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To ensure food security and restore the health of the planet, we need to move beyond industrial agriculture and return to the practice of small-scale, local farming. Bioshelter Market Garden: A Permaculture Farm describes the creation of a sustainable food system through a detailed case study of the successful year-round organic market garden and permaculture design at Pennsylvania’s Three Sisters Farm.

At the heart of Three Sisters is its bioshelter — a solar greenhouse which integrates growing facilities, poultry housing, a potting room, storage, kitchen facilities, compost bins, a reference library and classroom area. Bioshelter Market Garden examines how the bioshelter promotes greater biodiversity and is an energy-efficient method of extending crop production through Pennsylvania's cold winter months.

Both visionary and practical, this fully illustrated book contains a wealth of information on the application of permaculture principles. Some of the topics covered include:

• Design and management of an intensive market garden farm
• Energy systems and bio-thermal resources
• Ecological soil management and pest control
• Wetlands usage
• Solar greenhouse design and management.

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The recent decline of the European honeybee, one of North America’s primary pollinators, poses a serious challenge to our food supply and ecological health. Close to 75 percent of all flowering plants rely on pollinators in order to set seed or fruit, and from these plants comes a third of the planet’s food. What can you do to help? Attracting Native Pollinators shows you how to encourage the activity of pollinators other than honeybees by creating flowering habitats and inviting nesting sites. Anyone can do it! You’ll find comprehensive information on every kind of pollinator, instructions for building nesting structures, ideas for involving children, and an extensive list of resources. This is an essential reference book and action guide for anyone who is growing food or is concerned about the future of our food supply.

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People everywhere are turning patches of soil into bountiful vegetable gardens, and each spring a new crop of beginners pick up trowels and plant seeds for the first time. They're planting tomatoes in raised beds, runner beans in small plots, and strawberries in containers. But there is one place that has, until now, been woefully neglected — the front yard.

The typical veggie garden, with its raised beds and plots, is not the most attractive type of garden, and favorite edible plants like tomatoes and cucumbers have a tendency to look scraggily, even in their prime. But The Edible Front Yard isn't about the typical veggie garden, and author Ivette Soler is passionate about putting edibles up front and creating edible gardens with curb appeal.

Soler offers step-by-step instructions for converting all or part of a lawn into an edible paradise; specific guidelines for selecting and planting the most attractive edible plants; and design advice and plans for the best placement and for combining edibles with ornamentals in pleasing ways. Inspiring and accessible, The Edible Front Yard is a one-stop resource for a front-and-center edible garden that is both beautiful and bountiful year-round.

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Are you a beginning gardener wondering when to plant or how often to weed? Or an experienced grower who wants to increase flavor and yields? Take the guesswork out of gardening with the Week-by-Week Vegetable Gardener’s Handbook. Authors Ron and Jennifer Kujawski provide detailed weekly to-do lists — precisely customized to your own growing season — that break gardening down into simple and manageable tasks. Whether it’s planting strawberries, pinching off pumpkin blossoms, checking for tomato hornworm, or harvesting carrots, you’ll know exactly what to do — and exactly when and how to do it — for bountiful harvests and a stress-free gardening experience.

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We're hammered, we're slammed, we're out of control. Happiness is on the decline in the most affluent country in the world and Americans are troubled by the destructiveness of a lifestyle devoted to money and status. Yet no-one seems to have a clue how to exit from the Fast Lane.

Slow Is Beautiful analyzes the subtle consumer, political and corporate forces stamping the joy from our existence and provides a vision of a more fulfilling life through the rediscovery of caring community, unhurried leisure, and life affirming joie de vivre. The book discusses:

• the frantic time poverty plaguing everyone - a poverty that is being challenged by the growing Slow Life movement whose message is reverberating around the world
• the need to build a culture of connection with both people and the planet by challenging the consumer society and recreating vibrant life in our local communities
• the creation of a different experience of time where we live life in slower, more reflective ways, savoring our lives and recapturing exuberance and laughter.

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Are you itching to start your own garden or grow more in the one you have, but feel that gardening is too challenging or time-consuming for your busy schedule? Would you like to enjoy fresh, home-grown produce every month of the year?

Backyard Bounty is like having your own Master Gardener to consult every step of the way. This encyclopedic reference demystifies gardening, bringing it back to the down-to-earth, environmentally practical activity that anyone can enjoy. Learn about:

• Planning your garden and preparing the soil
• Organic fertilizers and simplified composting
• Sowing, growing healthy seedlings, transplanting, watering, easy weeding, and mulching
• Planting for winter harvests, intensive planting schedules
• Growing fruit, simple pruning methods
• Greenhouses, tunnels and containers
• Organic pest management, and more

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For a growing number of people, simplicity has been a path to experience the joy in life, to cherish its richness and vitality. It strips away the burdens of our daily lives so that we are left with exhilaration, spirit and fullness. These people are finding that less -- less work, less rushing, less debt -- is more -- more time with family and friends, more time with community, more time with nature, and more time to develop a meaningful and compelling spirituality.

In The Circle of Simplicity: Return to the Good Life, author Cecile Andrews helps you discover and create the good life for yourself. She is renowned for her workshops on voluntary simplicity and her seminars on creating simplicity circles, where people explore their own life stories and share information and knowledge, helping one another develop lives of simplicity and satisfaction. The circles do not only give people the tools to change, but they also fill unmet needs for community and intimacy and the desire to search for truth in the company of kindred spirits.

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This one-of-a-kind photographic encyclopedia features more than 200 animals and the fibers they produce. It covers almost every sheep breed in the world — from the longwool breeds of the United Kingdom to the Tasmanian merino, the Navajo churro, the northern European Faroese, and dozens and dozens more. It also includes goats, camelids (such as alpacas, llamas and vicunas), bison, horses, musk oxen, rabbits and even dogs.

Each entry includes photographs of the featured animal; samples of its raw fleece, its cleaned fleece, and yarn spun from the fleece; and samples of the yarn knit and woven. You’ll find everything you want to know about each animal and its fiber, including the fiber’s color, density, strength and staple length, as well as recommendations for processing and using it. This is the essential reference no fiber-lover can be without.

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A perfect gift for maple lovers! Savor the surprising history of maple sugaring, learn to identify the various kinds of maple trees, discover how to tap your own trees and make your own syrup, and indulge yourself with tempting recipes for old-fashioned treats like maple nut bread, maple eggnog, baked beans, maple nutmeg butternut squash, maple-glazed salmon and pecan pie. What could be sweeter?