10 Books to Gift the Homesteader in Your Life
These days there are a record number of people growing their own food and other crops at home. Whether the homesteader in your life is new to the homesteading lifestyle or a seasoned pro, we’ve got your go-to gifts for anyone who grows everything themselves.
In Material, Nick Kary takes readers along with him to visit some of the places where modern artisans are preserving, and in some cases passing on, the old craft skills. His vivid descriptions and eye for detail make this book a rich and delightful read, and the natural and cultural history he imparts along the way provides an important context for understanding our own past and the roots of our industrial society.
Personal, engaging, and filled with memorable people, landscapes and scenes, Material is a rich celebration of what it means to imagine and create, which in the end is the essence of being human, and native to a place.
Featured Excerpts:
A Material Connection: Becoming a Maker
From spoon carving to scything, coppicing to wreath-making, Carving Out a Living on the Land proves that you don’t need acres of expensive bottomland to start your land-based venture, but rather the creativity and vision to see what might be done with that rocky section or ditch or patch of trees too small to log. You can lease instead of buy; build flexible, temporary structures rather than sink money into permanent ones; and take over an existing operation rather than start from scratch. What matters are your unique circumstances, talents, and interests, which when combined with what the land is capable of producing, can create a fulfilling and meaningful farming life.
Featured Excerpts:
Your Starting Point as a Farmer
Site Repair: Using the Land’s History
In No-Till Intensive Vegetable Culture, O’Hara describes the methods he has developed, which are completely free of herbicides or other pesticides and require only a few acres of land and minimal capital investment. He asserts that this flexible, ecological methodology is as important for soil fertility as it is for his economic success.
Whether you’re a high-yield producer, a homesteader, or a market gardener, No-Till Intensive Vegetable Culture is the go-to vegetable grower’s manual for the twenty-first century. O’Hara’s advanced yet accessible methodology will both help you respond to natural systems and adapt to meet future challenges.
Featured Excerpts:
Profitability of Year Round Growing
Nature’s Cure: Reestablishing Balance
Principles and farm-tested practices for no-till market gardening–for healthier, more productive soil! From the host of the popular The No-Till Market Garden Podcast—heard around the world with nearly one million downloads!
Discovering how to meet the soil’s needs is the key task for every market gardener. In this comprehensive guide, Farmer Jesse Frost shares all he has learned through experience and experimentation with no-till practices on his home farm in Kentucky and from interviews and visits with highly successful market gardeners in his role as host of The No-Till Market Garden Podcast.
Featured Excerpts:
Garlic Growing 101: From Seed to Harvest
Designing an Efficient Garden: Permanent Beds
Inspired by the European intensive growers, The New Organic Grower, 30th Anniversary Edition, offers a very approachable and productive form of farming that has proven to work well for the earth and its stewards for centuries. Gardeners working on 2.5 acres or less will find this book especially useful, as it offers proof that small-scale market growers and serious home gardeners can live good lives close to the land and make a profit at the same time. The New Organic Grower is ideal for young farmers just getting started, or gardeners seeking to expand into a more productive enterprise.
Featured Excerpts:
How to Extend the Growing Season
The first and only complete guide to sourcing and using woodchip—an abundant, inexpensive, and ecologically sustainable material—for savvy growers and landscapers at any scale, from farm to garden to greenhouse.
The Woodchip Handbook is the essential guide to the many uses of woodchip both in regenerative agriculture and horticulture. Author Ben Raskin, Head of Horticulture and Agroforestry at the Soil Association, draws on his extensive practical experience using woodchip, provides the latest research from around the world, and presents inspiring case studies from innovative farmers.
Featured Excerpts:
How to Grow Mushrooms on Woodchip
5 Uses for the Mighty Woodchip
The Resilient Farm and Homestead is more than just a book of tricks and techniques for regenerative site development, but offers actual working results in living within complex farm-ecosystems based on research from the “great thinkers” in permaculture, and presents a viable home-scale model for an intentional food-producing ecosystem in cold climates, and beyond. Inspiring to would-be homesteaders everywhere, but especially for those who find themselves with “unlikely” farming land, Falk is an inspiration in what can be done by imitating natural systems, and making the most of what we have by re-imagining what’s possible. A gorgeous case study for the homestead of the future.
Featured Excerpts:
Becoming Resilient in an Ever-Changing World
Perennial Power: Why You Need Them in Your Garden
To many people today, using the words “factory” and “farm” in the same sentence is nothing short of sacrilege. In many cases, though, the same sound business practices apply whether you are producing cars or carrots. Author Ben Hartman and other young farmers are increasingly finding that incorporating the best new ideas from business into their farming can drastically cut their wastes and increase their profits, making their farms more environmentally and economically sustainable. By explaining the lean system for identifying and eliminating waste and introducing efficiency in every aspect of the farm operation, The Lean Farm makes the case that small-scale farming can be an attractive career option for young people who are interested in growing food for their community. Working smarter, not harder, also prevents the kind of burnout that start-up farmers often encounter in the face of long, hard, backbreaking labor.
Featured Excerpts:
Go Lean: Ten Types of Farm Waste
Today only a few dozen large-scale producers dominate the greenhouse produce market. Why? Because they know and employ best practices for the most profitable crops: tomatoes, eggplant, cucumbers, peppers, leafy greens, lettuce, herbs, and microgreens. The Greenhouse and Hoophouse Grower’s Handbook levels the playing field by revealing these practices so that all growers—large and small—can maximize the potential of their protected growing space. Whether growing in a heated greenhouse or unheated hoophouse, this book offers a decision-making framework for how to best manage crops that goes beyond a list of simple do’s and don’ts.
Featured Excerpts:
Is Your Greenhouse Winter-Ready?
Choosing the Best Heat Source for Your Greenhouse
In Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation, Cotter not only offers readers an in-depth exploration of best organic mushroom cultivation practices; he shares the results of his groundbreaking research and offers myriad ways to apply your cultivation skills and further incorporate mushrooms into your life—whether your goal is to help your community clean up industrial pollution or simply to settle down at the end of the day with a cold Reishi-infused homebrew ale.
Featured Excerpts:
Grow Mushrooms on Your Jeans. Seriously.
Brew Outside the Box: Making Mushroom-Infused Beer