Gaining Ground

Gaining Ground PDF Author: Forrest Pritchard
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0762794380
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
With humor and pathos, Forrest Pritchard recounts his ambitious and often hilarious endeavors to save his family’s seventh-generation farm in the Shenandoah Valley. Through many a trial and error, he not only saves Smith Meadows from insolvency but turns it into a leading light in the sustainable, grass-fed, organic farm-to-market community. There is nothing young Farmer Pritchard won’t try. Whether he’s selling firewood and straw, raising free-range chickens and hogs, or acquiring a flock of Barbados Blackbelly sheep, his learning curve is steep and always entertaining. Pritchard’s world crackles with colorful local characters—farm hands, butchers, market managers, customers, fellow vendors, pet goats, policemen—bringing the story to warm, communal life. His most important ally, however, is his renegade father, who initially questions his son's career choice and eschews organic foods for the generic kinds that wreak havoc on his health. Soon after his father’s death, the farm becomes a recognized success and Pritchard must make a vital decision: to continue serving the local community or answer the exploding demand for his wares with lucrative Internet sales and shipping deals. More than a charming story of honest food cultivation and farmers’ markets, Gaining Ground tugs on the heartstrings, reconnecting us to the land and the many lives that feed us.

Gaining Ground

Gaining Ground PDF Author: Forrest Pritchard
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0762794380
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 341

Get Book Here

Book Description
With humor and pathos, Forrest Pritchard recounts his ambitious and often hilarious endeavors to save his family’s seventh-generation farm in the Shenandoah Valley. Through many a trial and error, he not only saves Smith Meadows from insolvency but turns it into a leading light in the sustainable, grass-fed, organic farm-to-market community. There is nothing young Farmer Pritchard won’t try. Whether he’s selling firewood and straw, raising free-range chickens and hogs, or acquiring a flock of Barbados Blackbelly sheep, his learning curve is steep and always entertaining. Pritchard’s world crackles with colorful local characters—farm hands, butchers, market managers, customers, fellow vendors, pet goats, policemen—bringing the story to warm, communal life. His most important ally, however, is his renegade father, who initially questions his son's career choice and eschews organic foods for the generic kinds that wreak havoc on his health. Soon after his father’s death, the farm becomes a recognized success and Pritchard must make a vital decision: to continue serving the local community or answer the exploding demand for his wares with lucrative Internet sales and shipping deals. More than a charming story of honest food cultivation and farmers’ markets, Gaining Ground tugs on the heartstrings, reconnecting us to the land and the many lives that feed us.

Letters to a Young Farmer

Letters to a Young Farmer PDF Author: Martha Hodgkins
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1616896035
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
An agricultural revolution is sweeping the land. Appreciation for high-quality food, often locally grown, an awareness of the fragility of our farmlands, and a new generation of young people interested in farming, animals, and respect for the earth have come together to create a new agrarian community. To this group of farmers, chefs, activists, and visionaries, Letters to a Young Farmer is addressed. Three dozen esteemed leaders of the changes that made this revolution possible speak to the highs and lows of farming life in vivid and personal letters specially written for this collaboration. Barbara Kingsolver speaks to the tribe of farmers—some born to it, many self-selected—with love, admiration, and regret. Dan Barber traces the rediscovery of lost grains and foodways. Michael Pollan bridges the chasm between agriculture and nature. Bill McKibben connects the early human quest for beer to the modern challenge of farming in a rapidly changing climate. Letters to a Young Farmer is a vital road map of how we eat and farm, and why now, more than ever before, we need farmers.

The Color of Food

The Color of Food PDF Author: Natasha Bowens
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780865717893
Category : Minority farmers
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The Color of Food sheds light on the issues that lie at the intersection of race and farming. It challenges the status quo of agrarian identity for people of color, honoring a history richer than slavery and migrant labor. By sharing and celebrating their stories, this collection reveals the remarkable face of the American farmer.

Farming While Black

Farming While Black PDF Author: Leah Penniman
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 1603587616
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Farming While Black is the first comprehensive "how to" guide for aspiring African-heritage growers to reclaim their dignity as agriculturists and for all farmers to understand the distinct, technical contributions of African-heritage people to sustainable agriculture. At Soul Fire Farm, author Leah Penniman co-created the Black and Latino Farmers Immersion (BLFI) program as a container for new farmers to share growing skills in a culturally relevant and supportive environment led by people of color. Farming While Black organizes and expands upon the curriculum of the BLFI to provide readers with a concise guide to all aspects of small-scale farming, from business planning to preserving the harvest. Throughout the chapters Penniman uplifts the wisdom of the African diasporic farmers and activists whose work informs the techniques described--from whole farm planning, soil fertility, seed selection, and agroecology, to using whole foods in culturally appropriate recipes, sharing stories of ancestors, and tools for healing from the trauma associated with slavery and economic exploitation on the land. Woven throughout the book is the story of Soul Fire Farm, a national leader in the food justice movement.--AMAZON.

American Harvest

American Harvest PDF Author: Marie Mutsuki Mockett
Publisher: Graywolf Press
ISBN: 1644451166
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 445

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Book Description
An epic story of the American wheat harvest, the politics of food, and the culture of the Great Plains For over one hundred years, the Mockett family has owned a seven-thousand-acre wheat farm in the panhandle of Nebraska, where Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s father was raised. Mockett, who grew up in bohemian Carmel, California, with her father and her Japanese mother, knew little about farming when she inherited this land. Her father had all but forsworn it. In American Harvest, Mockett accompanies a group of evangelical Christian wheat harvesters through the heartland at the invitation of Eric Wolgemuth, the conservative farmer who has cut her family’s fields for decades. As Mockett follows Wolgemuth’s crew on the trail of ripening wheat from Texas to Idaho, they contemplate what Wolgemuth refers to as “the divide,” inadvertently peeling back layers of the American story to expose its contradictions and unhealed wounds. She joins the crew in the fields, attends church, and struggles to adapt to the rhythms of rural life, all the while continually reminded of her own status as a person who signals “not white,” but who people she encounters can’t quite categorize. American Harvest is an extraordinary evocation of the land and a thoughtful exploration of ingrained beliefs, from evangelical skepticism of evolution to cosmopolitan assumptions about food production and farming. With exquisite lyricism and humanity, this astonishing book attempts to reconcile competing versions of our national story.

Becoming A Young Farmer

Becoming A Young Farmer PDF Author: Sharada Srinivasan
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031152336
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
This open access book is based on a multi-country collaborative research project focussing on Canada, China, India, and Indonesia. It responds directly and concretely to concerns about the generational sustainability of smallholder farming worldwide– reflected in the current UN Decade of Family Farming. Drawing on research that asks how (some) young people continue to pursue a (future) livelihood in farming, the book uses the life-course perspective and privileges voices of young farmers to show that movement away from farming such as time spent in education, migration and non-farm work does not exclude eventual farming futures. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of agrarian studies, anthropology, development studies, gender studies, human geography, rural sociology, and youth studies.

Polyface Micro

Polyface Micro PDF Author: Joel Salatin
Publisher: Polyface
ISBN: 9781733686624
Category : House & Home
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
"I love your ideas, but I only have a few acres. How do I do this at my scale?" Success with domestic livestock does not require large land bases. Joel Salatin and his family's Polyface Farm in Virginia lead the world in animal-friendly and ecologically authentic, commercial, pasture-based livestock production. In Polyface Micro he adapts the ideas and protocols to small holdings (including apartments)! Homesteaders can increase production, enjoy healthy animals, and create aesthetically and aromatically pleasant livestock systems. Whether you're a new or seasoned homesteader, you'll find tips and inspiration as Joel coaches you toward success and abundance.

Young Men in Farming

Young Men in Farming PDF Author: Edwin Ray Hoskins
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agricultural education
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description


No Risk Ranching

No Risk Ranching PDF Author: Greg Judy
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780963246080
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Greg Judy was forced to liquidate his cow herd to pay debt in 1996. By the end of the following year he was dead broke and figured the family farm was history. A quote from Allan Nation, editor of The Stockman Grass Farmer magazine changed his whole view of ranching. Nation said, "Your sole purpose should be not to own the land, but to make a living from the land." Inspired by that approach, Judy started looking for idle, non-developed pastureland. By focusing on leasing rather than owning land, his grazing operation grew from 40 stockers to 1100 head. By custom grazing on leased land he was able to pay his entire farm and home loan within three years. Today he has four farms and leases 12. No Risk Ranching, Custom Grazing on Leased Land describes how he found and managed his first and subsequent leases. He offers a detailed guide for other graziers to follow on how to find idle land to lease; calculate the cost of a lease; draft and write a land lease contract (with examples included); develop good water and portable fencing on leased land; promote wildlife and improve timber stands; keep accurate records and more. No Risk Ranching was written to help other graziers from making the same mistakes Judy made. He writes, "I am convinced that in the USA our pastures are one of our most underutilized natural resources. I am not against land ownership. I just feel like it is an awful hardship on a new blooming grazing business."

The Farmer's Guide to Scientific and Practical Agriculture

The Farmer's Guide to Scientific and Practical Agriculture PDF Author: Henry Stephens
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agriculture
Languages : en
Pages : 798

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Book Description