dale Stoltzfus told us the book is the best thing he’s read in a long time, “The past 50-60 years have been one long lament for the losses horse farming has experienced. Now we are in a different time and the fire is burning more brightly, and we need to keep the blower on the forge cranking so that the fire doesn’t die back. This book is the kind of support we need.”

The New Horse-Powered Farm covers the whole spectrum from considering whether a horse-powered operation is right for you, to the practical management of one, including:

• Getting started with workhorses;
• The merits of different draft breeds;
• Various training systems for the horse and teamster;
• Haying with horses, seeding crops, and raising small grains;
• In-depth coverage of tools and systems;
• Managing a woodlot, farm economics, education, agritourism,
and more.

Browse the Table of Contents here, and take a look at some of the beautiful photographs from the book that show the diversity and vitality of this exciting movement.

As March rolls in like a lion, we’re entering what some gardeners and farmers call “the hungry gap.” This is the time when the ground is starting to thaw, but it’s still too cold and dark to plant new seedlings. Meanwhile your root cellar is running low, and you’ve long since devoured all those dilly beans and tomatoes you preserved at the height of summer. Maybe you have a few parsnips left (in which case you should try this recipe for tea cake), but that’s about it until your garden starts filling your larder once more.

Do you want next March to be different?  Using a simple method called a hot bed, which uses the heat from decaying compost to warm up a basic coldframe, you could be harvesting radishes and salad greens by now, and potatoes as early as April. That’s right. I said potatoes in April.

Hot beds are nothing new—they were even used by the Romans. Hot Beds, a new title from Green Books in the UK, shows you how to build these compost-heated coldframes, manage their warmth, and grow a variety of crops that will feed you through the early spring. By reviving and modernizing this ancient vegetable-growing method, author Jack First produces healthy plants that are ready at least two months earlier than conventionally grown vegetables, even in his native Yorkshire, England.

This practical, illustrated guide has everything you need to understand about how to utilize this highly productive, low-cost, year-round, eco-friendly gardening technique. Straightforward explanations, diagrams, and examples show how the natural process of decay can be harnessed to enable out-of-season growing without burning fossil fuels or elaborate equipment.

Below is a free sample of the book, including a diagram that shows you the basic structure of a hot bed. So get growing!

Hot Beds: How to Grow Early Crops Using an Age-Old Technique by Chelsea Green Publishing

You’ve heard it before. “Big Farma” says the only way to end world hunger is with more GMOs, more monoculture commodity crops, more pesticides, more chemical fertililzers. But there is another way.

Instead of using high-tech inputs, farmers are producing abundant, varied, and healthy crops by mimicking natural processes.

A pioneer of this practice is “Rebel Farmer” Sepp Holzer, and below he outlines his simple 10 step plan to combat world hunger — using permaculture, not petrochemicals. Holzer doesn’t speak a word of English, yet his ideas are so important we’ve translated his work for the US audience that needs it the most. Sepp Holzer’s Permaculture showed readers around his lush alpine farm — where he grows a variety of crops even at a high altitude and a cold climate, and his latest book Desert or Paradise focuses on his methods of engineering water in a landscape to overcome degraded soil.

If you’re intrigued by the ideas outlined in the excerpt below from Holzer’s latest book Desert or Paradise, this Spring you have a rare chance to learn from the master himself. Sepp Holzer lives in Austria, but will be teaching 5 day workshops in Bozeman, MT, Duluth, MN, Loma Mar, CA, and Detroit, MI to introduce his innovative methods of regenerating landscapes to US students. Holzer has used permaculture principles to restore landscapes throughout the Mediterranean region and elsewhere. This is a rare opportunity to learn his innovative methods.

These workshops will focus on agroforestry, aquaculture, crops, animal husbandry, landscaping, botany, food/nutrition, old and proven farming techniques, and concept development/planning, and more.

Find out more information about these workshops, and how to register, here. Information about the Detroit workshop can be found here.

Sepp Holzer’s 10 Step Plan to Combat World Hunger by Chelsea Green Publishing

“Could it be that bees are telling us that the methods we are using to manipulate them, although well intentioned, are actually condemning the bees to death?” — Ross Conrad, from Natural Beekeeping (Revised and Expanded edition)

Bees are some of the hardest workers in all of agriculture — but they’re on the verge of collapse.

Since its publication in 2007, Natural Beekeeping has guided both beginning beekeepers and experienced ones interested in switching to organic methods through a challenging era, when mysterious diseases and disappearances have threatened bees worldwide. This week, we’re proud to unveil a revised, expanded, full-color edition of Natural Beekeeping — on sale for 35% off.

The current state of industrial honey production is bad news for bees, and Conrad explains why small-scale beekeepers are sorely needed at this critical time:

• Bees in commercial honey production are fed pollen substitutes and corn syrup — but what does this do to their immune systems and overall health? Just like us, bees are more resilient when they’re fed real food, in their case real pollen and nectar from diverse crops.
• Small-scale, local beekeeping efforts avoid the stresses of trucking bees across the country to perform “pollination services” for monoculture commodity crops.
• As the costs of fuel rise, farmers will opt for raising their own pollinators instead of renting them — and they need to learn natural beekeeping to help raise the strongest possible bees.

The most immediate difference readers will notice with the new edition is the gorgeous full-color design including tons of photos. The expanded edition also offers new sections on a wide range of subjects, including the basics of bee biology and anatomy; urban beekeeping, and more. Browse the Table Of Contents here.

Ross Conrad’s new DVD is another teaching tool for the aspiring bee whisperer. Get clear examples of Conrad’s practices and tips, along with footage from one of his popular workshops. The DVD is available alone, or as a bundle along with the book. Watch the trailer below.

And remember, the book is on sale for 35% off this week.

Before we know it the growing season will be upon us, so now is the perfect time to take care of any pre-season grafting. Learning the art and science of grafting fruit trees can give an old tree a new life, or perhaps give some continuing life to a variety you love.

The Grafter’s Handbook by R. J. Garner is the classic reference book for this time-honored skill. First published in 1946, and last revised in 1988, we’re pleased to publish this sixth revised and updated edition. Revised and updated by respected horticulturist Steve Bradley, this  indispensable manual will remain the go-to guide for a new generation of orchardists.

In the excerpt below, Garner outlines basic concepts and details five key techniques for grafting established trees, such as cleft, oblique, rind, veneer, crown and strap grafting.

And the book covers many more aspects of grafting, everything  the dedicated amateur, student or professional horticulturalist wants to know.

Grafting Established Trees - An Excerpt from The Grafter’s Handbook by Chelsea Green Publishing

…And order them now! Quantities of these special seeds are extremely limited.

Carol Deppe, author of The Resilient Gardener and Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties, sells packets of the seeds she raises. With a focus on the survival crops she describes in The Resilient Gardener, her seed catalog doesn’t read like your typical, flowery missive from Burpee or Seeds of Change. Deppe carefully and simply explains the virtues of each crop, such as the ease of drying possessed by ‘Costata Romanesco’ Squash, and the delicious, distinct flavor of ‘Black Coco’ Bush Dry Beans, (”…bland just doesn’t cut it for me.”).

Deppe also hints at a tiny bit of the story of developing each crop, which she has carefully bred to its current form. And reminds growers of qualities you might not be familiar with if you typically purchase large-scale commercial seed.

The entry for ‘Gaucho’ Bush Dry Beans cautions, “I’m expecting about 1% off types from this year’s crop. Just cull anything that dries down much later than the Gauchos or is a little viney instead of bushy. Give your Gaucho dry beans as much isolation as you can from your Phaseolus vulgaris green bean types, but don’t worry overly much about purity. Gaucho wasn’t pure when I got it, as is common with heirloom beans.”

If you’ve read The Resilient Gardener, your mouth is probably already watering at the chance to get the perfect corn to grow for Carol’s Universal Skillet Bread, or her favorite snack food, pop beans.

Download a PDF of the Fertile Valley Seeds catalog here (ordering instructions are on page one).

Also available as a Word document, and in Rich Text Format.

And just to reiterate, quantities of these seeds are extremely limited. So don’t wait too long to place your order.

This month, plant the seeds of a great growing season. Spend some time planning what you’ll do in the spring, so as soon as the soil thaws you can get planting.

Want to incorporate permaculture principles into your vegetable beds this year? Curious about trying new varieties of plants this year, or a new method of composting?

These select farming and gardening books are on sale to help you have an abundant and joyful harvest in the coming year.

Sepp Holzer is known around the world for bringing deserted landscapes back to life using his unique methods of creating water-retention basins. In Desert or Paradise, Holzer applies his core philosophy for increasing food production, earth health, reconnecting mankind with nature, and reforestation and water conservation across the world. He urges us to look beyond failed “solutions” to drought by learning from his lengthy catalog of successes in arid, rainfall-dependent regions such as Greece, Turkey, Spain, and Portugal.

From his twenty-seven years of experience at Cate Farm in Vermont, Richard Wiswall knows firsthand the joys of starting and operating an organic farm—as well as the challenges of making a living from one. Farming offers fundamental satisfaction from producing food, working outdoors, being one’s own boss, and working intimately with nature. But, unfortunately, many farmers avoid learning about the business end of farming, and because of this, they often work harder than they need to, or quit farming altogether because of frustrating—and often avoidable—losses. In this set, featuring The Organic Farmer’s Business Handbook, plus the DVD Business Advice for Organic Farmers, Wiswall shares his story, and offers detailed advice on how to make your farm production more efficient, better manage your employees and finances, and turn a profit.

With The Winter Harvest Handbook, anyone can have access to Eliot Coleman’s innovative, highly successful methods for raising crops throughout the coldest of winters.

Coleman offers clear, concise details on greenhouse construction and maintenance, planting schedules, crop management, harvesting practices, and even marketing methods in this complete, meticulous, and illustrated guide. Readers have access to all the techniques that have proven to produce higher-quality crops on Coleman’s own farm.

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 in this Book & DVD set, featuring his award-winning book Perennial Vegetables, and tour his own lush forest garden in the new DVD, Perennial Vegetable Gardening with Eric Toensmeier.

The first edition of Gaia’s Garden sparked 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 extensively revised and expanded second edition broadens the reach and depth of the permaculture approach for urban and suburban growers.

Pastured Poultry Profit$ by Joel Salatin shows how a couple working six months per year for 50 hours per week on 20 acres can net $25,000-$30,000 per year with an investment equivalent to the price of one new medium-sized tractor. Seldom has agriculture held out such a plum. In a day when main-line farm experts predict the continued demise of the family farm, the pastured poultry opportunity shines like a beacon in the night, guiding the way to a brighter future.

This weekend at the University of Vermont in Burlington, Chelsea Green staff and a selection of our northeast-based authors will be attending the Northeast Organic Farming Association’s annual winter conference.

If you’re an aspiring farmer, or a seasoned pro looking to learn some new skills or network with others in your field (pun intended, sorry), the NOFA-VT conference is a great place to spend a day or the full weekend.

Below is a list of authors, the workshops they’ll be leading, and the time of their book signings. Their books will also be on sale, and Chelsea Green staff will be tabling and hosting their signings, so stop by and say hello!

Registration info and further details can be found here.

NOFA-VT (February 15-17)

• Eliot Coleman (The Winter Harvest Handbook) — Saturday, 2:15 –3:30PM- Keeping Four Season Farming in the Family • Book Signing Following Workshop •
• Ross Conrad (Natural Beekeeping Revised and Expanded Edition) — Sunday, 2:15-3:30 PM - Apitherapy: Health and Healing from the Hive
• Ben Falk (The Resilient Farm and Homestead) — Saturday, 10:45-12:00 PM - Homestead Resiliency: Principles in Practice
• Stephen Leslie (The New Horse-Powered Farm) — Saturday, 3:45-5:00 PM - The New Horse Powered Farm
• David Buchanan (Taste, Memory) — Friday, February 15 - Fermenting the Harvest
• Jack Lazor (The Organic Grain Grower) — Sunday, 10:45- 12:00 PM - Growing and Processing Oats for Human Consumption in VT
  Sunday, 2:15 – 5:00 PM (Double Session) - Making Organic Even Better by Producing Nutrient Dense Crops for Ourselves and our Livestock
• Susan Clark (Slow Democracy) — Saturday, 10:45AM- 12:00 PM - Slow Democracy: Skills for Success in Community Change • Book Signing Following Workshop •
• Grace Gershuny (Compost, Vermicompost, and Compost Tea) — Sunday, 3:45 - 5:00 PM - Is Organic Sustainable?
• Philip Ackerman-Leist (Rebuilding the Foodshed) — Sunday, 1:00 PM • Book Signing Only •

New York Times garden columnist Anne Raver recently visited Eric Toensmeier and Jonathan Bates’s Paradise Lot in Holyoke, Massachussetts.

Enchanted by the garden full of delicious perennials, and the charming love story that brought two plant geeks the “Eves” they dreamed of, she penned this piece.

Not only does Raver celebrate Eric’s new memoir, Paradise Lot, which tells the whole story of turning a barren Massachusetts backyard into a veritable Garden of Eden, she also highlights the practical beauty of permaculture — a holistic, beyond-organic, systems-thinking approach to gardening that Chelsea Green has been promoting for decades.

Eric Toensmeier has been a proponent of the low-work, high-yield system as well, writing Perennial Vegetables, co-authoring the two-volume Edible Forest Gardens, and starring in the new DVD Perennial Vegetable Gardening with Eric Toensmeier.

Read Anne Raver’s entire article on Paradise Lot here, and spread the word!

Oh, and Happy Valentine’s Day!

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HOLYOKE, Mass. — It was the build-it-and-they-will-come principle that inspired two self-described plant geeks to buy a soulless duplex on a barren lot in this industrial city 10 years ago and turn it into their own version of the Garden of Eden. Their Eves, they figured, would show up sooner or later.

Paradise Lot: Two Plant Geeks, One-Tenth of an Acre, and the Making of an Edible Garden Oasis in the City, by Eric Toensmeier, with contributions from Jonathan Bates, tells the story of how it happened. Published by Chelsea Green this month, it’s just in time for armchair gardening — and Valentine’s Day.

It’s a love story intertwined with the tale of how a small, barren backyard shaded by Norway maples, with an asphalt driveway in front, became a place that could sustain about 160 kinds of edible plants, including pawpaws, persimmons, Asian pears, gooseberries, strawberries, blueberries and rarities like goumi (tiny berries with a sour cherry zing).

Dwarf kiwi vines now climb up mimosa trees, with a lush carpet of shade-loving crops like currants, jostaberries (a cross between black currants and gooseberries), edible hostas, Solomon’s seal and May apples.

Ramps, that wild leek so coveted by foodies that it’s being stripped from eastern forests, thrive beneath the pawpaw trees, and so does giant fuki (Petasites japonicus Giganteus), with its four-foot-wide leaves. And fuki is not just a beautiful leaf that lends a tropical look to the landscape; like rhubarb’s, its stalks are edible.

“You can already see the flower buds, here and here,” Mr. Toensmeier, 41, told me one freezing day about two weeks ago.

He fingered the little bumps emerging from the frozen-looking ground, picturing a spring still invisible to the eye.

“It’s our first flower as soon as the snow is gone in March,” he said. “We eat the leaf stalk” — boiled and peeled, he explains in the book, then marinated in raspberry vinegar, shredded ginger and tamari — “it’s like weird-flavored celery.”

At the moment, however, this paradise is an icy landscape of bare trees, stumps and limp leaves, with sprigs of water celery peeking out of the frozen pool. In the summer, water lotus blooms here, but after last week’s storm, it’s under two feet of snow.

Marikler Giron Toensmeier reached down to pick a bit of water celery emerging from the frozen pond. It was about the size of a snowflake, but it was green and tasted like celery. “And look, praying mantises,” she said, touching one of the wrinkled egg cases stuck here and there among the dried grasses and twigs of the sleeping garden.

Ms. Toensmeier, 38, a native of Guatemala, is one of the Eves.

Keep reading…

“Seed is the vital link to our agricultural past,” writes John Navazio, author of our latest book, The Organic Seed Grower. Seeds are at the heart of local food and agriculture, and there is burgeoning interest in how to grow your own seeds.

Navazio’s foundational book will help skilled gardeners, who are already saving their own seed, grow seed commercially. And for diversified vegetable farmers who are growing a seed crop for sale for the first time, Navazio offers many of the tricks of the trade used by professional seed growers.

If you’re interested in growing your own vegetables better suited to your taste and hardiness zone, Carol Deppe’s book Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties is a perfect place to start for any gardener or small farmer.

For first-time seed savers, Suzanne Ashworth’s Seed to Seed is a perfect starting guide. If the magic of saving rare seeds catches your fancy, Janisse Ray’s latest work of literary nonfiction, The Seed Underground, offers inspiring stories of eccentric and impassioned seed-savers across the country. As Ray puts it, seeds are “the most hopeful thing in the world,” and “there’s no despair in a seed.”

Happy reading from the folks at Chelsea Green Publishing!

The Organic Seed Grower: A Farmer’s Guide to Vegetable Seed Production

Retail Price: $49.95 Discount Price: $32.47

The Organic Seed Grower is a comprehensive manual for the serious vegetable grower who is interested in growing high-quality seeds using organic farming practices. It is written for both serious home seed savers and diversified small-scale farmers who want to learn the necessary steps involved in successfully producing a commercial seed crop organically.

Written by well-known plant breeder and organic seed expert John Navazio, The Organic Seed Grower includes detailed profiles for each of the major vegetables and provides users with practical, in-depth knowledge about growing, harvesting, and processing seed for a wide range of common and specialty vegetable crops, from Asian greens to zucchini.

WATCH John explain why organic seed is important…

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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 describes specific techniques for saving the seeds of 160 different vegetables, and is widely acknowledged as the best guide available for home gardeners to learn effective ways to produce and store seeds on a small scale.

Reader Review: “I can’t recommend this book highly enough. I’ve been hunting for a reference guide that tells me exactly how to save each type of vegetable seed, and this book is it…This book should be on every sustainable homesteader’s reference shelf.”

Browse the Table of Contents…

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The Seed Underground: A Growing Revolution to Save Food

Retail Price: $17.95  Discount Price: $11.67

We are losing our seeds. Of the thousands of seed varieties available at the turn of the 20th century, 94 percent have been lost — forever.

In The Seed Underground Janisse Ray brings us the inspiring stories of ordinary gardeners whose aim is to save time-honored, open-pollinated varieties like Old Time Tennessee muskmelon and Long County Longhorn okra—varieties that will be lost if people don’t grow, save, and swap the seeds.

READ: Excerpt from The Seed Underground - How to Save Tomato Seeds…

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Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties: The Gardener’s and Farmer’s Guide to Plant Breeding and Seed Saving

Retail Price: $29.95 Discount Price: $19.47

All gardeners and farmers should be plant breeders, says author Carol Deppe. Developing new vegetable varieties doesn’t require a specialized education, a lot of land, or even a lot of time. It can be done on any scale. It’s enjoyable. It’s deeply rewarding. You can get useful new varieties much faster than you might suppose. And you can eat your mistakes.

Authoritative and easy-to-understand, Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties is the only guide to plant breeding and seed saving for the serious home gardener and the small-scale farmer or commercial grower.

“This is the best book to help adventuresome gardeners become plant breeders and seed savers. But it does more. It explains in clear, readable terms what’s going on with the genetic modifications of our food system and why backyard plant breeders are a crucial link to a healthy future for our food system.”—Will Raap, President, Gardener’s Supply Company

Browse the Table of Contents…

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Gathering: Memoir of a Seed Saver

Retail Price: $25.00 Discount Price: $16.25

Daughter of Iowa farmers, Missouri homesteader, and mother of five, Diane Ott Whealy never anticipated that one day she would become a leader in a grass-roots movement to preserve our agricultural biodiversity. The love for the land and the respect for heirloom seeds that Diane shared with her husband, Kent Whealy, led to their starting Seed Savers Exchange in 1975.

Ott Whealy’s heartwarming story captures what is best in the American spirit: the ability to dream and, through hard work and perseverance, inspire others to contribute their efforts to a cause. Thus was created one of the nation’s most admired nonprofits in the field of genetic preservation. 

Read a review of the book from Civil Eats…

More Seed Titles On Sale