The Colibri Gardens Home-Grown Syllabus

Washougal, Washington

Resources compiled by Lara Scanlon

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Where to Begin

 

"Kiss the Ground" a documentary about Regenerative Agriculture and Soil Health Solutions!

for more information go to kissthegorund.com

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Defending Beef, The Case for Sustainable Meat Production

Nicolette Hahn Niman

Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, VT. 2014

If you thought the only way to eat healthy and save the planet was to eliminate meat and animals products from your diet, think again!  This fabulous manifesto helps bring back the understanding that what our body and land really need for long term sustainability is grass fed meat! 

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Letters to a Young Farmer: On food, farming, and our future

Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture, edited by Martha Hodgkins

Princeton Architectural Press. New York, NY. 2017

This is a lovely introduction to the beauty and struggle of small farming. It will lift your spirits, propel you to this work, and kick your butt into gear. This most glorious compendium of some of the most important voices in the sustainable agriculture movement offers abounding insight and a sense of mentorship.

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Dirt to Soil, One Family's Journey into Regenerative Agriculture

Gabe Brown

Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, VT 2018

This book is definitely written more for the farmer, but anyone interested in getting into the real grit of how regenerate the soil, and make farming profitable must read this book.  Gabe Brown is inspirational.

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Braiding Sweetgrass, Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants

Robin Wall Kimmerer

Milkweed Editions, 2013

This book will nourish your soul, mind, and body.  

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Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ Plan for Revitalizing Rural Agriculture

https://berniesanders.com/issues/revitalizing-rural-america/

Bernie Sanders has penned one of the most comprehensive plans for supporting rural America. This plan offers a window into genuine problem-solving and political possibility that address some of the most serious issues confronting the small farm today.

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Animal care

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Natural Farming: A practical guide

            Pat Coleby

            Scribe Publications. London, UK. 2004.

An absolute must-read for the beginning farmer. Pat Coleby answers the question “why organic?” from a scientific, practical wealth of knowledge and gives you all of the information necessary for creating your own regenerative agriculture success story.

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Once you have livestock, Pat Coleby’s series of natural care books give you crucial and valuable information for raising the healthiest animals and responding to each challenge that may arise.

Natural Cattle Care

            Pat Coleby

Acres U.S.A. Publishers. Austin, Texas. 2001

 

Natural Goat Care

            Pat Coleby

            Acres U.S.A. Publishers. Austin, Texas. 2001, 2012.

 

Natural Sheep Care

            Pat Coleby

Acres U.S.A. Publishers. Austin, Texas. 2006, 2012.

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Gardening

 

Gaia’s Garden: A guide to home-scale permaculture (second edition)

            Toby Hemenway

Chelsea Green Publishing Company. White River Junction, VT. 2000, 2009.

Toby Hemenway offers a tremendous anthology of knowledge and in doing so, creates a perfectly practical guide to regenerative growing, including in-depth explorations of soil-building, garden guilds, and much more. This book is a beautiful companion for the process of starting your own food forest. 

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Four-Season Harvest (revised and expanded edition)

            Eliot Coleman

Chelsea Green Publishing Company. White River Junction, VT. 1992, 1999.

Eliot Coleman is the master of organic vegetable gardening. He has done so much of the work for you through his well-thought-out garden plans and management practices. Just follow along, and you’ll be on your way to eating your own fresh vegetables all year long.

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The Rodale Book of Composting: Easy methods for every gardener

            Edited by Grace Gershuny and Deborah L. Martin

Rodale Press, Inc. Emmaus, Pennsylvania. 1992.

Composting animal manures and vegetable matter is an integral part of a sustainable farm. This accessible how-to guide solves the mystery of composting and positions you to set up your own sustainable food cycle.

 

Edible Forest Gardens: Ecological vision and theory for temperate climate permaculture

            Volume One: Vision & Theory, Volume Two: Design & Practice

Dave Jacke with Eric Toensmeier

Chelsea Green Publishing Company. White River Junction, VT. 2005.

For all you super nerds, this is the most in-depth guide ever written for food forest enthusiasts (and beginners who are eager to learn). If you have read Gaia’s Garden, and it made you hungry for more, this compendium is the most comprehensive research literature available on food forest gardens. There is absolutely incredible information to be found in it. That being said, the text is less accessible and the price point is higher than is realistic for most.

 

The Humanure Handbook: A guide to composting human manure (third edition)

            Joseph Jenkins

Chelsea Green Publishing Company. White River Junction, VT. 2005.

Embark on a fun adventure in next-level composting. If you have ever asked “what did people do before flushing toilets?” or want to engage with responses to such questions, Joseph Jenkins’ work is a thought-provoking place to start.

 

American Agricultural History and Understanding

 

Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming domesticity from a consumer culture

            Shannon A. Hayes

Hayes explains the history of why our society undervalues the homemaker. While the home used to be a unit of production in which a family worked together to grow and trade for what they needed, capitalism forced a cultural shift that transformed the home into a unit of consumption. Through both historical research and poignant interviews, Hayes reasserts the value of being one who makes a home, no matter the scale and applicable to both homesteading and other contexts. Especially if you have an inkling in your soul that you want to homestead, she will offer the historical context and language to confront the harmful teachings of capitalism, fill you with purpose and direction, and give honor and validity to that spark.

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Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the great west

            William Cronon

            W.W. Norton & Company. New York, NY. 1991.

An absolute must-read for every person living on American soil, this book will change your perspective of place, space, and land, and if you’re like Lara, your life too. William Cronon explains how cities and farms have been intrinsically linked on the American landscape. This text chronicles the cultural shifts that resulted in the disintegration of most people’s relationships with how and where their food is grown.

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Dust Bowl: The southern plains in the 1930s

            Donald Worster

            Oxford University Press. New York, NY. 1979.

This book explains the painful reality of how tractors, tilling, and the push towards large-scale agriculture created the dust bowl. It is an important read for understanding why agriculture looks like it does today and the necessity of moving away from those practices and towards small, sustainable farming.

 

Tending the Wild: Native American knowledges and the management of California’s natural resources

            M. Kat Anderson

            University of California Press. Berkeley, CA. 2005.

It is long time we reevaluate the myth of untouched western wilderness. This gorgeous book details extensive tending of the land by indigenous peoples in California for sustainable food resources and ecological health, through Kat Anderson’s scientific understanding. Listen up!

 

The Earth’s Blanket: Traditional teachings for sustainable living

            Nancy J. Turner

            University of Washington Press. Seattle, WA. 2005.

A wonderful companion to Tending to the Wild, Nancy Turner’s ethnographic work uses a narrative voice to enliven her complex understanding of indigenous teachings with thoughtful storytelling.

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World Fire: The culture of fire on Earth

            Stephen J. Pyne

            University of Washington Press. Seattle, WA. 1995.

This book is crucial to understanding why the west is burning. Steven Pyne meticulously illustrates the vital connection between human beings and fire and the uses of fire in agriculture for centuries.

 

The Geography of Nowhere: The rise and decline of America’s man-made landscape

            James Howard Kunstler

            Touchstone. New York, NY. 1993.

Do we really want all of our food to taste the same? This is an incredibly thought-provoking account of how we got railroaded into the idea that standardization of food should be the goal of agriculture and why cookie-cutter suburban houses, MacDonald’s, and Starbucks are now the dominant American landscape. People’s relationships with food used to be locally specific and founded on understanding of place. The uniqueness of food that ensued is what makes the human experience of food beautiful. So why would we not strive for this? James Howard Kunstler utilizes an architectural understanding to explain how the modern goals of standardization and universal convenience have replaced an appreciation of locality. Though not specifically focused on agriculture, his work informs how small-scale farming can push back.

 

Water Wars: privatization, pollution, and profit

            Vandana Shiva

            South End Press. Cambridge, MA. 2002

Vandana Shiva is one of the most powerful and important voices in the fight to save us all. Informed by vivid description and brilliant research, this book is just one of many of Shiva’s dire cries to wake us up enough to save our precious resources, be they water, seeds, land, or community. Her work and her message could not be timelier.

 

What the Robin Knows: How birds reveal the secrets of the natural world

            Jon Young

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. New York, NY. 2012.

A playful and fun read, this book offers a new perspective into what is going on in the forest beyond the human eye, especially when you slow down enough to listen. This whimsical examination of bird language can expand your perception of life, and in doing so, inform a connection with animal life that is integral to food forest farming.

 

The Homestead Kitchen

 

Nourishing Traditions: A cookbook that challenges politically correct nutrition and the diet dictocrats (revised second edition)

            Sally Fallon with Mary G. Enig, Ph.D.

            NewTrends Publishing, Inc. Washington, DC. 1999, 2001.

This should be required reading for every human being eating today. Sally Fallon has the most comprehensive and well-researched understanding of genuine nutrition, and her sixty-page introduction to this fabulous cookbook ushers in a new relationship with food, and perhaps a new world. This is a fundamental examination of the importance of true nutrition, how what we eat works into a sustainable farm system, and its connection with the sustainable and organic agricultural movement.

 

Nourishing Meals: Healthy gluten-free recipes for the whole family

Alissa Segersten and Tom Malterre, MS, CN

            Whole Life Press. 2012.

This is a favorite cookbook full of gluten-free and sugar-free recipes that are both easy to prepare and incorporate the wonderful products of your farming.

 

Home Cheese Making (third edition)

            Ricki Carroll

            Storey Publishing. 2002.

This book is the bible for home cheese making with goat, cow, and sheep milk. It also contains helpful links to cheese making supplies.

 

Wild Fermentation: The flavor, nutrition, and craft of live-culture foods

            Sandor Ellix Katz

Chelsea Green Publishing Company. White River Junction, VT. 2003.

This book is a staple for anyone who loves to create fermented food, from miso to kimchi to kefir and beyond. If it’s fermented, it’s in this book.

 

Practical indexes

 

Johnny’s Selected Seeds: An employee-owned company serving growers since 1973        

Johnnyseeds.com, 877-564-6697

(i.e. 2018 catalog)

Considered the gold standard, this is the seed company that commercial growers use for garden success year after year.

 

Premier 1 - Fences That Work

            Premier1supplies.com, 800-282-6631

(i.e. 2020 catalog)

From this resource, you can get the absolute best electric fencing and solar charge systems on the market and a wide variety of supplies for everything you could possibly need to raise grazing animals.

 

Murray McMurray Hatchery

            Mcmurrayhatchery.com, 800-456-3280

Sourcing day old poultry with an astounding variety of breeds, this is one of the healthiest places to start your flock.

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Back to Basics: How to learn and enjoy traditional American skills

            Reader’s Digest Association, Inc. Pleasantville, NY. 1981.

This is an all-around fun book with a smattering of skills to dabble in and figure out what you might want to take a deeper dive into learning. It is great winter reading for anything and everything related to homesteading.