We are building a recommended reading list for you to access on The Greenhorns website. We’ll include books on finding land, writing a business plan, saving seed, animal husbandry, agroecology-biological control/insect management, starting a CSA, food processing, workbooks on USDA/ATTRA programs and grants, and pleasure reading for young farmers (Roman Agronomy textbooks, dried flower instructions).
While we construct, we will make a less formal list here as well as link out to other good short lists. Also check out Severine’s site, Pixie Poppins — there is quite an extensive book list there with everything from alternative building to ethnobotany.
Foodie Short Lists:
Saxelby Cheesemongers Recommended Reading
Ann Saxelby, a young cheesemonger featured in the film, suggests some reading to go along with her fine American farmstead cheese collection, available at Essex Market in the Lower East Side, NYC.
Carnivorous cookbooks
In a late 2007 New Yorker, Bill Buford delivers, with his usual finger-licking enthusiasm, a digest of three new books about meat. Though varying in tones of hopeful agrarianism, tongue-in-cheek indulgence, and gritty slaughterhouse realism, these authors (each in his early 40s) all nod to a Greenhorns ethos: you and your butcher should be on a first name basis.
The Greehorns’ list:
Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds
by Claire Hope Cummings
“As a journalist, I’ve been covering agricultural biotechnology for 15 years. During all that time, the arguments for and against this controversial technology didn’t change much. I wrote this book to move the conversation along and because of what I found out. I am deeply troubled by the role that privately held commercial technologies such as these will play as we enter into a time of environmental and social instability. We are in danger of forgetting what it means to be human.”
The book is the natural evolution of Pollan’s 2006 best-selling The Omnivore’s Dilemma , which revealed in plain terms where most of the food we eat comes from (answer: cornfields). In Defense of Food connects the dots from the cornfields to individual health, arguing that food is more than the sum of its nutritional parts. It simply cannot be taken apart and reconstructed according to marketing whims without deleterious results for our health. Pollan explores how nearly 30 years of scientific studies on the relationship between food and health have left Americans increasingly confused about healthy eating.
Photographer Menzel and writer D’Aluisio introduce us to 30 families, representing every continent, each family photographed with the food they had for the week they were interviewed. The household range is from the most affluent in the developed countries to the neediest. “A rich and thoughtful commentary on today’s human condition,” sums up Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor, in the foreword.
Another pertinent and much-needed product from the CFA– this book details the very real dangers genetically engineered foods present to our health, the environment, and farm communities.
Edible, Native and Gardening Resources for decorative, sustainable and sophisticated gardens
New Organic Grower
Eliot Coleman, Chelsea Green Press
An excellent primer on organic methods, written by a delightful Maine character. Coleman grows vegetables for the Blue Hills Farm in upstate New York, and has written extensively about growing in New England.
The Complete Guide to Edible Landscaping
Rosalind Creasy
illustrations of garden plans, lovely ideas about espaliered fruit trees, often dwarfed for small spaces. Traditional English gardening style with homespun organic ethic and inspired plant combination suggestions.
The Botany of Desire or The Omnivore’s Dilemna
Michael Pollen,
New York Times writer and U.C. Berkeley Proffessor of Journalism, Pollan has a truly curious mind and a unique way of exploring his topics without an agenda
Gaia’s Garden
Toby Hemenway,
Home-scale Permaculture guide. Permaculture is a design system for creating sustainable landscapes. Hemenway is based in the Northwest, but his plant suggestions would work well in Rhode Island.
The Forgotten Pollinators
Gary Paul Nabhan, S. Buchmann,
An exploration into the lives of our invertebrate companions, their plight and the diversity of plant- life they support. Facinating narratives about indigenous agriculture, wild bees, humingbirds, butterflies etc.
Eat Here
Brian Halweil.
Worldwatch Press
This Worldwatch researcher, Stanford grad and Slow Food chapter leader in Long Island gives a succinct history of local food traditions that are thriving today in America and elsewhere. Hopeful, well written and available at St. George’s School library.
by HRH Prince Charles
Prince Charles’s beautifully photographed third book exploring techniques useful to organic and sustainable gardening, including building healthy soil, returning meadows grounds to their original wildflower state, and nurturing and maintaining garden lawns.
January 10, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Some other books that I think are really good for us young farmers are.
The Four Season Harvest by Elliot Coleman
The Winter Harvest Handbook by Elliot Coleman
Seed to Seed by Suzanne Answorth
Breed your own vegetables by Carol Deppe
Sharing the Harvest: a citizens guide to CSA.
by Elizabeth Henderson and Robyn Von Eyk
The Permaculture Garden by Graham Bell
Marketing and Community Relations by Rebecca Bosch
Closing the Food Gap by Mark Winne
Food Not Lawns by H.C.Flores