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February 2024 MBR The Agriculture Shelf
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Midwest Book Review
Feb 18, 2024, 10:01:53 PMFeb 18
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The Agriculture Shelf
The Resilient Farm and Homestead: Revised & Expanded
Ben Falk
Chelsea Green Publishing Company
www.chelseagreen.com
9781645021100, $44.95, PB, 352pp
https://www.amazon.com/Resilient-Farm-Homestead-Revised-Expanded/dp/1645021106
Synopsis: In this newly revised and expanded edition of "The Resilient Farm and Homestead: 20 Years of Permaculture and Whole Systems Design" permaculture and gardening expert Ben Falk describes how he has transformed a degraded hillside in the frigid Vermont climate into a thriving, biodiverse Eden that now provides year-round abundance for his family and community.
Originally published in 2013, this newly updated edition of "The Resilient Farm and Homestead" well serves as a comprehensive DIY how-to guide for building durable and productive land-based systems through the reciprocal interplay of humans and the natural world. In the ten years since he first published this seminal work, Falk has deepened his wisdom in harnessing nature-based solutions for increasingly challenging times, including addressing severe climate disruptions like drought and flood conditions.
This new and updated edition of "The Resilient Farm and Homestead" covers every strategy Falk and his team have tested on the Whole Systems Research Farms over the past two decades and includes detailed information on earthworks, gravity-fed water systems, soil fertility management, growing nutrient-dense food and medicine, fuelwood production, agroforestry, managed grazing, and so much more.
Complete with full-color photography and detailed design drawings, The Resilient Farm and Homestead, Revised and Expanded Edition includes new information on: Designing greenhouses and microclimates; Reinvigorating human health and embodying a vigorous lifestyle; Raising children on a homestead; Creating failure-proof and resilient energy systems; Focusing on permaculture beekeeping; Cultivating proven cold climate plants; Overcoming analysis paralysis and mastering the art of knowing where to start and when to take strategic risks -- and much, much more!
In an age that feels defined by disconnection, disease, and decline, "The Resilient Farm and Homestead, Revised and Expanded Edition" offers a comprehensive roadmap to conquering uncertainty, maximizing efficiency, and creating a bountiful, manageable landscape that will endure.
Critique: This large format (8 x 1 x 10 inches, 1.25 pounds) paperback edition of "The Resilient Farm and Homestead, 20 Years of Permaculture and Whole Systems Design" will prove to be of immense value for DIY readers with an interest in sustainable agriculture and organic gardening. While unreservedly recommended as an essential and core addition to personal, professional, community, and college/university library Agriculture/Horticulture/Gardening collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists, it should be noted that "The Resilient Farm and Homestead: Revised & Expanded Edition) is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $38.99).
Editorial Note: Ben Falk (www.wildabundance.net/bios/ben-falk) developed Whole Systems Design, LLC, as a land-based response to biological and cultural extinction and the increasing separation between people and elemental things. Life as a designer, builder, ecologist, tree-tender, and backcountry traveler continually informs Ben's integrative approach to developing landscapes and buildings. His home landscape and the WSD studio site in Vermont's Mad River Valley serve as a proving ground for the innovative land developments featured in the projects of Whole Systems Design. Ben has studied architecture and landscape architecture at the graduate level and holds master of arts in landscape design degree. He has taught design courses at the University of Vermont and Harvard's Arnold Arboretum as well as on permaculture design, microclimate design, and design for climate change. He recently served on the board of directors at the Yestermorrow Design-Build School, where he also teaches from time to time. He is also the author of The Resilient Homestead: Innovative Permaculture Systems for the Home and Farm.
Flower Farming for Profit
Lennie Larkin
Chelsea Green Publishing Company
www.chelseagreen.com
9781645021766, $45.00, PB, 288pp
https://www.amazon.com/Flower-Farming-Profit-Complete-Successful/dp/1645021769
Synopsis: When Lennie Larkin set out to become a flower farmer, she found all sorts of resources about growing flowers but a scarcity of reliable information on how to build a profitable cut flower business. How do you create efficient systems and adequately value your own time and effort through your pricing? When and how should you consider scaling up your farm? How can you make doing what you love support you financially?
With the publication of "Flower Farming for Profit: The Complete Guide to Growing a Successful Cut Flower Business", Larkin answers these questions and a great many more. With instructive lessons and savvy business tips from her own and other successful farms around the world, she explores: The diverse challenges of both wholesale and retail sales channels, from florists and farm stands to farmers markets; Streamlining weddings for the farmer-florist, from communications to floral design; Efficient recordkeeping and bookkeeping; Steps for conducting your own cost-of-production analysis; Marketing and growth strategies; Business planning, goal setting, and making financial projections; Crop planning based on local climatic conditions, market demand, and sales projections.
The cut flower industry continues to experience reliable and continuing growth. To successfully do what they love while expanding the market for sustainably produced flowers, new and experienced farmers alike must deliberately step back from the field and into the office. "Flower Farming for Profit" is a unique guide to creating the type of numbers-driven business that will allow individual farms to prosper and local flower economies to thrive.
Critique: Simply stated, "Flower Farming for Profit: The Complete Guide to Growing a Successful Cut Flower Business" is the Bible for creating and operating a profitable cut flower business, whether it be on a local, regional, national, or even international basis. Nicely illustrated throughout with full color photography, "Flower Farming for Profit" is as comprehensive as it is 'user friendly' in organization and presentation. Also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $33.99), "Flower Planning for Profit" is a necessary and core addition to personal, professional, corporate, and college/university library Agriculture/Horticultural Industry collections.
Editorial Note: Lennie Larkin (www.flowerfarmingforprofit.com) started B-Side Farm in Sonoma County, California, in 2014, and has since moved the farm and settled on two beautiful acres outside of Portland, Oregon. B-Side has grown flowers for all kinds of retail and wholesale customers over the years and designed for hundreds of weddings. Lennie's true passion lies not only in tending to her own farm but in helping other farmers thrive in their businesses. She has been an associate faculty member at Santa Rosa Junior College and served multiple terms on the board of the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers. She teaches a business curriculum that she developed specifically for flower farmers, provides coaching and business advising, and conducts grant-funded research on cut flower cost of production and efficiency.
EDITOR'S NOTE:
The Midwest Book Review is an organization of volunteers committed to promoting literacy, library usage, and small press publishing. We accept no funds from authors or publishers. Full permission is given to post any of these reviews on thematically appropriate websites, newsgroups, listserves, internet discussion groups, organizational newsletters, or to interested individuals. Please give the Midwest Book Review a credit line when doing so.
The Midwest Book Review publishes the monthly book review magazines "California Bookwatch", "Internet Bookwatch", "Children's Bookwatch", "MBR Bookwatch", "Reviewer's Bookwatch", and "Small Press Bookwatch". All are available for free on the Midwest Book Review website at www (dot) midwestbookreview (dot) com
Anyone wanting to submit books for review consideration can send them to:
James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief
Midwest Book Review
278 Orchard Drive
Oregon, WI 53575-1129
To submit reviews of any fiction or non-fiction books, email them to Frugalmuse (at) aol (dot) com (Be sure to include the book title, author, publisher, publisher address, publisher website/phone number, 13-digit ISBN number, and list price).
James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief
Midwest Book Review
The Resilient Farm and Homestead: Revised & Expanded
Ben Falk
Chelsea Green Publishing Company
www.chelseagreen.com
9781645021100, $44.95, PB, 352pp
https://www.amazon.com/Resilient-Farm-Homestead-Revised-Expanded/dp/1645021106
Synopsis: In this newly revised and expanded edition of "The Resilient Farm and Homestead: 20 Years of Permaculture and Whole Systems Design" permaculture and gardening expert Ben Falk describes how he has transformed a degraded hillside in the frigid Vermont climate into a thriving, biodiverse Eden that now provides year-round abundance for his family and community.
Originally published in 2013, this newly updated edition of "The Resilient Farm and Homestead" well serves as a comprehensive DIY how-to guide for building durable and productive land-based systems through the reciprocal interplay of humans and the natural world. In the ten years since he first published this seminal work, Falk has deepened his wisdom in harnessing nature-based solutions for increasingly challenging times, including addressing severe climate disruptions like drought and flood conditions.
This new and updated edition of "The Resilient Farm and Homestead" covers every strategy Falk and his team have tested on the Whole Systems Research Farms over the past two decades and includes detailed information on earthworks, gravity-fed water systems, soil fertility management, growing nutrient-dense food and medicine, fuelwood production, agroforestry, managed grazing, and so much more.
Complete with full-color photography and detailed design drawings, The Resilient Farm and Homestead, Revised and Expanded Edition includes new information on: Designing greenhouses and microclimates; Reinvigorating human health and embodying a vigorous lifestyle; Raising children on a homestead; Creating failure-proof and resilient energy systems; Focusing on permaculture beekeeping; Cultivating proven cold climate plants; Overcoming analysis paralysis and mastering the art of knowing where to start and when to take strategic risks -- and much, much more!
In an age that feels defined by disconnection, disease, and decline, "The Resilient Farm and Homestead, Revised and Expanded Edition" offers a comprehensive roadmap to conquering uncertainty, maximizing efficiency, and creating a bountiful, manageable landscape that will endure.
Critique: This large format (8 x 1 x 10 inches, 1.25 pounds) paperback edition of "The Resilient Farm and Homestead, 20 Years of Permaculture and Whole Systems Design" will prove to be of immense value for DIY readers with an interest in sustainable agriculture and organic gardening. While unreservedly recommended as an essential and core addition to personal, professional, community, and college/university library Agriculture/Horticulture/Gardening collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists, it should be noted that "The Resilient Farm and Homestead: Revised & Expanded Edition) is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $38.99).
Editorial Note: Ben Falk (www.wildabundance.net/bios/ben-falk) developed Whole Systems Design, LLC, as a land-based response to biological and cultural extinction and the increasing separation between people and elemental things. Life as a designer, builder, ecologist, tree-tender, and backcountry traveler continually informs Ben's integrative approach to developing landscapes and buildings. His home landscape and the WSD studio site in Vermont's Mad River Valley serve as a proving ground for the innovative land developments featured in the projects of Whole Systems Design. Ben has studied architecture and landscape architecture at the graduate level and holds master of arts in landscape design degree. He has taught design courses at the University of Vermont and Harvard's Arnold Arboretum as well as on permaculture design, microclimate design, and design for climate change. He recently served on the board of directors at the Yestermorrow Design-Build School, where he also teaches from time to time. He is also the author of The Resilient Homestead: Innovative Permaculture Systems for the Home and Farm.
Flower Farming for Profit
Lennie Larkin
Chelsea Green Publishing Company
www.chelseagreen.com
9781645021766, $45.00, PB, 288pp
https://www.amazon.com/Flower-Farming-Profit-Complete-Successful/dp/1645021769
Synopsis: When Lennie Larkin set out to become a flower farmer, she found all sorts of resources about growing flowers but a scarcity of reliable information on how to build a profitable cut flower business. How do you create efficient systems and adequately value your own time and effort through your pricing? When and how should you consider scaling up your farm? How can you make doing what you love support you financially?
With the publication of "Flower Farming for Profit: The Complete Guide to Growing a Successful Cut Flower Business", Larkin answers these questions and a great many more. With instructive lessons and savvy business tips from her own and other successful farms around the world, she explores: The diverse challenges of both wholesale and retail sales channels, from florists and farm stands to farmers markets; Streamlining weddings for the farmer-florist, from communications to floral design; Efficient recordkeeping and bookkeeping; Steps for conducting your own cost-of-production analysis; Marketing and growth strategies; Business planning, goal setting, and making financial projections; Crop planning based on local climatic conditions, market demand, and sales projections.
The cut flower industry continues to experience reliable and continuing growth. To successfully do what they love while expanding the market for sustainably produced flowers, new and experienced farmers alike must deliberately step back from the field and into the office. "Flower Farming for Profit" is a unique guide to creating the type of numbers-driven business that will allow individual farms to prosper and local flower economies to thrive.
Critique: Simply stated, "Flower Farming for Profit: The Complete Guide to Growing a Successful Cut Flower Business" is the Bible for creating and operating a profitable cut flower business, whether it be on a local, regional, national, or even international basis. Nicely illustrated throughout with full color photography, "Flower Farming for Profit" is as comprehensive as it is 'user friendly' in organization and presentation. Also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $33.99), "Flower Planning for Profit" is a necessary and core addition to personal, professional, corporate, and college/university library Agriculture/Horticultural Industry collections.
Editorial Note: Lennie Larkin (www.flowerfarmingforprofit.com) started B-Side Farm in Sonoma County, California, in 2014, and has since moved the farm and settled on two beautiful acres outside of Portland, Oregon. B-Side has grown flowers for all kinds of retail and wholesale customers over the years and designed for hundreds of weddings. Lennie's true passion lies not only in tending to her own farm but in helping other farmers thrive in their businesses. She has been an associate faculty member at Santa Rosa Junior College and served multiple terms on the board of the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers. She teaches a business curriculum that she developed specifically for flower farmers, provides coaching and business advising, and conducts grant-funded research on cut flower cost of production and efficiency.
EDITOR'S NOTE:
The Midwest Book Review is an organization of volunteers committed to promoting literacy, library usage, and small press publishing. We accept no funds from authors or publishers. Full permission is given to post any of these reviews on thematically appropriate websites, newsgroups, listserves, internet discussion groups, organizational newsletters, or to interested individuals. Please give the Midwest Book Review a credit line when doing so.
The Midwest Book Review publishes the monthly book review magazines "California Bookwatch", "Internet Bookwatch", "Children's Bookwatch", "MBR Bookwatch", "Reviewer's Bookwatch", and "Small Press Bookwatch". All are available for free on the Midwest Book Review website at www (dot) midwestbookreview (dot) com
Anyone wanting to submit books for review consideration can send them to:
James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief
Midwest Book Review
278 Orchard Drive
Oregon, WI 53575-1129
To submit reviews of any fiction or non-fiction books, email them to Frugalmuse (at) aol (dot) com (Be sure to include the book title, author, publisher, publisher address, publisher website/phone number, 13-digit ISBN number, and list price).
James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief
Midwest Book Review
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