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Whether building a summer cottage in the woods, planning the hunting cabin of your dreams or homesteading off the grid, this handy reference provides a logical and sensible approach to building permanent shelter in out-of-the-way places. Including everything from choosing and clearing a site and creating an electrical power source, to clearing the land and creating a foundation, this book offers instruction on building an A-frame cabin and a rustic log cabin with a framed roof. There is also a special section on designing small buildings to cope with Mother Nature, including earthquakes, heavy snow, high wind and flooding.

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From the stirrings of spring and summer swarms to autumn honey harvest and winter protection, this essential resource guides both the aspiring and experienced beekeeper through every season of the beekeeping year. Learn how to rear a queen, control a swarm, protect a hive, and keep bees healthy. The book is also packed with practical tips on using beeswax and, of course, making honey.

About the author: Ron Brown has more than 50 years' experience of keeping bees, both in Britain and central Africa. A former editor of the monthly journal Beekeeping, he has travelled all over the world to give lectures on specialist beekeeping topics.

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Richard Louv changed how we view and interact with nature in the New York Times best-seller Last Child in the Woods, which sparked an international movement to reconnect children with nature and introduced the term “nature-deficit disorder.” His new book The Nature Principle is a call to action for the rest of us to also reconnect with the natural world.

Does your daily nature intake include running on the treadmill with a forest scene on the TV monitor in front of you? Or perhaps playing Wii tennis with your kids — instead of playing on a real tennis court? We all — kids and adults alike — are suffering from “nature-deficit disorder.”

In The Nature Principle, Louv discusses how we can create a healthier balance between technology and nature, so that we can experience the best of technology and nature in our lives. He shows us how tapping into the restorative powers of the natural world can boost mental acuity and creativity; promote health and wellness; build smarter and more sustainable businesses, communities and economies; and ultimately strengthen human bonds. As he says in his introduction, The Nature Principle is “about the power of living in nature — not with it, but in it. We are entering the most creative period in history. The twenty-first century will be the century of human restoration in the natural world.”

Cities, communities, and organizations around the country are embracing this movement. In fact, May 6 has officially been declared the Richard Louv and Children and Nature Day in the city of San Diego! Louv is giving a call to action to change the way we live, and how much better off we’ll be for it.

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Based on the James Beard Award–winning blog The One-Block Diet, this all-in-one home gardening, do-it-yourself guide and cookbook shows you how to transform a backyard or garden into a self-sufficient locavore’s paradise.

When Margo True and her fellow staffers at Northern California–based Sunset magazine walked around the grounds of their Menlo Park office, they saw more than just a lawn and some gardens. Instead, they saw a fresh, bountiful food source, the makings for intrepid edible projects, and a series of seasonal feasts — all just waiting to happen.

The One-Block Feast is the story of how True and her team took an inspired idea and transformed it into an ambitious commitment: to create four feasts over the course of a year, using only what could be grown or raised in their backyard-sized plot. She candidly shares the group’s many successes and often humorous setbacks as they try their hands at chicken farming, cheese making, olive pressing, home brewing, beekeeping, winemaking and more.

Grouped into gardening, project and recipe guides for each season, The One-Block Feast is a complete resource for planning an eco-friendly kitchen garden; making your own pantry staples for year-round cooking and gifts; raising bees, chickens and even a cow; and creating made-from-scratch meals from ingredients you’ve grown yourself. Chapters are organized by season, each featuring a planting plan and crop-by-crop instructions, an account of how that season’s projects played out for the Sunset team, and a multicourse dinner menu composed of imaginative, appealing and ultra-resourceful vegetarian recipes, such as:

Butternut Squash Gnocchi With Chard and Sage Brown Butter, Egg and Gouda Crepes, Whole Wheat Pizzas With Roasted Vegetables and Homemade Cheeses, Fresh Corn Soup With Zucchini Blossoms, Braised Winter Greens With Preserved Lemons and Red Chile, Summer Lemongrass Custards, Honey Ice Cream

Generously illustrated and easy to follow, this ultimate resource for today’s urban homesteader will inspire you to take “eating local” to a whole new level.

Recommended Product for Wiser Living: Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, MOTHER EARTH NEWS is recommending books to readers. For 40 years, MOTHER EARTH NEWS has been North America’s “Original Guide to Living Wisely,” creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature.

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In a day when beef is assailed by many environmental organizations and lauded by fast-food chains, a new paradigm to bring reason to this confusion is in order. With farmers leaving the land in droves and plows poised to "reclaim" set-aside acres, it is time to offer an alternative that is both land and farmer friendly.

Beyond that, the salad bar beef production model offers hope to rural communities, to struggling row-crop farmers, and to frustrated beef eaters who do not want to encourage desertification, air and water pollution, environmental degradation and inhumane animal treatment. Because this is a program weighted toward creativity, management, entrepreneurism and observation, it breather fresh air into farm economics.

About the Author Joel Salatin and his family own and operate Polyface Farm, arguably the nation's most famous farm since it was profiled in Michael Pollan's New York Times bestseller, The Omnivore's Dilemmaand two subsequent documentaries, Food, Inc., and Fresh. An accomplished author and public speaker, Salatin has authored seven books. Recognition for his ecological and local-based farming advocacy includes an honorary doctorate, the Heinz Award, and many leadership awards.

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>Ever since Thoreau's Walden, the image of the American homesteader has been of someone getting away from civilization, of forging an independent life in the country. Yet if this were ever true, what is the nature and reality of homesteading in the media-saturated, hyper-connected 21st century?

For seven years Philip Ackerman-Leist and his wife, Erin, lived without electricity or running water in an old cabin in the beautiful but remote hills of western New England. Slowly forging their own farm and homestead, they took inspiration from their experiences among the mountain farmers of the Tirolean Alps and were guided by their Vermont neighbors, who taught them about what it truly means to live sustainably in the postmodern homestead--not only to survive, but to thrive in a fragmented landscape and a fractured economy.

Up Tunket Road is the inspiring true story of a young couple who embraced the joys of simple living while also acknowledging its frustrations and complexities. Ackerman-Leist writes with humor about the inevitable foibles of setting up life off the grid--from hauling frozen laundry uphill to getting locked in the henhouse by their ox. But he also weaves an instructive narrative that contemplates the future of simple living. This is not a how-to guide, but something much richer and more important--a tale of discovery that will resonate with readers who yearn for a better, more meaningful life, whether they live in the city, country, or somewhere in between.

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Hand-making musical instruments is part of a growing trend that even celebrities such as Johnny Depp and guitar legend Jack White are taking part in.

It doesn't require a lot of money or an expertise in woodworking and electronics, all it takes is a little creativity. In Handmade Music Factory, handyman Mike Orr guides you through the construction of eight of the most unique and imaginative instruments found anywhere ... from a one-string guitar made from a soup can, to a hubcap banjo, and a stand-up lap steel guitar made from a vintage ironing board.

There are also directions for an amp that can be assembled using inexpensive parts from the local electronics store. There's no shortage of inspiration to draw upon in creating an arsenal of instruments that look good, sound great, and deliver some foot stompin' fun!

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A quiet revolution is taking place: People across the United States are turning toward local food. Some are doing it because they want more nutritious, less-processed food; some want to preserve the farmland and rural character of their regions; some fear interruptions to the supply of non-local food; some want to support their local economy; and some want safer food with less threat of contamination. But this revolution comes with challenges.

Reclaiming Our Food tells the stories of people across America who are finding new ways to grow, process, and distribute food for their own communities. Their successes offer both inspiration and practical advice.

The projects described in this book are cropping up everywhere, from urban lots to rural communities and everywhere in between. In Portland, Oregon, an organization called Growing Gardens installs home gardens for low-income families and hosts follow-up workshops for the owners. Lynchburg Grows, in Lynchburg, Virginia, bought an abandoned 6.5-acre urban greenhouse business and turned it into an organic farm that offers jobs to people with disabilities and sells its food through a local farmers' market and a CSA. Sunburst Trout Farm, a small family business in rural North Carolina, is showing that it’s possible to raise fish sustainably and sell to a local market. And in Asheville, North Carolina, Growing Minds is finding ways to help bring fresh foods into schools. Author Tanya Denckla Cobb offers behind-the-scenes profiles of more than 50 food projects across the United States, with lessons and advice straight from their founders and staff. Photographic essays of 11 community food projects, by acclaimed photographer Jason Houston, detail the unusual work of these projects, bringing it to life in unforgettable images.

Reclaiming Our Food is a practical guide for building a local food system. Where others have made the case for the local food movement, Reclaiming Our Food shows how communities are actually making it happen. This book offers a wealth of information on how to make local food a practical and affordable part of everyone's daily fare.

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A compregensive introduction to the "nectar of the gods."

With increasing numbers of people ditching drugs for natural healing, Honey: Nature's Golden Healer is a timely look at how the beehive can help us look and feel better. Highlighted with hundreds of vivid color photographs, the book explains how honey is made and describes the complex lives of honeybees, beehive architecture and the sophisticated social structure of beehives. Novice beekeepers will find enough reliable information to get started on a small scale.

Honey examines the beneficial properties of honey and other bee products, such as propolis, pollen, royal jelly and beeswax, and explains how to collect and use them. The book includes recipes for homemade remedies, luxurious beauty formulas and delicious treats.

• The critical role of honeybees in agriculture
• The many types and colors of honey
• Raw Honey
• How honey compare to sugar
• Preserving with honey
• Honey's antibacterial properties and how they work
• Honey as a neutraceutical (a foodstuff with medicinal properties)
• Bee sting therapy
• Super-honeys
• The benefits of propolis, bee pollen and royal jelly
• Honey in cooking and baking