Health knowledge made personal
  Sara Snow's Fresh Living , by Sara Snow: If you're new to this living-lighter-on-the-land stuff, start with Sara. Watch her terrific shows , visit her website , and read her book . She is totally the friend-next-door, guiding you on the journey with expertise, enthusiasm and support. This book takes you room-by-room and simply suggests the hows and whys of greening things up a bit. You know when you go for a walk with a friend and the next thing you know two hours have passed and you've walked many miles without even realizing it? That's what it's like with Sara. (Pictured is one of my green-living friends, Debbie Smith, creator and owner of Idbids , on a recent walk with me). The part about houseplants, if you can believe it (she gets very specific), and the green cleaning recipes are worth the price of the book alone. And it's especially terrific to see what becomes of someone who "grew up green" (and yes, veered off the path for a little while, like most of us at one point or another!)  Urban Farming , by Thomas J. Fox, from the editors of Urban Farm magazine: Let's put it this way--I donated a pile of urban agriculture/sustainability books recently (and believe me, I love my books ) to the Better World Books drop box at Truly Living Well's Wheat Street Gardens location (pictured-- my Jamie !). I kept this one. As I told Tom when we talked recently (he grew up twenty minutes from me and went to school in my hometown!), this book looks like a textbook and reads like a novel. I frankly don't know how he did it. He's not an urban farmer or even a hardcore gardener, yet the information in this book is spot-on, presented beautifully, and truly offers "something for everyone" in a way that's not overwhelming but still truly helpful. If I were to teach a class on urban farming (which I'm not), this is the book I'd use.  The Essential Urban Farmer , by Novella Carpenter and Willow Rosenthal: First of all, I loved Novella Carpenter's memoir, Farm City . If you haven't read it, do. You'll think of the pigs forever, and Novella's dumpster diving, and the chef she met, and how her life changed. You'll show up more, take more risks, and laugh a bit more heartily at the serendipitous situations in which you find yourself as a result of this changing-the-way-we-eat stuff you're doing. Or at least I did. But back to this book. The Essential Urban Farmer is all business. Don't look for Novella's very quirky, funny voice here. It's the answer to, "Okay, you got me. I want to do this. Tell me how." And believe me, you'll learn it--everything from knot tying to a view of rabbit genitalia like you've never seen before. My favorite little tidbit in this book is the simple crop rotation advice: heavy feeder, light feeder, edible nitrogen fixer, non-edible nitrogen fixer (pictured is Austrian winter peas in the shopping cart garden I steward at the community garden). (That one's courtesy of Willow, as she's the veggie pro). The Essential Urban Farmer offers advice for all stages of your experience, but I'd put this one in the category of someone serious about urban homesteading/farming and wanting to move to the next level. This book goes on the shelf and will come out (frequently) when I need really specific, hardcore advice. Farmer Jane , by Temra Costa: I am extremely influenced by design, and I smiled from the moment I opened the package mailed to me with this book in it. The premise of this book is that the decision-making and purchasing power of women in deciding what their families eat is not getting the media shout-out it deserves, and the extraordinary growth in women leaders in the real food movement is a story worth telling. Well, actually 30. Temra profiles 30 women in the sustainable food industry, from farmers to chefs, film makers to policy makers. Novella and Willow are in there, as is Olivia Sargent of Farm 255 fame . This book reminded me that I am part of a larger collective of people (men and women) working together to change not just the dinner plate, but the world, and is succeeding. (Pictured is my friend Melissa, who is shown on her farm years ago with my younger daughter--no, they are not in Temra's book, but they are two women changing the world, and this picture does appear in my book ). According to The Essential Urban Farmer, one yard of compost covers 100 feet with 3 inches of compost, so therefore the 10 cubic yards I recently had delivered covers 1,000 square feet. As I calculated my home garden area in cultivation to be 600 square feet last year, it appears as if I have, once again, expanded. And since I know, from my food pantry gardening involvement, that I can grow 2 pounds of food per square foot in my grow zone, that puts my yield potential at 2,000 pounds, which, yes, would be, finally, a ton . I am completely certain that I won't hit these numbers without Temra, Sara, Tom, Willow, and Novella offering their advice and encouragement. So I'll keep these books close by. As you may want to do, too. |
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