Customer Reviews

The Earth Manual: How to Work on Wild Land Without Taming It

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If you are an Earth-goer that enjoys nature, this is a must have. This book will tell you everything from rehydrating wetlands to sprouting wild seeds, like acorns and pine cones. It will also inform of some of the DOs and DON'Ts of nature. In one segment the author, Margolin, states that you shouldn't bother making a dam for nature will always do her best to overcome obsticles. Also, keep in mind the small praire animals. There are sections in there for making homes, while not harming the land they all live on. If you don't believe me, you must get it. Now, don't just get the book, USE it, and encourage other to use it as well. It is one of the best natural guide books to keep around your home.

I will say if you are an Earth-goer it a definite to keep handy. In this book, you will learn everything from rehydrating wetlands, to sprouting wild seeds like acorns and pine cones. It is great reference to get you started in the good fight of Earth preservation. In one segment the author, Margolin, mentions making dams and states that is near impossible, for nature is meant to overcome it own obsticles. This book will tell you the DOs and DON'Ts of helping the wild creatures and the land they live on. You must see it your self to even believe all the useful knowledge this guide contains. So I will say, just get the book. Not only buy the book but use it and encourage other you know to use it also. If more people tooks these sorts of books to heart then we wouldn't need help in the wild, but in this day and age we need the extra boost.

A superb, modest, very special book (230 pages + index) with perfect black and white line illustrations. This book helps you learn to be a healer of semiwild and damaged lands by encouraging the natural processes of the earth healing itself at the ground level. It is focused on what the individual and the community can do, using one's hands rather than machines. The chapters include:

1. Wildlife: wildlife needs, "do not restock" (carrying capacity), predators, variety, managing for _all_ wildlife, brush piles (including land and water piles for fish), rock piles, holes and dens (including den trees), hedgerows, corridors through heavy brush, dusting places, forested openings, fruits and natural foods, the issues around artificial feeding of wildlife.

2. Felling a Tree: Why this must be practiced and when, how to plan the downfall, which trees to cut, dropping the tree (nice diagrams on the cutting procedure), stumps, and safety precautions.

3. The Mulch Mystique: To mulch or not, selecting the kind of mulch, applying the mulch, and working with kids in mulching.

4. Be Your Own Tree Doctor: Things you can do to cure a sick tree or heal an injured one, the importance of sickness and dead trees in nature, tree first aid and surgery, barbed wire wounds, and feeding a tree (fertilizers, etc.)

5. Erosion Control: An essential task, how erosion happens and gullies develop, fighting erosion with plants, sheet erosion and plant cover, brush mats and wattles, contour trenches, principles of building check dams, culverts, streams and bank erosion, channel erosion.

6. The Seed Bag: When and how to collect seeds from wild plants, labeling, conifer cones (pine cones,e tc.), drying/storing/treating wild seeds, planting from seed.

7. Plant Midwifery: Helping plants reproduce through root cuttings, layering of shrubs and vines, willow stakes, and hardwood cuttings.

8. Pruning: With wild trees, pruning is not about shaping, but more about the health of plants and the land, cutting diseased branches and getting cuttings for planting.

9. Planting Trees: Bare-root seedlings, when to plant trees- and when other habitats are needed, what trees to plant, spacing, "heeling in" (keeping trees temporarily before you are able to plant them), when and how to plant, mistakes, container-grown trees, preparing the hole, planting (water, mulch, staking), transplant shock, transplanting wild trees, picking and moving the tree, root ball size, root pruning, lifting and moving the tree, bare rooting larger trees, and more.

10. Ponds and Watering Holes: The magic of water sources in the land in attracting wildlife, potholes, springs, seeps, rainfall cachments, containers and digging holes, erosion, leaks, plumbing (if called for), what animals/plants will naturally come and which you might want to bring (fish to control mosquito larvae for example) -but caution against bringing in turtles, etc.

11. Happy Trails to You: How to plan for and make a trail through your land, surveying, switchbacks, clearing, grading/sloping, special problems (wet areas, steps, etc.), and clean up.

12. Working with Kids: For teachers, youth programs and others who depend on kids' participation in working on the land, issues of volunteers, recruiting, don't make the work too difficult, and how best to get your message across of carrying for the land.

A real, hands-on gem for those wanting to work in partnership with their backlot or secondary growth areas.