Amazon.com Review
Gene Logsdon has done it again! One of his earlier books,
The Contrary Farmer, is one of the most moving, sensible, readable books about sustainable farming on the market. Now Logsdon successfully applies that wry wit, wisdom, and storytelling faculty to gardening. The result is a perceptive and inspirational volume: it is nearly impossible to resist dreaming about getting out there and raising your own food after reading this intelligent, enjoyable book.
Logsdon's voice is utterly personal and sensible: he uses his experiences as well as tales of people he knows to point out absurdities of modern agricultural horticultural silliness. This same humor and clear-headedness are employed in considering the futility of industrialized farming, pesticide use, and the highly destructive methods of corporate and commercial farming and gardening.
From Library Journal
Logsdon is a farmer, writer, and longtime observer of rural America who has written more than a dozen books on farming, gardening, and country life, including At Nature's Pace (LJ 12/93) and The Contrary Farmer (LJ 4/15/94). His latest work is typical Logsdon, blending philosophy with practical advice from cover to cover. The author includes chapters on the economics (and pleasures) of gardening, as opposed to our present agribusiness, food-factory economy, which he sees as ultimately unsustainable. Other chapters treat mulching, grain gardening, water gardening, garden husbandry (raising chickens and other small animals in combination with gardening), and protecting the garden from destructive wildlife. Readers will learn how to prepare coq au vin, pigeon broth, and sweet corn; when to harvest zucchini; how to read a seed company's catalog; what kind of manure is best for making compost; and why chickens are good for peach trees. Recommended for public libraries and all libraries with alternative agriculture collections.?William H. Wiese, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
