More than 100 photographs by famed photographer J.C. Allen of field work including planting, tilling, harvesting and more. Includes shots of threshing, corn shelling, milling, haystacking. Horses, mules, oxen, vintage tractors, and stream engines provide the power back when rural life was the norm.

More than 120 photographs by famed photographer J.C. Allen of farm work performed in dairy, poultry and hog barns as well as the wide variety of tasks performed in the barnyard including ensilaging, stock feeding and watering, haymow loading, threshing, corn grinding, butchering, collecting eggs, root cellaring and much more.

The homesteading adventures of Jenna Woginrich have caught the imagination of thousands who dream of a more self-sufficient lifestyle. As she learns to farm by trial and error, she records her offbeat observations and poignant moments with honesty, humility, and humor. In BarnHeart, she tells the story of her quest to find a permanent home for herself and her livestock -- a herd of sheep, a flock of chickens, some geese and ducks, rabbits, a goat, and a turkey. Even when taking on cranky neighbors, small-town politics, and the difficulties of running a farm alone on a shoestring budget, she never loses her sense of humor. You'll find inspiration in this entertaining tale of longing and striving for a more authentic life.

About the Author
Jenna Woginrich is a 20-something homesteader and the author of Chick Days and Made from Scratch. She blogs at Cold Antler Farm, as well as Mother Earth News and The Huffington Post. A Pennsylvania native, she has made her home in the mountains of Tennessee, in northern Idaho, in rural Vermont, and most recently in upstate New York, where she lives with a flock of Scottish Blackface sheep, a border collie in training, chickens and geese, a hive of bees, and several amiable rabbits.

Mother Earth News has covered a lot of content in 2019! From homesteading and livestock to natural health and gardening, each issue published was full of information to help readers live a more sustainable and independent lifestyle. Now, in The Best of Mother Earth News, all the best articles are together in one special edition! Whether it’s learning how to organize your homestead, manipulate your microclimate, build your dream log home, or something else, the information in this issue will help you take the next step.

Josh Volk, author of the best-selling Compact Farms, offers small-scale farmers an in-depth guide to building customized equipment that will save time and money and introduce much-needed efficiencies to their operations.

Building Your Permaculture Property offers a revolutionary, holistic method to overcome the overwhelmingly complex process of resilient land design. It distills the authors' decades of experience as engineers, farmers, educators, and consultants into a five-step process, which is complete with principles, practices, templates, and workflow tools to help you stay on track.

A complete guide to building a wilderness retreat, from buying land and getting services, through developing plans and construction methods. All aspects of construction are clearly illustrated and various designs are explored.

Comeback Farms takes up where Judy's previous book, No Risk Ranching ended. Here, he shows how to add sheep, goats, and pigs to existing cattle operations. He details fencing and water systems that build on existing infrastructure set up for Management-Intensive Grazing. Sharing his firsthand experience (the mistakes as well as successes), Judy takes graziers to the next level. He shows how high density grazing (HDG) on his own farm and those he leases can revitalize hayed-out, scruffy, weedy pastures, and turn them into highly productive grazing landscapes that grow both green grass and greenbacks.

Locavore leaders such as Alice Waters, Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver all speak of the need for sweeping changes in how we get our food. A longtime leader of this movement is Wes Jackson, who for decades has taken it upon himself to speak for the land, to speak for the soil itself. Here, he offers a manifesto toward a conceptual revolution: Jackson asks us to look to natural ecosystems—or, if one prefers, nature in general—as the measure against which we judge all of our agricultural practices.

Jackson believes the time is right to do away with annual monoculture grains, which are vulnerable to national security threats and are partly responsible for the explosion in our health care costs. Soil erosion and the poisons polluting our water and air—all associated with agriculture from its beginnings—foretell a population with its natural fertility greatly destroyed.

In this eloquent and timely volume, Jackson argues we must look to nature itself to lead us out of the mess we’ve made. The natural ecosystems will tell us, if we listen, what should happen to the future of food.

Coppice Agroforestry is a richly illustrated, comprehensive guide to resprout silviculture – managing trees and shrubs by coppicing, pollarding, shredding, and pleaching – for a continuous supply of small diameter polewood for products from firewood to fine furniture.