A practical, comprehensive, and essential how-to manual with information on growing perennial crops, soil fertility, water security, nutrient dense food, and more!
"Essential reading for the serious prepper as well as for everyone interested in creating a more resilient lifestyle."--Carol Deppe, author of The Resilient Gardener
The Resilient Farm and Homestead is for readers ready to not just survive, but thrive in changing, unpredictable times. It offers the tools to develop durable, beautiful, and highly functional human habitat systems anchored by preparation, regeneration, and resiliency.
Ben Falk is a land designer and site developer whose research farm has drawn national attention. The site is a terraced paradise on a hillside in Vermont that would otherwise be overlooked by conventional farmers as unworkable. Falk's wide array of fruit trees, rice paddies (relatively unheard of in the Northeast), ducks, nuts, and earth-inspired buildings is a hopeful image for the future of regenerative agriculture and modern homesteading.
The book covers nearly every strategy Falk and his team have been testing at the Whole Systems Research Farm over the past decade, as well as experiments from other sites Falk has designed through his off-farm consulting business.
The book includes detailed information on:
- Gravity-fed water systems
- Fuelwood hedge production and processing
- Human health through nutrient-dense production strategies
- Rapid topsoil formation and remineralization
- Agroforestry, silvopasture & grazing
- Earthworks
- Species composition
- The site-design process and site management
- Ecosystem services, especially regarding flood mitigation
- Tools, equipment, and appropriate technology guides
- A "Homestead Vulnerability" checklist
- Resiliency Aptitude quiz and skills list for emergencies
- And much more!
Complete with gorgeous photography and detailed design drawings throughout!
The Resilient Farm and Homestead is more than just a book of tricks and theories for regenerative site development. It offers actual working results from a complex farm-ecosystems based on research from the "great thinkers" in permaculture, and presents a viable home-scale model for an intentional food-producing ecosystem in cold climates, and beyond. Inspiring to would-be homesteaders everywhere, but especially for those who find themselves with "unlikely" farming land, Falk is an inspiration in what can be done by imitating natural systems, and making the most of what we have by re-imagining what's possible. A gorgeous case study for the homestead of the future.
