Customer Reviews

Successful Small-Scale Farming: An Organic Approach (Down-To-Earth Book)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

If you're thinking of small scale commercial farming, this is the book for you! If you know about soil and crop rotation and yields and harvest logistics, there's still plenty of information about equipment and storage and seeds and...

If you don't know about those things, this book is the place to start. With the information here and a little current market research, (ie. surf the web for 20 minutes to get prices,) you can write a complete farm business plan.

Well written, clear and to the point, it's full of tips and tricks to make your venture a success. It would be a bargain at ten times the price! (And I'm a hard grader.

This book is for people who either live and farm in the country already, or have some realastic experience about what it is to work for a living. Anyone who has ever tried to bring in a crop, will appreciate the down-to-earth basic information provided. If you are looking for information about how to make a pretty garden, look elsewhere. this is a not to be missed reference, right up there with your county extension agent's telephone number.

Anyone owning or planning to own a small farm will find this handbook an invaluable guide to both the real potential and the harsh realities in making a full or part-time living on the land - buying land, growing and marketing your crops. Concise how-to. 134 pages.

Once you get passed the government, agri-business, and scientist bashing introduction and first chapters, this is a good overview of farming equipment and basic practices. It is written for "new farmers", "a practical resource for the beginning cash crop grower." Judging by the equipment recommendations, it is intended for farmers rather than large gardeners.

The book was almost ruined for me by comments such as "wrong headed farmers", "why soil scientists came up with such a cumbersome scale defies explanation" (referring to the logarithmic pH scale), while freely using science to support his beliefs (without citing sources or giving credit).

The book has one of the best introductory farm equipment chapters, covering the small, older tractors a beginning farmer would be able to afford, and one of the best summaries of many pieces of farm equipment, that I have read. It is worth the price alone.

It has a chapter on farming practices such as plowing, tilling, terracing, cultivating which is worth reading as well. There are rather cursory chapters on soils and plant growth. While the author obviously believes in organic and sustainable agriculture; he does little to explain it. There are two chapters analyzing various cash crops that serve as a good introduction to finding a crop to grow, including standard farm crops such as wheat and corn, and specialty crops such as berries and wood lots. The concluding chapters on the farm in general, and farm life, are also good.

I would give the book four stars, perhaps, except for the bashing mentioned above, that serves no purpose whatsoever. It is a good book for someone taking a first look at farming as a new occupation.

For the person unfamiliar with agriculture, this book has some value. It covers the field (pun intended) from about the 50,000 foot level. For additional information, the reader will have to get specific books on what was covered in a paragraph or two in this book.

Simply, clearly written, the book is a very practical guide for someone new to, but serious about, farming. Concise, yet still comprehensive and fun to read. Would have liked a section on draft animals, but Schwenke's disclaimer for not including it makes sense.

I was already familiar with author Schwenke from his 1975 book, Build Your Own Stone House, a product of the back-to-the-earth movement of that decade. His more recent book, Successful Small-Scale Farming, is simply too short and too thin to live up to its title, a characteristic it shares with its earlier sibling.

From its title, one would expect Schwenke's volume to present a reasonably broad overview of farm operations, concentrating on methods proven to be successful and profitable. While no one should expect a completely thorough and fully-detailed investigation of such a vast topic as farming, agronomy, and farm-business operations in one single volume, I should have known from the short length of this book, a mere 130 pages, that topics essential to its title would receive inexcusabley short shrift.

About half of Schwenke's offering is an examination of thoughts on organic farming to include an organic approach to maintaining soil and various organic cropping methods. This is all well and good, but considering this comprises only 39 pages of an already thin book, there is little reason one would not fare better buying a volume devoted solely to organic agriculture and the actual, useful detail and sophistication it would offer.

If the vestigal treatment of organic farming is insufficient reason to buy Schwenke's book, then one must conclude it would be for the depth and breadth of its exploration and analysis of successful small-scale farm techniques and operations. In this, Schwenke's attempt falls short again.

He offers a scant 12-page chapter on farm machinery, laughable in its superficial treatment of a profoundly important topic to successful farmers. Analysing capital purchases such as farm machinery is one that can promote success if done well and contribute to poverty and eventual loss of one's farm if done poorly. This would have been a great opportunity for Schwenke to bring to bear thorough research about the productivity improvements machinery can bring to the small farm and a machinery needs anaysis with depreciation and maintenance schedules. Alas, he missed the opportunity.

He further could have siezed the moment by weeding through the confusing morass of different kinds of farm implements and equipment available and described the crops and farm operations that can be met through the use of general farm machinery and those needing the use of specialized equipment.

For example, he could have discussed when and if a seed drill should be acquired, how various types of combines work and the various heads that must be bought in order to harvest specific types of field crops. He could have looked at small scale milking parlors and on-farm refrigeration required by law for dairy products and butchered meat. He could have investigated small butter-making machinery. Advice on what to look for when evaluating used equipment and the type and extent of maintenance each would require would have proven highly valuable to the small farmer on a tight budget. He does none of this.

Greatfully, Schwenke avoids going off on a tangent urging the aspiring successful farmer to step back to the 19th century and farm with oxen and horses. However, his treatment of tractor selection is, frankly, astonishing. It seems for Schwenke, the more rusted, poorly-operating, and outmoded the tractor, the better. He apparently feels that living a dust bowl lifestyle somehow makes one a successful farmer.

Specifically, Schwenke argues that the few remaining examples of 1930s to 1960s relic tractors that still can be found offer a low acquisition cost and ought be the tractor of choice for the small farmer. How foolish. Excellent recent-vintage and far superior tractors from John Deere, among others, are amply available everywhere and in every state at Schwenke's much-loved junk tractor prices. A quick search of the internet will reveal thousands at prices equal to the disaster-tractors Schwenke seems to inexplicably favor.

As far as the topic of overall farm management, what Schwenke writes is easy to read and provides some small amount of useable knowledge, but the key word is small- a total of 30 pages. There are many other books one could study that would provide far more of the necessary depth and usefullness to be actionable. Mr. Schwenke's treatment of this extensive and critical topic is mere fun-to-know information and not much more.

Perhaps the best part of Schwenke's flawed attempts at a useful book are the bite-sized nuggets he randomly heaps together in two appendicies comprising the last 36 pages of his book. These pages offer interesting tidbits such as how to make a wire-tensioner to use when building wire fences or how much split wood comprises a cord. He also addresses the plant-food content and typical yields of a wide variety of common farm crops. However, these and the other charts Schwenke includes in the appendicies are one and the same available from seed and feed companies, so one cannot offer much appreciation for bringing original work to bear on this vital topic.

In summary, one can expect Karl Schwenke's book, Successful Small-Scale Farming, to be a very light and occasionally amusing read. It would be far better, however, to spend one's money on books that offer more pages and more hard, up to date, realistic farming information that really can help the small farmer become successful.

The book started off getting me real excited about sustainable farming. I was eager to turn the page and learn more, but as i turned the page, nothing materialized. I learned a lot about soil health and management, but when it got around to details about specific vegetables, growing seasons, and pest prevention, the book was lacking.

Great reference book with lots of ideas to plan and manage your small farm, organically. We've had the book for several years and continue to refer to it.

This book gives a lot of info on how conventional farming works. It's basically how to use conventional methods on smaller farms. Whenever he mentions organic farming he talks about how HARD it is and how there are so many PROBLEMS. He's a big complainer. The reason he sees it as hard is because he's talking about replacing conventional inputs (for example chemical fertilizers) with "organic" inputs, as if that's all there is to it. The problem is that his *thinking* is not sustainable at all, so of course his approaches are going to be trying to muscle things into working in a system where they just don't fit. The good thing about this book is it gives you a nice comparison of what conventional farming looks like.