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Everything you need to know to raise one chicken or 100. You'll learn how to choose the right breed, care for chicks, and build feeders and shelters.

Recommended Product for Wiser Living: Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, MOTHER EARTH NEWS is recommending books to readers. For 40 years, MOTHER EARTH NEWS has been North America’s “Original Guide to Living Wisely,” creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature.

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The Backyard Beekeeper, now revised and expanded, makes the time-honored and complex tradition of beekeeping an enjoyable and accessible backyard pastime that will appeal to gardeners, crafters, and cooks everywhere. This expanded edition gives you even more information on "greening" your beekeeping with sustainable practices, pesticide-resistant bees, and urban and suburban beekeeping. More than a guide to beekeeping, it is a handbook for harvesting the products of a beehive and a honey cookbook--all in one lively, beautifully illustrated reference. This complete honey bee resource contains general information on bees; a how-to guide to the art of beekeeping and how to set up, care for, and harvest honey from your own colonies; as well as tons of bee-related facts and projects. You'll learn the best place to locate your new bee colonies for their safety and yours, and you'll study the best organic and nontoxic ways to care for your bees, from providing fresh water and protection from the elements to keeping them healthy, happy, and productive. Recipes of delicious treats and instructions on how to use honey and beeswax to make candles and beauty treatments are also included.

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Chicken coops come in all sizes and styles to meet the needs of every chicken family. Start a great DIY project, and build a chicken coop with these how-to drawings and conceptual plans for 45 different designs — from strictly practical to flights of fancy — guaranteed to meet the needs of every chicken owner. A 16-page color section shows detailed photos of many of the featured coops.

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The title says it all. If you want to make money selling pastured chickens or eggs, you won’t want to miss reading Salatin’s advice, which is based on his many years of firsthand experience and his knowledge of what has and has not worked for others.

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When photographer Paul Mobley set out to capture the soul of America's farming communities, he discovered a culture defined by tradition, integrity and hard work, and comprised of the most authentic and generous individuals he'd ever encountered. Traveling across the country from Tennessee to Montana, Mobley and his camera were welcomed into the homes of more than 100 farming families, who graciously shared their personal histories along with the fruits of their labor. To spend time with them was to turn back the clock — to an era when there were no locks on doors, no urban sprawl, and no virtue more prized than common decency. Children still move across the street and not across the state when they grow up, and parents move back in with their children when they grow old. Story after story, visit after visit, Mobley slowly came to know the independent farmer's spirit both from behind the lens and over the dinner table.

The result is a stunning series of portraits and direct quotes that collectively chronicle the life of the American farmer. Each image offers an unvarnished and intimate look inside the hardships and joys of a quickly disappearing lifestyle — one that once defined our national identity and now struggles just to keep a foothold. And even as encroaching cities threaten their livelihoods, these men and women continue to find sustenance in the same basic human values they were raised with. American Farmer is an inspirational reminder of what it means to live with simplicity and contentment, in a world that is driven by excess. This vivid portfolio is accompanied by anecdotes and memories in the farmer's own words that are both a testament to their enduring hospitality and a moving glimpse into their daily routines and family histories. But what you will read first, and foremost, are their faces. From Bruce Crump, a citrus farmer in Florida; to Patsy Fribley, a stockyard dealer from Montana; to Thurston Wilber, a Maine lobsterman, Mobley's intense and beautiful portraits capture the furrows of fields lining their brows, the crevices of drought creasing the corners of their mouths, and the grains of truth in their squinted eyes.

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With just a quarter acre of land, you can feed a family of four with fresh, organic food year-round. This comprehensive guide to self-sufficiency gives you all the information you need to grow and preserve a variety of vegetables, fruits, herbs, nuts and grains; raise chickens for eggs and meat; raise cows, sheep and goats for meat or milk; raise pigs and rabbits; and keep honeybees. Simple instructions make it easy to enjoy canned, frozen, dried and pickled produce all winter; use your own grains to make bread, pasta and beer; turn fresh milk into delicious homemade yogurt, butter and cheese; make your own wine, cordials and herbal teas; and much, much more. It truly is possible to eat entirely from your backyard.

Recommended Product for Wiser Living: Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, Mother Earth News is recommending books and products to readers. For more than 40 years, Mother Earth News has been North America's "Original Guide to Living Wisely," creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature.

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More than 20 projects offer complete plans and instructions for building a wide range of structures that are designed for adaptability and usefulness. You'll learn the step-by-step fundamentals of general construction — from planning and laying out a site to do-it-yourself framing, roofing, wiring, plumbing, and much more. Some of the projects featured include:

• All-purpose barns
• Equipment or machine shed
• Two-car garage
• Roadside stand
• Insulated dog house
• Home office

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Grain harvesting can be done in small spaces. With Homegrown Whole Grains, you'll learn how to grow, harvest and cook nine nutritious whole grains. From wheat and rice to heirloom grains, this book covers everything you need for a successful grain harvest.

All you need to start grain harvesting is to convert part of your yard into a field of grain. After the harvest you can enjoy nutritious whole grains, using them whole in delicious recipes or milling them into flour for artisan breads and other baked goods. Barley, quinoa, millet, buckwheat and oats are among the grains you’ll learn to take from yard to plate.

Author Sara Pitzer started this book 30 years ago, when she wrote Wholegrains for the original folks of the back-to-the-land movement. Today, she writes about grain harvesting with a different attitude, one that helps modern homesteaders grow their own food at a smaller, more manageable scale.

For the gardener who is eager to grow more than a variety of vegetables, this grain harvesting book will become a dear resource. Each of the nine grains featured in Homegrown Whole Grains has a different flavor and use. By harvesting them at home, you'll be able to make such varied foods as whole grain pasta, as well as add variety to homegrown food.

About the Author: Sara Pitzer has learned and written about grains in Pennsylvania's Amish country, California, the American Southeast, Thailand and Peru. She is the author of more than a dozen cookbooks and travel guides.

Recommended Product for Wiser Living: Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, MOTHER EARTH NEWS is recommending books to readers. For 40 years, MOTHER EARTH NEWS has been North America’s “Original Guide to Living Wisely,” creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature.