Ethicurean Reviews Back-in-Print Small-Scale Grain Raising
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The following is a review of the forthcoming Small-Scale Grain Raising: An Organic Guide to Growing, Processing, and Using Nutritious Whole Grains for Home Gardeners and Local Farmers by Gene Logsdon, from Ethicurean.com.
As the price of flour and other grain-based foods has risen, creative-minded people have begun to consider growing their own wheat, corn, rye, and other grains. Groovy Green noted last year that one bakery — the Hungry Ghost Bread company in Northhampton, Massachusetts — even offered grain seeds to their customers through their Little Red Hen venture, encouraging them to grow the grains to sell back to the bakery for local loaves.
It’s an idea whose time is ripe once again. More than 30 years ago, farmer Gene Logsdon followed his publisher’s suggestion to write a book that would help aspiring grain-growing homesteaders of the 1960s and 1970s choose the right grain for their land and their garden or farming situation. The book went out of print many years ago, but the recession, the specter of peak oil, and the desire to take back some control over the food supply have all combined to prompt some folks to grow grains locally, sparking a renewed interest in the work and sending the price of used copies of “Small-Scale Grain Raising” well over $1,000.
It’s with some relief, then, that readers and homesteading hopefuls will welcome this revised second edition (Chelsea Green, spring 2009), in which Logsdon has updated the information based on new research and his personal experience. Logsdon returned with his equally knowledgeable wife, Carol, to farm a portion of his family’s land in Upper Sandusky, Ohio, in the 1970s. He began a prolific literary career by working at “Farm Journal” in the 1960s before writing on practical homesteading and how-to topics, moving to philosophical essays, and in recent years producing two novels and a “fable” on reclaiming strip-mined land. He currently writes at Organic To Be, combining reprinted essays and passages from his books with up-to-date musings, and at Farming Magazine. (He also writes a more down-home column in his local newspaper that occasionally tweaks his neighbors’ sensibilities.) For my money, he ranks with Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson as a realistic and necessary voice in the realm of agriculture, challenging how we see farmers and farming as well as challenging the agribusiness establishment in all its guises.
In “Small-Scale Grain Raising,” Logsdon lays out clearly just how easy it can be to grow grains for your family and your livestock, from his beloved “pancake patch” up to acre-sized plots. Interspersed with good-humored vintage anecdotes and his usual “Contrary Farmer” commentary, this primer elevates the status of grain-growing on farms of all sizes (from the backyard on up) to a happy essential. As he states repeatedly, there’s nothing so delicious — or so economical — as home-baked goods made with fresh grains you grew and milled yourself. And when those same home-grown grains can also feed your animals and build soil fertility… well, what’s stopping you?
