This is a wonderful book, filled with interesting knowledge and a philosophy of how food should be grown. I have to admit that, as far as I'm concerned, he is preaching to the choir. Yet, there are several things about the book that bother me, especially a conflict between the principles of the first half and the second.
This is not a book about how to do farming, although the attentive reader would pick up many good points. It is more about a philosophy of self-sufficiency and using nature rather than battling it. The first part of the book handles that very well. Basically, the author contrasts the way food is raised on a "traditional" but well managed nature-embracing farm and the way food is produced in the industrial approach to raising vegetables and meat. Needless to say, he illustrates the horror and unhealthy results of the latter. He also makes excellent points as to the true costs of our over-subsidized industrial agriculture - particularly with respect to energy consumption.
Along the way he illustrates how the farm life, lived his way, creates emotional strength and satisfaction for the farmer and creates children who are happy, confident, realistic and responsible. He does a great job of selling this approach to self-sufficiency and community stability. My only problem with some of his methods is a health worry. He is big on pasturing both cattle and hogs (and having chickens follow them around). In fact the hogs go rooting in the forest, to the forest's benefit.
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