What's the difference between a weanling and a yearling, or a farrow and a barrow? Country and city mice alike will delight in Julia Rothman's charming illustrated guide to the curious parts and pieces of rural living. Dissecting everything from tractors and pigs to fences, hay bales, crop rotation patterns, and farm tools, Rothman gives a richly entertaining tour of the quirky details of country life. From the shapes of squash varieties to the parts of a goat; from how a barn is constructed to what makes up a beehive, every corner of the barnyard is uncovered and celebrated. A perfect gift for gardeners, locavores, homesteaders, and country-living enthusiasts alike.

America's average farmer is 60 years old. When young people can't get in, old people can't get out. Approaching a watershed moment, our culture desperately needs a generational transfer of millions of farm acres facing abandonment, development or amalgamation into ever-larger holdings. Based on his decades of experience with interns and multigenerational partnerships at Polyface Farm, farmer and author Joel Salatin digs deep into the problems and solutions surrounding this land- and knowledge-transfer crisis. Fields of Farmers empowers aspiring young farmers, midlife farmers and nonfarming landlords to build regenerative, profitable agricultural enterprises.

For hard-working urban professionals Kristy Athens and her husband, Michael, living in the country was a romantic dream. After purchasing 7 acres in Washington's beautiful Columbia River Gorge, Athens and her husband were surprised to learn just how challenging rural life could be.

Get Your Pitchfork On! provides the hard-learned nuts-and-bolts of rural living, from city folk who were in over their heads. Practical and often hilarious.

Get Your Pitchfork On! gives urbanites the practical tools they need to realize their own dreams of getting away from it all, with the basics of home, farm and hearth. The book enters territory that others avoid-straightforward advice about the social aspects of country living, from health care to schools to small-town politics. Athens doesn't shy away from controversial subjects, such as owning firearms and hiring migrant workers.

Kristy Athens' nonfiction and short fiction have been published in a number of magazines, newspapers and literary journals, most recently Jackson Hole Review, High Desert Journal, Barely South Review and the anthology Mamas and Papas. Athens currently lives in Portland, Oregon, where she works for Oregon Humanities and is also an artist and novice fiddle player. She and her husband are plotting their next attempt at rural living.

It's not often that someone stumbles into entrepreneurship and ends up reviving a community and starting a national economic-reform movement. But that’s what happened when, in 1983, Judy Wicks founded the White Dog Café on the first floor of her house on a row of Victorian brownstones in West Philadelphia. After helping to save her block from demolition, Judy grew what began as a tiny muffin shop into a 200-seat restaurant—one of the first to feature local, organic, and humane food. The restaurant blossomed into a regional hub for community, and a national powerhouse for modeling socially responsible business.

Good Morning, Beautiful Business is a memoir about the evolution of an entrepreneur who would not only change her neighborhood, but would also change her world—helping communities far and wide create local living economies that value people and place as much as commerce and that make communities not just interesting and diverse and prosperous, but also resilient.

Wicks recounts a girlhood coming of age in the sixties, a stint working in an Alaska Eskimo village in the seventies, her experience cofounding the first Free People's store (now well known as Urban Outfitters), her accidental entry into the world of restauranteering, the emergence of the celebrated White Dog Café, and her eventual role as an international leader and speaker in the local-living-economies movement.

Her memoir traces the roots of her career—exploring what it takes to marry social change and commerce, and do business differently. Passionate, fun, and inspirational, Good Morning, Beautiful Business explores the way women, and men, can follow both mind and heart, do what’s right, and do well by doing good.

Organized in four sections corresponding to the seasons, this account by an Amish farmer of his life in Southern Ohio, celebrates his daily labours, his family and, most importantly, the flora and fauna of his 70 acre farm. He works his land with horses and without electricity. He describes the proper preparation of Sassafras tea, maple sugaring in late winter, chopping firewood in autumn and rejoices in the vast diversity of the birds.

Fun writing from farmer Joel Salatin on what you need to know about buying local and organic, and raising animals humanely. This book was written for everyone who buys and eats food.

Building on the enormous success of his original Shelter book, Lloyd Kahn continues his odyssey of finding and exploring the most magnificent and unusual handbuilt houses in existence. Among the intriguing domiciles described in Home Work are a Japanese-style stilt house accessible only by a cable across a river; a stone house in a South African valley whose roof serves as a baboon trampoline; and a bottle house in the Nevada desert.

More than 1,500 photos illustrate various innovative architectural styles and natural building materials that have gained popularity in the last two decades, such as cob, papercrete, bamboo, adobe, strawbale, timber framing and earthbags. If you love fine, fun and/or funky buildings, you will want to own this splendid book.

This 241-page book helps you evaluate the housing needs of your animals and provides dozens of adaptable plans for sheds, coops, hutches, multipurpose barns, windbreaks and shade structures, as well as plans for essential equipment.

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Jamie Durie, international award-winning horticulturalist and landscape designer, reveals the secrets behind his incredible designs on the ever-popular HGTV series The Outdoor Room, now viewed in more than 12 countries. With dynamic photography, including Durie's personal travel photographs and a sneak peek of his private garden, this information-packed companion to his smash-hit t.v. show is as hardworking as it is stunning.

Complete with detailed site plans, zonal plant lists, and helpful eco-tips, it covers everything from the basics of landscape design to practical, hands-on information, such as how to design your own private garden using Durie's philosophy. From an exotic Balinese-inspired dining pavilion to a private English-style garden with an adjoining children's play area, Durie shows you how to incorporate his techniques and design principles to create a personal and truly unique garden, giving you and your family and friends the opportunity to reconnect with nature in the privacy of your very own outdoor room.

Just the Greatest Life is a collection of stories that has warmed hearts around the world. Struggling farmers, amazing neighbors, four-legged friends, and an awe of and appreciation for nature make this self-published page-turner a book you'll read again and again. The editor of Country Journal called it a "pure, inspiring treasure" about a "life gone real." Fellow grass farmer, Joel Salatin, says "Schafer captures the exuberance of newly discovering the 'culture' of agri-culture and the satisfaction of a better way."

You will gain a profound respect for the bees’ intelligence, the practical information for successfully starting and maintaining a few (or many!) colonies in your own backyard, and an appreciation of the bees’ harmonious cooperative ways—which may be key to creating a brighter future for our planet.

This collection reflects the rhythm of farm life; where that most forgiving of animals, the horse, sets the pace and the range. These letters are addressed to the most fundamental need of people, land, and community nurture.

When it comes to survival, one size definitely does not fit all. That's exactly what author F. J. Bohan discovered when he and his family set out on a quest for self-sufficiency, a journey that has lasted more than 17 years. Living on the Edge describes why Bohan and his wife made the decision to pull their four sons from public school in the East and set off in a converted school bus to the American Southwest. On a very limited budget, the Bohans began their new life in a tent pitched on public campgrounds. As soon as they could, they purchased remote ranchland, where they built a rustic cabin from the ground up. It grew as they could afford to add on, and they also homeschooled the boys so well that all four received scholarships to the schools of their choice. On their journey, the Bohans learned a lot about living off the land and off the grid, mostly through trial and error. In this book, the author graciously shares valuable lessons on the following: § Keeping a wife, four boys, two dogs and two cats happy in a tent for 18 months § Creating power for a tent or cabin through a combination of solar panels, car batteries, generators and oil § Heating and cooking on wood stoves § Finding creative ways to earn money in an insular, impoverished rural area § Securing enough water in the desert for a family of six, plus animals, to live on § Erecting fences—literal and figurative ones—for privacy and security § Raising chickens, goats and ducks for food, while avoiding bears, bobcats, skunks and other country critters Relocating to the desert, living in a tent or homeschooling kids may not appeal to you. But if you have ever thought of living off the grid or simply becoming more self-sufficient, this is how one American family successfully did it . . . and found freedom along the way.

The story of three trailblazing women who came together to create a 21st century cooperative household.

This book documents the many reasons why raising livestock on a natural diet of grass is better for consumers, family farmers, the environment and the animals. Includes proof that meat, eggs and dairy products from grass-fed animals are richer in numerous vitamins and nutrients and lower in fat.

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 its readers. For more than 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.

The title says it all. If you want to make money selling pastured chickens or eggs, you won’t want to miss reading Salatin’s advice, which is based on his many years of firsthand experience and his knowledge of what has and has not worked for others.

Popular Poultry Breeds examines 40 popular breeds of chickens and bantams. Most breeds exist in several plumage color varieties, and in large and bantam (miniature) size versions, all of which are also included in this comprehensive book.