growing food in a hotter, drier land

Gary Nabhan’s newest book, out next month.

From his website:
With climatic uncertainty now “the new normal,” many farmers, gardeners, and orchardists in North America are desperately seeking ways to adapt how they grow food in the face of climate change. The solutions may be at our back door.

In Growing Food in a Hotter, Drier Land, Nabhan, one of the world’s experts on the agricultural traditions of arid lands, draws from the knowledge of traditional farmers in the Gobi Desert, the Arabian Peninsula, the Sahara Desert, and Andalusia, as well as the Sonoran, Chihuahuan, and Painted deserts of North America to offer time-tried strategies, including:

• Building greater moisture-holding capacity and nutrients in soils;
• Protecting fields from damaging winds, drought, and floods;
• Reducing heat stress on crops and livestock;
• Harvesting water from uplands to use in rain gardens and terraces filled with perennial crops;
• Selecting fruits, nuts, succulents, and herbaceous perennials that are best suited to warmer, drier climates; and,
• Keeping pollinators in pace and in place with arid-adapted crop plants.

“Emulating and refining these adaptations may help us secure food in the face of climate change,” writes Nabhan.

cooked – michael pollan on democracy now!

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/5/6/michael_pollan_on_how_reclaiming_cooking

We spend the hour with Michael Pollan, one of the country’s leading writers and thinkers on food and food policy. Pollan has written several best-selling books about food, including “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” and “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.” In his latest book, “Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation,” Pollan argues that taking back control of cooking may be the single most important step anyone can take to help make our food system healthier and more sustainable.

our essay collection!

Congrats to all of our editors and essayists – GREENHORNS: The Next Generation of American Farmers – has just won a 2013 Nautilus Gold Award in the Living Green / Sustainability category!  The Nautilus awards recognize “Better Books for a Better World”.

From Nautilus: Amidst the turmoil and turbulence in our world today, people everywhere are beginning to hope for and imagine a world that works for everyone – a world, as it could be, with abundant possibilities for rethinking how we live. It is with great dedication and commitment to this vision that we continue to present a collection of Better Books for a Better World.  We are so proud to include your 2013 Award winning book in this body of knowledge.

regenerative enterprise

Here’s a sneak peak at an exciting new book, Regenerative Enterprise: Optimizing for Multi-Capital Abundance, by our friend Ethan Roland. Download the excerpt

 

michael pollan’s latest work

Cooked
A Natural History of Transformation

In Cooked, Michael Pollan explores the previously uncharted territory of his own kitchen. Here, he discovers the enduring power of the four classical elements—fire, water, air, and earth— to transform the stuff of nature into delicious things to eat and drink. Apprenticing himself to a succession of culinary masters, Pollan learns how to grill with fire, cook with liquid, bake bread, and ferment everything from cheese to beer. In the course of his journey, he discovers that the cook occupies a special place in the world, standing squarely between nature and culture. Both realms are transformed by cooking, and so, in the process, is the cook. Each section of Cooked tracks Pollan’s effort to master a single classic recipe using one of the four elements. A North Carolina barbecue pit master tutors him in the primal magic of fire; a Chez Panisse–trained cook schools him in the art of braising; a celebrated baker teaches him how air transforms grain and water into a fragrant loaf of bread; and finally, several mad-genius “fermentos” (a tribe that includes brewers, cheese makers, and all kinds of picklers) reveal how fungi and bacteria can perform the most amazing alchemies of all. The reader learns alongside Pollan, but the lessons move beyond the practical to become an investigation of how cooking involves us in a web of social and ecological relationships: with plants and animals, the soil, farmers, our history and culture, and, of course, the people our cooking nourishes and delights. Cooking, above all, connects us.

The effects of not cooking are similarly far reaching. Relying upon corporations to process our food means we consume large quantities of fat, sugar, and salt; disrupt an essential link to the natural world; and weaken our relationships with family and friends. In fact, Cooked argues, taking back control of cooking may be the single most important step anyone can take to help make the American food system healthier and more sustainable. Reclaiming cooking as an act of enjoyment and self-reliance, learning to perform the magic of these everyday transformations, opens the door to a more nourishing life.

There’s also an MP3 file you can download with an excerpt from the audio book. Check it out at by clicking here.

history lesson – salvation army farm colonies

Around the turn of the century, the Salvation Army founded three intentional communities in Colorado, Ohio, and California in an effort to relieve urban poverty that followed in the wake of rapid industrialization. Conceived by founder William Booth, the project was organized by his son-in-law Frederick Booth-Tucker, commander of the Salvation Army in the United States. Clark Spence’s account of this back-to-the-land experiment is at once agricultural, social, religious, and even political history enacted on both sides of the Atlantic: in the irrigated beet and alfalfa fields where small farmers fought hoppers, drought, or saline soil in an effort to wrest a living from their twenty acres; at the fund-raising meetings where the Booth-Tuckers garnered both applause and dollars from business leaders; and in the halls of Congress and Parliament where Army supporters argued in vain for government subsidies.

The Salvation Army Farm Colonies

rev billy’s newest book

The End of the World
In pages that crackle with the lightning of an electric storm, the Reverend Billy, messianic leader of the Church of Stop Shopping, thunders from his pulpit, sounding the tocsin on the toxins that are poisoning our planet.

The Mayan calendar points to the final apocalypse descending on us in December 2012. Evangelicals have been raising hell about the coming Rapture since the death of their Christ.

But the good Reverend’s eschatology is less scriptural. Rather it is rooted in the environmental disasters that rampant capitalism and couldn’t-care-less governments are visiting on our world.

As the fish and forests perish, our future here on earth looks bleaker than ever. But, our Reverend insists in a sequence of surreally imagined sermons, we cannot be passive congregants in the face of our own demise.

Rather, with soaring parables from protests as far apart as the bank lobbies of Barcelona and the underground police cells of New York City, our preacher raises a resounding “Earthallujah!”, turning back the devils of debt and destruction, rallying those of radical faith to save themselves and save us all.

Reseller Links:

Paperback

ebook

Paperback+eBook Bundle

Find events and book readings on his website.

super duper books

 

http://www.smillswriter.com/works.htm

moving to the country, just you and me

Get Your Pitchfork On!: The Real Dirt on Country Living. It’s a no-romance guide to moving from an urban place to a rural one, and covers all the usual things–land, buildings, livestock–but also talks about the social piece of moving to the country, which for me was the hardest thing. More info here: http://getyourpitchforkon.com/Pitchfork/Home.html

conversation with lisa hamilton + linda hussa in SAN FRAN

Poet and Rancher Linda Hussa, in conversation with Lisa M. Hamilton

March 7, 6PM at The California Historical Society

RSVP at http://eveningwithlinda-eorg.eventbrite.com/

Linda Hussa writes and ranches cattle and sheep in California’s farthest northeast corner, on the edge of the Black Rock Desert. She is the author of seven books of poetry and non-fiction, all of which artfully explore rural lives and work—their struggles as well as their joys. Hussa has won numerous awards, including the “Willa,” given in the name of Willa Cather by Women Writing the West. She has recently been nominated to the Cowgirl Hall of Fame for her work as a poet, writer, rancher, historian, and activist.

Hussa will read her poetry, and be joined in conversation by guest curator Lisa M. Hamilton, whose own work explores agriculture and rural communities. Hamilton features Hussa in the current photographic exhibition exploring rural California; indeed it was Hussa’s own words that gave the exhibition its title, “I See Beauty in this Life.”

good morning, beautiful business

 

A new book by Judy Wicks

“Judy Wicks’ brilliance redefines what a business can be. The White Dog Café modeled what commerce will become if we are to create a livable future. This is business as spiritual practice, business as kindness, business as community, business as justice, joy, transformation, leadership, and generosity. There is nothing here you will learn in business school because the White Dog Café is not in the business of selling life; it’s in the business of creating life. How blessed is Philadelphia and the world for her presence and prescience.”
—Paul Hawken, author Blessed Unrest

wendell berry book list

Dad would want everyone to know who his teachers were. Den Berry

The Holy Earth by Liberty Hyde Bailey.

Farmers of Forty Centuries by F. H. King.

Becoming Native to This Place by Wes Jackson. Counterpoint Press, 1996.

An Agricultural Testament by Sir Albert Howard.

A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold.

Tree Crops : A Permanent Agriculture by J. Russell Smith; Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1929. (link).

Home Place: Essays on Ecology by Stan Rowe; NeWest Press, 2002.

Earth Alive: Essays on Ecology by Stan Rowe; NeWest Press, 2006.

“Soil Erosion: A National Menace” by Hugh Hammond Bennett, USDA Bulletin Circular 33, Washington, D. C. : U. S, Government Printing Office, 1928.

From Eco-Cities to Living Machines: Principles of Ecological Design by John Todd and Nancy Todd; North Atlantic Books, 1994.

50-Year Farm Bill (link).

From the Berry Center.

help translate le jardinier-maraicher

Le jardinier-maraîcher, written by Jean-Martin Fortier, provides an overview of all aspects of vegetable production at les Jardins de la Grelinette, a farm in Quebec that is well known for its intensive methods of production. This book demonstrates how adopting intensive methods of production can allow the grower to concentrate on growing better instead of bigger, making their operation more lucrative and viable in the process. The book explains in great detail the different horticultural techniques, tools and know-how that the author has developed while running a successful vegetable operation on less than 1.5 acres of land.

But the world needs this deep source of knowledge  translated into English! Help fund the Indie Gogo campaign here: http://www.indiegogo.com/Growing-Great-Veggies/

books to read

Drought in the 1930′s: The Worst Hard Time

Drought in the 2010′s: Full Planet, Empty Plates

Check out the connection.

your cooperation in distribution

Hi there folks we love.

ITs distribution time!

WE need your guidance in getting the 2013 New Farmers Almanac out and about,

AK press will be distributing to bookstores– but we’d really like to get the book to

Hardware stores, Feed+ Farm Supply Stores, Coops, Grocceries, and local small businesses.

If you have leads in your town of places that might stock it, please send them along to almanac@thegreenhorns.net

We’ll respectfully approach them with a bulk order offer.

Thank you!

Severine, Shanye, Audrey and the Almanac team