Permaculture Reading List

We love to read.

Here are some recommended choices in a slew of categories, for your reading pleasure.

We are only recommending books we have actually read. There are many other great books available on Permaculture that we haven’t read for lots of reasons. Some classics aren’t on here. Why? Because they are expensive and we can’t find one to borrow.

To start with: If you only read one book on Permaculture, read this one– The Permaculture Handbook by Peter Bane. 

• Sidenote: Peter Bane and Chuck Marsh (who actually lead a workshop at our PDC) taught one of the first PDCs in the country back in the 1990s at the same land trust we call home today. We were just children then, but it is incredible to think that their design for the land trust almost 30 years ago is part of the reason we found this place to call home.

Permaculture, in general:

• The Permaculture Handbook by Peter Bane
• Permaculture: A Practical Guide for a Sustainable Future by Bill Mollison
• Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway
• Permaculture by Sepp Holzer
• Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability by David Holmgren
• Designing and Maintaining Your Edible Landscape Naturally by Robert Kourik

Case Studies/Farm Examples:

• The Bio-Integrated Farm by Shawn Jadrnicek and Stephanie Jadrnickek (tons of technical information on maximizing passive solar designs, using compost to generate heat, and aquaponics)
• The Forest-Garden Greenhouse by Jerome Osentowski (well renowned permaculture teacher talks about growing with greenhouses at extreme elevations)
• The Nourishing Homestead by Ben Hewitt and Penny Hewitt (they call their approach “practiculture” and they prioritize growing healthy, nutrient-dense food in Vermont)
• Living the Good Life by Helen and Scott Nearing (classic by the iconic figures who started the back-to-the-land movement in the 1930s; this is about their first homestead in Vermont)
• Loving and Leaving the Good Life by Helen Nearing (as above, but about the subsequent homestead in Maine)
• The Resilient Farm and Homestead by Ben Falk (inspiring permaculturist in Vermont who really thinks outside the box–is growing rice paddies!)

Annual Gardening:

• The New Organic Grower by Eliot Coleman
• The Four-Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman
• Miraculous Abundance by Perrine Hervé-Gruyer and Charles Hervé-Gruyer
• The Resillient Gardener by Carol Deppe

Forest Farming/Perennial Food Production:

• Farming the Woods by Ken Mudge and Steve Gabriel
• The Holistic Orchard by Michael Phillips
• Integrated Forest Gardening by Wayne Weiseman, Daniel Halsey, and Bryce Ruddock
• Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation by Tradd Cotter
• Perennial Vegetables by Eric Toensmeier

Foraging

• Nature’s Garden by Samuel Thayer
• The Forager’s Harvest by Samuel Thayer

Animals:

• The Small-Scale Poultry Flock by Harvey Ussery
• The Resillient Gardener by Carol Deppe
• The Independent Farmstead by Beth Dougherty and Shawn Dougherty (great information on rotational grazing and pasture restoration)

Economics:

• Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein

Special Topics in Permaculture:

• Rainwater Harvesting for the Drylands and Beyond by Brad Lancaster
• The Humanure Handbook by Joseph C. Jenkins

Design:

• A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander et al
• The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander et al

Cabin Porn

• Woodstock Handmade Houses by Robert Haney and David Ballantine
• Handmade Houses: A Guide to the Woodbutcher’s Art by Art Boericke and Barry Shapiro
• The Craftsman Builder by Art Boericke and Barry Shapiro
• Mud Space & Spirit by Gray, Macrae, McCall
• Converted Into Houses by Fracchia and Bragstad
• Tiny Tiny Houses: or How to Get Away From It All by Lester Walker
• Handmade Houses: A Century of Earth-Friendly Home Design by Richard Olsen
• Shelter by Lloyd Kahn and Bob Easton

 

Up Shit Hill Without a Shovel

“It’s October 30^th ! Why is it so hot?!” I spit at Jim. Even though it is dark and past my bedtime, I am sweating through my tank top, which is encouraging my fatalistic obsession about how this is harder than it needs to be. We are shoveling ¾ of a ton of cow manure (that I should remember is a beautiful gift, but am currently resenting) from a borrowed truck onto a makeshift platform of cardboard resting in our field of brambles. It hasn’t rained any appreciable amount since last year; it feels like it might not ever rain again. It has been dry so long that the older pile of manure has aerosolized into a fine powder that isn’t acting anything like being easy to move; unless, of course, you are trying to move it into your lungs so you can get weird cow-poop cancer. The other pile of manure is less than a week old, sticky wet, and covered in just enough hay such that when it comes in contact with the dry manure, it creates massive cement-like bricks that are too heavy to lift. And to top it off, we are shoveling side by side in a pickup truck, which is working less than it is not working.

Jim and I keep miscalculating and smashing our tools into each other. We only have one brand-new manure fork that we bought for the task and one pretty sad excuse of a shovel. Neither tool is doing a very good job, which is really the most frustrating aspect of this seemingly endless chore. We have access to so many other tools that would work so much better. All I can think about is how I wish I had a garden fork or sharp shovel and how I wish that at least some of the times I pick my manure fork up, there would be manure attached. Then, I think, it would be easier; all I need is better tools. Yeah! I should just go home and go to sleep; I can deal with this in the morning! I’ll totally drive home, wake up early so I can drive 30 minutes west, then drive back an hour east, just so I can have an easier time doing something that would take far less time if I just stuck it out–even if it is super frustrating because you are using what seems like the most poorly named tool on the planet. We don’t need to work on that composting toilet tomorrow. Yeah, let’s spend all day tomorrow shoveling poop too…

Just in time, a light goes off in my head, interrupting me and my quickly mounting anger toward this worthless manure fork and my exasperation with Jim who never seems to get frustrated, and who I know (even though I can’t see his face for the dense shadows we create with our backs to the headlights), is smiling away as he shovels shit in the dark. The light tells me that this job would be way easier if one of us stands on the pile, breaks it apart into manageable pieces with the manure fork, and the other one shovels the now somewhat-manageable clods onto the pile below. Jim agrees that this is a better idea and only quietly mutters that he had this idea about ten minutes before but was a little too scared of sleepy-Maryl to suggest a change.

With this change in work flow, I push aside my day-dreams of sleep and procrastination; forget how I was wishing my husband also hated working in the dark as much as me; and I suck it up and heave away at the pile, only this time, we actually get somewhere. The manure starts to move and I don’t feel like I am going to break my back before I turn 30 anymore.

We eventually get to bed by midnight, feeling successful, after draining every last drop of energy out of our bodies. We don’t even take our manure-covered clothes off, we just plop into bed and fall right asleep. No insomnia in this world .