Chelsea Green Blog

Community Resilience

Miyawaki Method

The Miyawaki Method: Imagining a Mini-Forest’s Potential

Want to witness the magic of the mini-forest? When you practice The Miyawaki Method, a unique approach to reforestation, you’ll see an empty lot or backyard transform into a biodiverse forest before your very eyes. The following is an excerpt from Mini-Forest Revolution by Hannah Lewis. It has been adapted for the web. Photo Credit:…

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How to Plan the Best Garden Ever

When you plan out how you want your garden to look and operate, you’re setting yourself up for long-term success. Here are some helpful tips on how to plan the best garden this upcoming growing season! The following excerpt is from The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times by Carol Deppe. It has been…

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Fresh-Fig-Pecan-Bread

Fresh Fig Pecan Bread

This fig pecan bread is a  sweet, delicious, and nutritious side that everyone around the table will enjoy this winter (or maybe you’ll want to keep it all to yourself, we won’t judge). Enjoy! The following is an excerpt from From the Wood-Fired Oven by Richard Miscovich. It has been adapted for the web. What…

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arugula

The Endless Arugula Bed

What if we told you that there was a way to extend your growing season and save time & money? The answer is all in arugula. With quick hoops and greenhouse film, you’ll be on your way to harvesting sweet & flavorful arugula in no time.  The following excerpt is from The Resilient Farm and…

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axe

DIY: How to Make Your Own Hatchet

Ever wanted to make your own hatchet? Then today’s your lucky day! With some scrap steel, a hacksaw, a file, a drill, a bonfire, a bucket of water, and an oven, you can make this simple, hardy, “democratic” axe. The following excerpt is from A Handmade Life: In Search of Simplicity by William Coperthwaite. It has…

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preserve food

How to Preserve Food Without Nutrient Loss

Want to get the most out of your harvest? Preserve food to keep your fruits and veggies fresh for weeks to come! Methods of food preservation like fermentation, drying, and salt-curing are very simple, don’t require fossil fuels, and promote food safety. The following is an excerpt from Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning by the…

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grass-fed steak

How to Cook the Perfect, Tender Grass-Fed Steak

Summertime is here, which means it’s officially grilling season! Whip up a delicious grass-fed steak at your next BBQ to support small-scale farmers, help protect the environment, and give your guests a meal they’re going to be talking about all summer. The following is a collection of recipes from cookbooks by Shannon Hayes, author of…

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Are you Team Duck or Team Chicken?

Thinking about adding a laying flock to your backyard, but having trouble deciding between ducks and chickens? Agonize no more. Ducks are easy to herd, have routine egg laying hours, and are superior to chickens in terms of pest control. Chickens are more readily available, usually cheaper to purchase, and are a better confinement animal,…

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An Interview With Vandana Shiva and Dougald Hine: Finding Humility at the End of Modernity

Matthew Derr, Executive Director of The Chelsea Green Foundation, recently sat down with Dougald Hine, Co-Founder of the Dark Mountain Project and Dr. Vandana Shiva, Founder of Navdanya, for an interview in what we’re calling “Conversations on Resilience & Resistance:” a series of discussions, reviews, and articles that supports the Foundation’s mission of exchanging creative thinking and…

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Open-Source Agriculture

Open-Source Agriculture: “Hacking” the Farming Industry

Whether we like it or not, technology is quickly evolving and continues to be an integral part of our everyday lives. This leaves us with a choice: we can either allow ourselves to be dominated by this new technology, or we can harness its potential and use it to understand and improve our shared environment.…

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Farming for the Long Haul: It Takes a Village

It’s almost impossible to achieve farming for the long haul without a group of caretakers behind the scenes, making sure everyone’s needs are met. For hundreds of years, women made up these “caring communities,” supporting families, making food, and bettering community life. Though the makeup of these caring communities has changed over the years, the…

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Car Survival Tips for Severe Winter Weather

Now that temperatures have started to dip below freezing, it’s time to get serious about winter preparedness — especially when it comes to driving! Here are some car survival tips to help your vehicle get through the winter. The following is an excerpt from When Disaster Strikes by Matthew Stein. It has been adapted for the…

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avoiding fallacies

Avoiding Fallacies: Finding Our Place in the Mosaic

The Chelsea Green Foundation, a private operating foundation that supports activists, artists, farmers, writers, and other practitioners in challenging orthodoxy, exchanges creative and critical thinking that inspires ecological and societal resilience. As part of our mission, we sought out to find our place in the mosaic of the nonprofit world — where exactly do we fit in this…

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Introducing: The Chelsea Green Foundation

Here at Chelsea Green, we’re dedicated to working with authors who bring in-depth, practical knowledge to life and give readers hands-on information related to organic farming and gardening, ecology and the environment, healthy food, sustainable economics, progressive politics, integrative health, and wellness. To expand the reach of our values, we have recently established a name-sake…

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Miyawaki Method

Using The Miyawaki Method: A Forest in the Desert

Growing a forest on fertile land is doable, but doing the same on barren land demands an innovative approach. That’s exactly what Gaurav Gurjar did. Using the Miyawaki Method he transformed barren and infertile land in the Rajasthan desert into an oasis! Nature is resilient and with small interventions, we can restore biodiversity and return…

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Multiple garden beds with vegetables

To Garden is to be Resilient

Our gardens provide many things; food for our tables, flowers for our loved ones, even a pleasant way to spend sunny afternoons—but there’s so much more we can gain from our gardens. While we’re planting, weeding, and watering, we’re doing so much more than growing. We are building resilience, from the ground up. The following…

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When it All Comes Together: The Barn Raising

This is the moment the Barn Club has been working towards: the barn raising. As Robert J. Somerville mentions in this excerpt, in modern times the task of barn raising has been given to bigger, stronger machines. But there is something deeply fulfilling about using your own two hands, along with the hands of others,…

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NYC Composting Project

The Phases of Composting

Although the stages of composting are very closely intertwined, each separate one has its own value and needs to be nurtured accordingly. The materials used go through several transformations: physical, biological, and chemical. Understanding each phase of this process is the first step in creating the best nutrients for your plants. The following is an…

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Embracing Hope And Letting Go Of Fear

We can all get caught up in our own heads sometimes; fall down rabbit holes of fear and find ourselves stuck in situations we don’t want to be in. This can be especially true when it comes to climate change. Often, our resistance to change is a response to our fears of the future. But…

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A Letter from a Reader: Why We Do What We Do

Chelsea Green Publishing is a 100% employee-owned company! As a small independent, employee-owned business, our readers are the heart of our success. From the beginning, our readers have always been our compass—providing inspiration and direction. Occasionally stories of how our books have made a difference in the lives of our readers make it back to…

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farmland with hay

Who Are We as Farmers?

Recently, farmers have been making the headlines because of the hardships they’re facing to sustain their farms. With larger, corporate farms running smaller, privately-owned farms out of business, it seems like many farmers are fighting an uphill battle. But, despite the small amount of money, long hours, and constant threats from the “big guys” farmers…

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wood-fired oven

How to Get the Most Out of Your Wood-Fired Oven

What could be better than an oven you can build yourself, that allows you to cook an array of delicious foods outside, and can help restore the individual and communal resiliency we’ve lost in recent decades? Follow these tips to learn how to make and maintain your own wood-fired oven! The following is an excerpt…

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Okra With a Twist: Crispy, Dry-Fried Okra

Wood-fired oven are not just for baking bread and pizza! If you utilize the full heat-cycle, as Richard Miscovich details in From the Wood-Fired Oven, you can make a wide range of tasty eats during just one firing—from roasting meats and vegetables to drying herbs. With live-fire roasting, this recipe for Dry-Fried Okra comes out…

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TREES OF POWER

Learning from Our Arboreal Allies

Akiva Silver owns and operates Twisted Tree Farm, a homestead, nut orchard, and nursery located in Spencer, New York, where he grows around 20,000 trees per year using practices that go beyond organic. His background is in foraging, wilderness survival, and primitive skills. He has been observing nature intensively for the last 20 years, cultivating…

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A tray of bees

Biodynamic Beekeeping 101

Spring is here and I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get started on all of the projects I mapped out during the cold winter months – including trying my hand at incorporating bees into my homesteading adventure! As a new-bee (get it?!), I need help to get started so I did…

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