Category: Reviews

The Planter of Modern Life Louis Bromfield and the Seeds of a Food Revolution June 1, 2020 By Stephen Heyman W.W. Norton & Company, 2020 https://www.theplanterofmodernlife.com/ How is it that a bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer living and working outside of Paris after World War I whose success – literary and social – was envied

Gardening with Emma Grow and Have Fun: A Kid-to-Kid Guide June 1, 2020 By Emma Biggs and Steven Biggs Storey Publishing, 2019 144 pages, paperback, $18.95 The first thing you notice about this book is that it is bright! It’s filled with colorful photos and kid-friendly illustrations that invite you to explore the pages. The

The Farm That Feeds Us A year in the life of an organic farm June 1, 2020 By Nancy Castaldo; illustrated by Ginnie Hsu Quarto Publishing, 2020 80 pages, hardbound, $18.95 How wonderful to read a book that begins, “Hurrah for farms that supply us with the food we eat!” While some farms grow crops

Willie Knows Who Done It June 1, 2020 By Hans Krichels Atmosphere Press, 2020. Available at BookStacks in Bucksport, Union River Book & Toy Co. in Ellsworth, all Sherman’s locations, Longfellow Books in Portland, and from Amazon and atmospherepress.com 208 pages, paperback, $15.99 Hans Krichels migrated to Maine to homestead in the ‘70s and learned

Edible Weeds on Farms Northeast farmer’s guide to self-growing vegetables June 1, 2020 By Tusha Yakovleva, 2020 The 98-page free PDF discusses weeds as foods, outlines harvesting and marketing, and offers weed identification resources and recipes. The information was researched thanks to a grant from Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education. https://foundwith.care/weeds-as-crops

Tree Leaf Fodder for Livestock Transitioning Farm Woodlots to ‘Air Meadow’ for Climate Resilience June 1, 2020 By Shana Hanson, 2020 This is the final report about a SARE-funded study of pollarding and harvest of tree growth at 3 Streams Farm in Belfast, Maine, to feed livestock. Pollarding is pruning drastically above browse height, cutting close to

Wild About Weeds March 2020 By Jack Wallington Laurence King Publishing, 2019 176 pages, hardcover, $24.99 This book may make you stop cringing at the word “weed” (and even “invasive”) and enable you to consider some plants in a different light. Landscape garden designer and garden writer Jack Wallington profiles over 50 weeds and ways

The New American Farmer Immigration, Race, and the Struggle for Sustainability March 2020 By Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern MIT Press, 2019 214 pages, paperback, $30 Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern recounts the stories of new Latino/a farmers who have miraculously managed, despite many obstacles, to move from farmworkers to farm owners in the United States. Of the dozens of farmers

Where Have All the Bees Gone? Pollinators in Crisis March 2020 By Rebecca E. Hirsch Twenty-First Century Books, 2020 104 pages, library bound, $37.32 Bees are disappearing, and not just honey bees. Bumblebee populations are in decline, too. For those of us who like to eat, this is a problem because bees pollinate 75 percent

Ending the War on Artisan Cheese March 2020 By Catherine W. Donnelly, Ph.D. Chelsea Green, 2019 224 pages, paperback, $24.95 “It’s terrifying to think that, with the stroke of a pen, the FDA could wipe out centuries of traditional [cheesemaking] practice. It’s even more frightening to think that this could be accomplished through the incorrect