The Urban Farm Handbook

City-Slicker Resources for Growing, Raising, Sourcing, Trading, and Preparing What You Eat

  • 304 pages
  • Skipstone
  • 978-1-59485-637-2
  • Sep 21, 2011

Paperback / softback
$24.95
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Description
Is that . . . a goat in your garage?! It might be if you've been reading The Urban Farm Handbook: City-Slicker Resources for Growing, Raising, Sourcing, Trading, and Preparing What You Eat. In this comprehensive guide for city-dwellers on how to wean themselves from commercial supermarkets, the authors map a plan for how to manage a busy, urban family life with home-grown foods, shared community efforts, and easy yet healthful practices.

More than just a few ideas about gardening and raising chickens, The Urban Farm Handbook uses stories, charts, grocery lists, recipes, and calendars to inform and instruct. As busy urbanites who have learned how to do everything from making cheese and curing meat to collaborating with neighbors on a food bartering system, the authors share their own food journeys along with those of local producers and consumers who are changing the food systems in the Pacific Northwest. Organized seasonally, this handbook instructs on:

> How to maximize space for planting a variety of fruits and vegetables
> Small-animal husbandry and beekeeping
> Canning, drying, freezing, fermenting, and pickling techniques
> Grinding grains for flour and other uses
> Tips for creating a farmer-to-consumer connection
> How to form a "buying club" with neighbors
> "Opportunities for Change" steps to follow

And so much more!

 

Contributors

Details
  • 304 pages
  • Skipstone
  • 978-1-59485-637-2
  • Sep 21, 2011
Reviews
  • Throughout The Urban Farm Handbook, you'll find notes on "opportunities for change," laying out the authors' different levels of crazy — venturing from the most subtle changes (buying organic) to the more advanced (making your own) and everything in between. McNichols deems himself as being "crazy," while Cottrell is "very, very crazy" (in a good way, of course!). Think of it as a choose-your-own-adventure DIY manual on urban farming — but be prepared: You might also just find yourself dangling off of the edge of the crazy cliff as well!
    — Parent Map
  • The authors have done what they are describing and their personal stories and experiences make the book accessible on an emotional level. You will marvel at what each of them has accomplished.....[The Urban Farm Handbook is] full of useful and stimulating ideas.
    — Transition Lummi Island
  • Throughout the book, readers will also find "Opportunities for Change" - steps people can take to achieve a more sustainable urban kitchen, whether it's as simple as changing the types of vendors you buy from or turning your front yard into an edible farm!
    — Apartment Therapy
  • An incredible resource and quite inspiring
    — Dr. Stephen S. Jones, Director, WSU Research and Extension
  • [this] go-to guide will have even city slickers eating fresh from the backyard
    — Seattle Magazine
  • [The Urban Farm Handbook] is a vast, thorough, interesting tool for those into food production and homesteading. And even if you’re not going to become a hardcore urban farmer, it’s useful to understand how the urban and farm worlds can collide in a time in which we need to redesign the way we produce and consume food.
    — Treehugger

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