Renowned outdoors expert and New York Times best-selling author Dave Canterbury provides you with all you need to know about packing, trapping, and preparing food for your treks and wilderness travels. Whether you're headed out for a day hike or a weeklong expedition, you'll find everything you need to survive (and eat well) out in the wild. Canterbury makes certain you're set by not only teaching you how to hunt and gather, but also giving you recipes to make while on the trail. Complete with illustrations to accompany his instructions and a full-color photo guide of plants to forage and those to avoid, this is the go-to reference to keep in your pack. The Bushcraft Field Guide to Trapping, Gathering, and Cooking in the Wild helps you achieve the full outdoor experience. With it, you'll be prepared to set off on your trip and enjoy living off the land.

The information you need to nip problems in the bud … and, better still, avoid them in the first place. Let longtime chicken keeper and poultry expert Chris Graham guide you through 100 common problems faced by chicken keepers. You'll discover in clear and simple terms what the underlying cause is and how to solve it.

The Community-Scale Permaculture Farm describes not only the history of the D Acres project, but its evolving principles and practices that are rooted in the land, its inhabitants and the joy inherent in collective empowerment.

For almost 20 years, D Acres of New Hampshire has challenged and expanded the common definition of a farm. As an educational center that researches, applies and teaches skills of sustainable living and small-scale organic farming, D Acres serves more than just a single function to its community. By turns it is a hostel for travelers to northern New England, a training center for everything from metalworking and woodworking to cob building and seasonal cooking, a gathering place for music, poetry, joke-telling and potluck meals, and much more.

While this book provides a wide spectrum of practical information on the physical systems designed into a community-scale homestead, author Josh Trought also reviews the economics and organizational particulars that D Acres has experimented with over the years.

The D Acres model envisions a way to devise a sustainable future by building a localized economy that provides more than seasonal produce, a handful of eggs and green appliances. With the goal of perennial viability for humanity within their ecosystem, D Acres is attempting an approach to sustainability that encompasses practical, spiritual and ethical components. In short: They are trying to create a rural community ecology that evolves in perpetuity.

No other book contains such a wealth of innovative ideas and ways to make your farm or homestead not only more sustainable, but more inclusive of, and beneficial to, the larger community. Readers will find information on such subjects as:

• Working with pigs to transform forested landscapes into arable land
• Designing and building unique, multifunctional farm and community spaces using various techniques and materials
• Creating and perpetuating diverse revenue streams to keep your farm organization solvent and resilient
• Receiving maximum benefits and yields for the farm without denigrating resources or the regional ecology
• Implementing a fair and effective governance structure
• Constructing everything from solar dehydrators and cookers to tree houses and ponds
• Connecting and partnering with the larger community beyond the farm

Emphasizing collaboration, cooperation and mutualism, this book promises to inspire a new generation of growers, builders, educators, artists and dreamers who are seeking new and practical ways to address today’s problems on a community scale.

Wild meat, hunted in a responsible way, is one of the most healthful, sustainable foods possible. Depending on how it is done, hunting can be as local, intimate and humane as it gets. And aside from this, it demands the hunter enter a world of awareness, wildness, life and death that we have lost connection to as a culture.

The Compassionate Hunter's Guidebook is a guide for those that come to the act of hunting with pure intentions, motivated by a desire for healthy food that comes directly from the land where they live. This practical manual suggests that hunting is not a "sport" and the animals whose lives are taken are not "game." It combines a deep, philosophical exploration of the ethics of killing with detailed instructions on every step of the process including:

• Understanding your prey
• Tools, techniques and preparation
• The act of the hunt
• From forest to table: processing, preserving and preparing your kill

A unique and comprehensive, fully illustrated guide to the complexity, ethics and spirit of the hunt, The Compassionate Hunter is a must-read for beginning and experienced hunters alike. It will appeal to anyone who wishes to delve more deeply into the complex, humbling and ultimately profound reality of our relationship with the food that nourishes us.

With structures ideally suited for any weather condition, The Complete Survival Shelters Handbook presents emergency shelter designs built from a variety of elements, including 100 percent gathered items, a combination of natural and store-bought supplies and even durable construction materials.

Long embraced by corporations that are driven only by the desire for profit, industrial agriculture wastes precious resources and spews millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year, exacerbating climate change and threatening the very earth and water on which we depend. However, this dominant system, from which Americans obtain most of their food, is being supplanted by a new paradigm.

The Emergent Agriculture is a collection of 14 thematic essays on sustainability viewed through the lens of farming. Arguing that industrial food production is incompatible with the realities of nature, science and ethics, this lyrical narrative makes the case for a locally based food system that is:

• Stable in the face of economic uncertainty
• Resilient in the face of environmental variability
• Grounded in stewardship of the land, on attaching value to food and the craft involved in producing it, and on respecting the dignity of farmers, consumers and livestock

A revolution in food production is underway. Written from the vantage point of an ecologist who is also a farmer, The Emergent Agriculture is essential reading for anyone interested in food security and the potential for growing local economies. It’s food for thought about the future of food.

In barnyards and backyards, on rooftops and in alleyways, a movement is happening: the modern homesteading movement. Whether it’s turning a lawn into a vegetable garden, getting a flock of chickens, or transforming cucumbers into pickles, people everywhere are taking charge of their own food supply. Ashley English, a major figure in the return to homesteading, gives newcomers her time-honored tips for successfully overseeing food production in their own homes. Completely updating material from her phenomenal homesteading books (Keeping Bees, Keeping Chickens, Canning & Preserving, and Home Dairy), this collection covers everything from preserving jams and jellies to whipping butter and keeping a hive of honey bees. English provides entry points, troubleshooting tips, and inspiration for putting the food your family consumes back in your own hands.

A major outdoor survival book, The Extreme Survival Almanac is unlike anything else on the market. It’s written specifically for regular folks who may be suddenly forced to survive in the wilderness without assistance … and with no planning, specialized training nor equipment. This remote-area survival manual provides clear decision-making guidelines to walk you step-by-step from the first signs of trouble all the way through to rescue. It outlines specific courses of action for every type of survival scenario imaginable, including thousands of useful tips, directions and suggestions that can be understood and followed by the panicked and possibly injured layman stranded in the woods, in a vehicle or at sea.

Sections are devoted to topics like surviving in land-locked settings, including in the desert or in the tundra, as well as surviving at sea. Each section covers the basics for survival in detail, including how to create shelter and find water or food in each scenario. Also included are appendices with navigation tools and maps detailing unique information such as prevailing ocean current patterns, prevailing wind patterns and common commercial flight routs.

You decided to become a farmer because you love being outside, working the land and making a difference in the way we eat and farm.

And when you decided to become a farmer, you also became an entrepreneur and business person. In order to be ecologically and financially sustainable, you must understand the basics of accounting and bookkeeping, and learn how to manage a growing business.

Author Julia Shanks distills years of teaching and business consulting with farmers into this comprehensive, accessible guide. She covers all aspects of launching, running, and growing a successful farm business through effective bookkeeping and business management. She provides tools to make managerial decisions, apply for a loan or other financing, and offers general business and strategy advice for growing a business.

Whether you've been farming for many years or are just getting started, The Farmer's Office gives you the tools needed to think like an entrepreneur and thoughtfully manage your business for success.

There has never been a better time to make and sell great cheese. People worldwide are consuming more high-quality, handmade cheese than ever before. The number of artisan cheesemakers has doubled in recent years, and many of the industry's newcomers are "farmstead" producers — those who work only with the milk of their own animals. More than ever before, the people who choose to become farmer-cheesemakers need access to the knowledge of established cheese artisans who can help them build their dream.

Few career choices lead to such extremes of labor, emotion and monetary challenge. In The Farmstead Creamery Advisor, respected cheesemaker, instructor and speaker Gianaclis Caldwell walks would-be producers through the many, and often confusing, steps and decisions they will face when considering a career in this burgeoning cottage industry. This book fills the gap that exists between the pasture and cheese plate. It goes far beyond issues of caring for livestock and basic cheesemaking, explaining business issues such as:

• Analyzing your suitability for the career
• Designing and building the cheese facility
• Sizing up the market
• Negotiating day-to-day obstacles
• Ensuring maximum safety and efficiency

Drawing from her own and other cheesemakers' experiences, Caldwell brings to life the story of creating a successful cheesemaking business in a practical, organized manner. Absolutely essential for anyone interested in becoming a licensed artisan cheesemaker, The Farmstead Creamery Advisor will also appeal to the many small and hobby-farm owners who already have milking animals and who wish to improve their home dairy practices and facilities.

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.