a mushroom with a story

book review by Samuel Oslund

Salvage capitalism, ecological assemblages, and precarity… These are a few concepts that Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing fleshes out in The Mushroom At the End of the World, a genre bending book that tracks the global economy by way of the Matsutake mushroom.

As a farmer, I have noticed that my own ways of thinking and seeing the world have shifted with each passing season. I have felt something akin to love for an animal that I knew would one day be dinner, have felt tremendous connection to invisible soil critters and life webs as I hoed through pea patches. Social scientists refer to this process as affect, the suggestion that other-than-human-beings (plants, animals, earth elements) can impact and shape our ways of being. 

the true story of a farm turned cult

Helen Zuman, long-time Greenhorns-follower and contributor to New Farmers Almanac, has an agricultural story to tell that is as gripping as it is disquieting– and she’s asking for help getting it published.

Helen writes, “The action unfolds on a farm in the backwoods of Western North Carolina – Zendik Farm, which, I discovered after being kicked out, was actually a cult. The story features an urge to homestead (part of what sent me hunting for a place like Zendik in the first place), firewood, wheelbarrows, snuffling bucks, outhouses, de-nailing, wild persimmons, abundant intrigue – and a glimpse of the detours aspiring agrarians were perhaps more likely to take back in the late 90s, when the beginning-farmer scene was nowhere near as robust as it is today.”

An intimate journey through the full arc of cult involvement, MATING IN CAPTIVITY shows how Zuman joined Zendik, learned its mating rituals, endured exile, and – finally – mated in the wild.

Helen has launched a thirty-day kickstarted campaign to fund the book, and rewards include advance access to the paperback, a reading (with Q&A) at a venue of your choice, and a handwritten copy of the manuscript. The campaign ends April 10.

erotic farm fiction

This weekend we would like to steer you towards Artemisia Rae’s  White Oak Summer, an erotic romance novel, that blends sex and farming into a lovely little fireside read.  When she’s not writing blush-worthy prose Rae is farming and helping run a local seed cooperative in Boise, Idaho.

The synopsis:

White Oak Summer is a story about self-discovery. To escape from a dead end job and a life without purpose, Kelsie Thompson accepts an internship on an organic farm. In lush western Oregon farm country, White Oak Farm owners Dana and Craig become Kelsie’s mentors in life and in love. Dana instructs her on the fine art of beekeeping and the luscious intricacies of the plant kingdom. Craig has different things to teach Kelsie and not all of them have to do with farming. Their neighbor – hunky goat farmer Joshua Murphy- complicates things with his own agenda, while the other interns struggle to find their own places in farm life. As the season unfolds, Kelsie learns as much about her sexual interests as she does about growing vegetables. With the inherent sensuality of the natural world as her backdrop, she reaps what she sows.

One reviewer exclaimed, “farm stories with sex scenes.” I can’t help but recall Kristin Kimball’s words from the Dirty Life when, out of sheer seasonal exhaustion, she and Mark began referring to farmer sex as touching hands… This sounds like a superb addition to farm fiction canon 🙂

click here for the book:

http://earthlydelightsfarm.com (farm)

http://snakeriverseeds.com (seed co-op)

ballymoe litfest, ireland, may 19-21

Friends in the UK! LitFest – A Food and Drinks Literacy Festival is taking place this year on the weekend of 19-21st May 2017 in Ballymoe, Ireland.

The full program of events is now published so check it out and book the events that you’re interested in here…

Litfest is the only festival of its kind in Ireland and has created an important hub for food and drinks enthusiasts worldwide to meet and share ideas with each other.

Check out the list of fantastic participants who will be taking part at Litfest17. And buy tickets here!

last minute gift idea for the environmental troubadours in your life

Learn more and buy the book here!

sweet herbal remedy book and GH almanac release party, brooklyn, dec. 10!

Dec 10th Book Release Party: Nature’s Remedies & New Farmers Almanac

Calling all fellow Greenhorns, plant lovers, and herb nerds! 

It’s Jean Willoughby here, and I can easily be described by all three of those lovely, earthbound designations. I hope you’ll join me and an amazing group of folks at the Third Root Community Health Center, a worker-owned cooperative in Brooklyn, for a book release party this Saturday, December 10th.

We’re getting together to celebrate the launch of my book Nature’s Remedies: An Illustrated Guide to Healing Herbs (Chronicle Books). We’ve also teamed up with Greenhorns folks to usher in the release of the latest edition of The New Farmers Almanac.

I’m planning to give a short talk, sort of a ‘people’s history of herbal medicine,’ that I’m excited to share with the Greenhorns community. We’re also going to be joined by a few herbalists, who will be on hand with their wares. Come get some healing, nourishing, and delicious gifts for your loved ones and learn more about medicinal herbs.

Nature’s Remedies & New Farmers Almanac
Book Release Party
Saturday, Dec. 10th, 2016
6:30 pm to 9:30 pm
Third Root Community Health Center
380 Marlborough Rd, Brooklyn, New York 

+ Food & Drink
+ Herb-infused Meads
+ Meet farmers, medicine makers, and herbalists who will be there with their wares
+ 100% of Nature’s Remedies book sales will benefit Third Root!

Get more event info or RSVP: http://bit.ly/dec10releaseparty

I hope to see you there!
Green forever,

Jean

Ps. Our new site for herb curious folks: www.HerbCurious.com

color au natural

I know there are some serious DYIers in the audience– and I bet that if I were to draw a ven diagram with DIY folks in one circle and who would rather walk around naked than put chemical dyes close to their skin, those two circles might just have some overlap…

Those in this middle area of the graph might seriously want to check out this new book by Sasha Duerr. Natural Color is a comprehensive guide to plant dyes and compost coloring. (Sasha taught a great Greenhorns workshop years ago in Pescadero on using weeds and farm bi-products to make natural dyes, so we feel as though we are in a position to give her advice our personal stamp of approval.) Copies of the book are available to preorder from Penguin Random House today.

“the farmer’s office”

Are you feeling cool, calm, collected? If not, try reading Julia Shenk’s “ The Farmers Office: Tools tips and templates to successfully manage a growing farm business”.

Comprehensive, logical, holistic and witty— she lays out the steps and frameworks for a solvent and sustainable farm business. She’s got the chops, and she’s witty. Thats already a lot when you have to learn the terminology, how to run the software, implications for record-keeping and cash flow management, and testing questions. Farming may be hard, honest work— it is also a hard business, and one that must be mastered.  Dear Greenhorns:

Use this book, stay in business, for the earth!

new books exposes the scientific fraud that got GMOs onto our tables

In his new book, Altered Genes, Twisted Truth, Steven Druker says: “Contrary to the assertions of its proponents, the massive enterprise to reconfigure the genetic core of the world’s food supply is not based on sound science but on the systematic subversion of science – and it would collapse if subjected to an open airing of the facts.”

These are strong words. But they are also necessary words today because the European Union is considering allowing countries to opt out of it’s blockade against GMOs.

The book argues that the US government and leading scientific institutions have systematically misrepresented the facts about GMOs and the scientific research that casts doubt on their safety and features a foreword by the renowned primatologist Dame Jane Goodall, hailing it as “without doubt one of the most important books of the last 50 years”.

Given the fact that some European countries are considering the commercial planting of GM crops following the European Parliament’s decision to allow member states to opt out of the blockade that has barred them from the EU until now. Based on the evidence presented in the book, Druker and Goodall will assert that it would be foolhardy to push forward with a technology that is unacceptably risky and should never have been allowed on the market in the first place.

The book is the result of more than 15 years of intensive research and investigation by Druker, who came to prominence for initiating a lawsuit against the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that forced it to divulge its files on GM foods. Those files revealed that GM foods first achieved commercialisation in 1992 only because the FDA:

• Covered up the extensive warnings of its own scientists about their dangers.
• Lied about the facts.
• And then violated federal food safety law by permitting these foods to be marketed without having been proven safe through standard testing.

The book points out that if the FDA had heeded its own experts’ advice and publicly acknowledged their warnings that GM foods entailed higher risks than their conventional counterparts, the GM food venture would have imploded and never gained traction anywhere.

It also reveals:

• Many well-placed scientists have repeatedly issued misleading statements about GM foods, and so have leading scientific institutions such as the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the UK’s Royal Society.
• Consequently, most people are unaware of the risks these foods entail and the manifold problems they have caused.
• Contrary to the claims of biotech advocates, humans have indeed been harmed by consuming the output of genetic engineering. In fact, the technology’s first ingestible product (a food supplement of the essential amino acid, L-tryptophan) caused dozens of deaths and seriously sickened thousands of people (permanently disabling many of them). Moreover, the evidence points to the genetic alteration as the most likely cause of the unusual contamination that rendered the supplement toxic.
• Laboratory animals have also suffered from eating products of genetic engineering, and well-conducted tests with GM crops have yielded many troubling results, including intestinal abnormalities, liver disturbances, and impaired immune systems.
• Numerous scientists (including those on the FDA’s Biotechnology Task Force) have concluded that the process of creating genetically modified food radically differs from conventional breeding and entails greater risk.
• There has never been a consensus within the scientific community that GM foods are safe, and many eminent experts have issued cautions – as have respected scientific organizations such as the Royal Society of Canada and the Public Health Association of Australia.

At their upcoming press conference, he and Jane Goodall intend to challenge the Royal Society to confront the facts, apologize for the misleading statements that it and several of its prominent members have issued, and take earnest steps to set the record straight.

In her foreword to Altered Genes, Twisted Truth, Goodall commends it for countering the disinformation and providing much-needed clarity. She states: “I shall urge everyone I know who cares about life on earth, and the future of their children, and children’s children, to read it. It will go a long way toward dispelling the confusion and delusion that has been created regarding the genetic engineering process and the foods it produces. . . . Steven Druker is a hero. He deserves at least a Nobel Prize.”

Pat Thomas, Director of UK campaigning group Beyond GM, which is facilitating the press launch, says: “Under pressure from new legislation and the ongoing TTIP negotiations, the UK and the rest of Europe are on the precipice of making sweeping changes to their historical stance on GMOs. Much of our regulatory framework has been informed by foundations laid down in America in the early 1990s, and the belief that they got it right in terms of understanding the science of genetic modification. Steven Druker’s investigation into the history of fraud and deceit that ushered in the era of GMOs deserves serious consideration before we take actions that will irreversibly alter the European food supply”.

You can buy the book from the publisher HERE, or, if you prefer, you can get it from Amazon HERE. Of course we encourage you to check your local book store before you rush to the address bar.

You can learn more about Steven Druker and his other projects HERE.

techno-utopia reading list!

Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures:

Cold Evil: Technology and Modern Ethics by Andrew Kimbrell

Buddhist Technology: Bringing a New Consciousness to Our Technological Future by Arthur Zajonc

The Community’s Role in Appropriate Technology by George McRobie

Books:

New Dimensions of Appropriate Technology: Selected Proceedings of the 1979 Symposium by Alfred L. Edwards

Appropriate Technology and Social Values: A Critical Appraisal by the American Academy Of Arts and Sciences, edited by Franklin A. Long and Alexandra Oleson

Soft Energy Paths: Towards a Durable Peace by Amory Lovins

Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy Of Industrial Agriculture by Andrew Kimbrell

Sowing Resistance: The Third World Speaks Out on Genetic Engineering by Anuradha Mittal and Ellen Hickey

The Future in the Balance: Essays on Globalization and Resistance by Anuradha Mittal and Walden Bello

The Culture of Technology by Arnold Pacey

Making Peace With the Planet by Barry Commoner

The End of Nature by Bill McKibben

The Age of Missing Information by Bill McKibben

Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet by Bill McKibben

Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben

Supply Shock: Economic Growth at the Crossroads and the Steady State Solution by Brian Czech and Herman Daly

The Resurgence Of The Real: Body, Nature, And Place In A Hypermodern World by Charlene Spretnak

When Technology Wounds: The Human Consequences of Progress by Chellis Glendinning

Let Them Eat Data: How Computers Affect Education, Cultural Diversity, and the Prospects of Ecological Sustainability  by Chet A. Bowers

Cognitive Surplus: How Technology Makes Consumers into Collaborators by Clay Shirky

Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth about Climate Change by Clive Hamilton

Growth Fetish by Clive Hamilton

The God That Limps: Science and Technology in the Eighties by Colin Norman

The Circle by Dave Eggers

The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us To Choose Between Privacy And Freedom? By David Brin

The Arrogance of Humanism by David Ehrenfeld

Swimming Lessons: Keeping Afloat in the Age of Technology by David Ehrenfeld

Beginning Again: People and Nature in the New Millennium by David Ehrenfeld

The Uncertain Promise: Value Conflicts in Technology Transfer by Denis Goulet

Rays of Hope: The Transition to a Post-Petroleum World by Denis Hayes

Energy: Crisis or Opportunity?: An Introduction to Energy Studies by Diana Schumacher

Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age by Douglas Rushkoff

Schumacher on Energy by E. F. Schumacher

Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered by E. F. Schumacher

Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences by Edward Tenner

Gaia in Turmoil: Climate Change, Biodepletion, and Earth Ethics in an Age of Crisis by Eileen Crist and H. Rinker

Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation by Eileen Crist and Philip Cafaro

The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology by Erich Fromm

Ecotopia Emerging by Ernest Callenbach

To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism by Evgeny Morozov

Nuclear Roulette: The Truth about the Most Dangerous Energy Source on Earth by Gar Smith

Small Is Possible by George McRobie

Technophobia: Getting Out of the Technology Trap by Harold Hellman

Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer by Helen Caldicott

Ancient Futures: Lessons from Ladakh for a Globalizing World by Helena Norberg-Hodge

The Future of Progess: Reflections on Environment and Development by Helena Norberg-Hodge and Edward Goldsmith

From the Ground Up: Rethinking Industrial Agriculture by Helena Norberg-Hodge and John Page

The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul

Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation by James Howard Kunstler

World Made by Hand: The World Made by Hand Novels, Book 1 by James Howard Kunstler and Jim Meskimen

The End of the Future: The Waning of the High-Tech World by Jean Gimpel

The Coming Energy Revolution: The Search for Free Energy by Jeane Manning

The Capitalism Papers: Fatal Flaws of an Obsolete System by Jerry Mander

In the Absence of the Sacred by Jerry Mander

Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television by Jerry Mander

Machina Ex Dea: Feminist Perspectives on Technology by Joan Rothschild

Green Wizardry: Conservation, Solar Power, Organic Gardening, and Other Hands-On Skills From the Appropriate Tech Toolkit by John Michael Greer

Not the Future We Ordered: Peak Oil, Psychology, and the Myth of Progress by John Michael Greer

Questioning Technology: Tool, Toy or Tyrant? by John Zerzan and Alice Carnes

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

An Electronic Silent Spring: Facing the Dangers and Creating Safe Limits by Katie Singer

Appropriate Technology Sourcebook: A Guide to Practical Books for Village and Small Community Technology by Ken Darrow and Mike Saxenian

Human Scale by Kirkpatrick Sale

Stepping Stones: Appropriate Technology and Beyond by Lane De Moll and Gigi Coe

Autonomous Technology: Technics-Out-Of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought by Langdon Winner

The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology by Langdon Winner

Proving Up: Domesticating Land in U.S. History by Lisi Krall

Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam Trilogy #1) by Margaret Atwood

The AT Reader: Theory and Practice in Appropriate Technology by Marilyn Carr

Tinker, Tiller, Technical Change by Matthew Gamser

Techno-Fix: Why Technology Won’t Save Us Or the Environment by Michael Huesemann and Joyce Huesemann

Architect or Bee?: The Human/Technology Relationship by Mike Cooley

Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology by Neil Postman

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr

Appropriate Technology: Problems and Promises by Nicolas Jéquier

Technology, Transfer and Human Values: Concepts, Applications, Cases by Peter B. Heller

Appropriate Technology: Technology with a Human Face by Peter D. Dunn

Radical Technology by Peter Harper

Earthwalk by Philip Slater

Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth by R. Buckminster Fuller

Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State by Ralph Nader

Unsafe at Any Speed by Ralph Nader

Appropriate Technology: Precepts And Practices by Ram Dass and Richard Alpert

Appropriate Visions: Technology, the Environment, and the Individual by Richard C. Dorf

The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies by Richard Heinberg

Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines by Richard Heinberg

Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World by Richard Heinberg

Turning Away from Technology: A New Vision for the 21st Century by Stephanie Mills

On Gandhi’s Path: Bob Swann’s Work for Peace and Community Economics by Stephanie Mills

In Praise of Nature by Stephanie Mills

Epicurean Simplicity by Stephanie Mills

Energy: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth by Tom Butler

Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit by Vandana Shiva

Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply by Vandana Shiva

Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis by Vandana Shiva

Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge by Vandana Shiva

Village Technology Handbook by the Volunteers In Technical Assistance (VITA), edited by Leonard Doak

New Roots for Agriculture by Wes Jackson

Becoming Native to This Place by Wes Jackson

Altars Of Unhewn Stone: Science And The Earth by Wes Jackson

Appropriate Technology in Industrialized Countries by Willem Riedijk

Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming by Winona LaDuke

All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life by Winona LaDuke

Taming the Tiger: The Struggle to Control Technology by Witold Rybczynski

Paper Heroes: A Review Of Appropriate Technology by Witold Rybczynski

Film/TV:

Surviving Progress (2011) written/directed by Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks

“The rise of personal robots.” 2010 by Cynthia Breazeal at TEDWomen.

“The new bionics that let us run, climb and dance.” (2014) by Hugh Herr at TED2014

Next Generation TV: Standing Up for Our Future (www.nextgeneration.tv)

Magazine:

Geez founded by Aiden Enns and Will Braun

conspicuous carnivores

In this week’s 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. Buford introduces the three authors the same way we want to introduce The Greenhorns:

“And yet, at a time when things could not seems worse, there is a generation of people (in their forties and younger) who are thinking hard and philosophically about their food and are prepared to declare: Enough! I’m a meat-eater and proud of it!” (Bill Buford)

Sub “meat-eater” for “young grower” and you’ve got our mission statement.

Check out Buford’s favorite of the lot, Hugh-Fearnley-Whittingstall, an unexpected British foodie celebrity who has not just gone back-to-land, but back to all the guts and gore of raising and cooking game. He discovered his passion for food in a restaurant kitchen where he learned how to turn each season’s bounty into a gastronomical adventure. HFW has since been articulating this adventure at the “great agrarian laboratory” River Cottage in the UK.

We’re pretty sure our friend and fellow film contributor Dewolf Emery (seen here gathering clams on Cumberland Island) is going to do something similar here in the US. Look out.