Thursday, March 17, 2011

On the Kitchen Table

The other day I realized our reading material is urban homestead/farm/sustainable living focused these days.  We ordered The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-sufficient Living in the Heart of the City  a few weeks back after the whole urban homestead TM controversy came out.  It's a great read and I'd recommend it to beginning through advanced urban homesteaders.  It's the go to "hand book" for urban homesteading.  I've been getting Real Simple for months now and it's a fabulous sustainable living resource as well as chocked full of organizational advice which any mom can benefit from.  Whenever I feel like I'm in need of some organization I grab a Real Simple.  We've been drooling over the Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds magazine Ron picked up at work the other day.  Their website touts them as "America's top source for pure heirloom seeds."  Spring is around the corner and with the arrival of the chicks I thought this repro Little Golden Book Baby Farm Animals would be perfect for our little guy.  The illustrations are delightful and it's a good beginning reader.  

So what urban homesteading reads are on your kitchen table?

4 comments:

  1. Our table usually has magazines...Hobby Farm, Hobby Farm Home, Grit, Mother Earth News are the main ones. Right now I also have "A Short History of the Honey Bee: Humans, Flowers, and Bees in the Eternal Chase for Honey", plus "Honey in a Hive" which is a kid's book about bees, and "The Compleat Meadmaker". Apparently it's spring! :)

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  2. Awesome magazine list! I'll have to check out the Hobby Farm and Hobby Farm Home. We plan to get bees at some point, so I'll put those bee books on our list. I'm looking out for kids' homesteading books too and plan to do a post on that. Thanks so much!

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  3. I ♥ Baker Creek; just got my order the other day.

    I just read Urban Homestead the night before last, and what I could read of it I enjoyed very much (2 thumbs up!).

    But man, the book designer (not the authors) gets a hearty thumbs down for the big blocks of small white type on a light green background (I have vision issues and can't make out the text at all in those) and the lack of an index. :/

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  4. I'm still hoping on the Baker Creek seeds. I got a selection of about 15 different peppers and 12 different tomato and a literally well over a 100+ other types of veggie and herb seeds.

    A lot of floaters (of the peppers and tomato), and looking closer many look crushed. Peppers held up to the light seem to be missing the embryo in many of them (not well pollinated). The sage had very low germination.

    Didn't mean to be negative, just if you really want a certain strain of theirs, you may want to consider buying extras.

    I am still holding out hope, especially for the many squash.

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