The Community-Scale Permaculture Farm

The Community-Scale Permaculture Farm
Author: Josh Trought
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2015
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1603584757

With practical examples of alternative building, renewable energy, holistic forestry, no-till gardening, hospitality management, community outreach, and more The Community-Scale Permaculture Farm describes not only the history of the D Acres project, but its evolving principles and practices that are rooted in the land, its inhabitants, and the joy inherent in collective empowerment. For almost twenty years, D Acres of New Hampshire has challenged and expanded the common definition of a farm. As an educational center that researches, applies, and teaches skills of sustainable living and small-scale organic farming, D Acres serves more than just a single function to its community. By turns it is a hostel for travelers to northern New England, a training center for everything from metal- and woodworking to cob building and seasonal cooking, a gathering place for music, poetry, joke-telling, and potluck meals, and much more. While this book provides a wide spectrum of practical information on the physical systems designed into a community-scale homestead, Trought also reviews the economics and organizational particulars that D Acres has experimented with over the years. The D Acres model envisions a way to devise a sustainable future by building a localized economy that provides more than seasonal produce, a handful of eggs, and green appliances. With the goal of perennial viability for humanity within their ecosystem, D Acres is attempting an approach to sustainability that encompasses practical, spiritual, and ethical components. In short: They are trying to create a rural community ecology that evolves in perpetuity. From working with oxen to working with a board of directors, no other book contains such a wealth of innovative ideas and ways to make your farm or homestead not only more sustainable, but more inclusive of, and beneficial to, the larger community. Readers will find information on such subjects as: Working with pigs to transform forested landscapes into arable land; Designing and building unique, multifunctional farm and community spaces using various techniques and materials; Creating and perpetuating diverse revenue streams to keep your farm organization solvent and resilient; Receiving maximum benefits and yields for the farm without denigrating resources or the regional ecology; Implementing a fair and effective governance structure; Constructing everything from solar dehydrators and cookers to treehouses and ponds; and, Connecting and partnering with the larger community beyond the farm. Emphasizing collaboration, cooperation, and mutualism, this book promises to inspire a new generation of growers, builders, educators, artists, and dreamers who are seeking new and practical ways to address today's problems on a community scale.

The Farm on Badger Creek

The Farm on Badger Creek
Author: Peggy Prilaman Marxen
Publisher: Wisconsin Historical Society
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2021-10-26
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0870209574

"Peggy Marxen grew up in the somewhat isolated environment of northwestern Wisconsin's Sawyer County, yet was surrounded by close-knit extended family. In 1916, after a lengthy search conducted by train and bicycle, her grandparents settled a forty next to Badger Creek, in the hilly cutover land that remained after lumberjacks harvested thousands of acres of pines. They arrived just before the creation of the Township of Meteor in 1919. In the 1920s and 1930s her parents and an uncle and aunt built homes near her grandparents and began to raise their small families. Multiple generations of her family witnessed the changes to rural Wisconsin, which changed the fabric of their lives and the lives of all in their community: new farming techniques, education, transportation, and technology, among others. Peggy's traditional farm family supplemented their subsistence herd of dairy cows by hunting and fishing and selling timber and maple syrup. Her home, like those of the neighbors, for a time lacked indoor plumbing, electricity, and a telephone. Until statewide school consolidation (when Peggy was in 5th grade), she attended a one-room schoolhouse and walked, biked, or sledded the three miles to school and back, no matter the weather. Through her girlhood eyes, Peggy Marxen traces her family's story through the best and worst of times, examining the strength of Wisconsin's small communities. Her book is a fitting tribute to her settler ancestors and a way of life now gone-and a celebration of the hardy people of northwestern Wisconsin"--

Bulletin ...

Bulletin ...
Author: Grand Rapids Public Library (Grand Rapids, Mich.)
Publisher:
Total Pages: 344
Release: 1915
Genre:
ISBN: