GeRue's Reviews A Country Bookstore

 

HOW TO FIND YOUR IDEAL COUNTRY HOME: A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE, by Gene GeRue  This is the third edition of my book. It is listed first not to say it is best but because country life begins with finding your place. There are 32 chapters, each a subject I feel is vital knowledge to help you make your first purchase the right one, so you don't have to uproot yourself and loved ones a second or third time. I also drew 93 maps to give you essential information at a glance. Reviewers have said this is the best book on the subject, but the testimonials that warm and humble me most are those received from readers. "This is one of the best books I've ever read" (Carol Post, Altamonte Springs, Florida). "Your book is superb" (Jerry & Clare Perkins, Livonia, Michigan). "After reading your book, I feel like we are close neighbors" (David & Sheila Knapp, Winnebago, Illinois). If after reading my book you have any unanswered questions, please e-mail me at genegerue@ruralize.com. And, please--don't forget to enjoy the journey. Go to Amazon's page HOW TO FIND YOUR IDEAL COUNTRY HOME

FINDING & BUYING YOUR PLACE IN THE COUNTRY, by Les Scher & Carol Scher  Les Scher is a lawyer. The premise of this book is that you want to act as your own real estate agent, so most of the book presents the myriad aspects of real estate law, appraising and negotiating price, finance, contracts, escrow, title insurance, and of course, using a lawyer. If you want to act as your own agent, buy this book. If you want to use an experienced real estate agent to handle your purchase, buy my book, which tells you how. A caveat: this book is rather light on finding your right place, so if you buy this book, you need mine also. Here's Amazon's page FINDING & BUYING YOUR PLACE IN THE COUNTRY

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THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COUNTRY LIVING, by Carla Emery  Carla Emery is a national treasure. This is simply the most informative book ever written on country living, the next best thing to having a live-in grandmother who knows everything there is to getting homegrown food from dreams to dinner plates plus nearly anything else you need to know. Begun as a 12-page table of contents for a recipe book in 1969, the present ninth edition has 858 pages of far more than recipes. Veggies, vines, trees, grains, poultry, goats, cows, bees, rabbits, sheep, pigs. Planning, nurturing, harvesting, preserving, preparing. Flipping pages at random finds starting transplants, breads leavened with eggs and beating, speeding up tomato sauce-making, harvesting herbs, making cider, managing an existing stand of trees, root cellar storage, soap making, brooding chicks, secrets to safe cattle handling, cultured buttermilk, cooking on a wood stove, jams and jellies, making a wool quilt. If your budget or bookshelf has room for only one book, this is the book to buy. Go to Amazon's page for THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COUNTRY LIVING

BACK TO BASICS: HOW TO LEARN AND ENJOY TRADITIONAL AMERICAN SKILLS, by Readers Digest.  A primer on self-reliance and rural skills, this is a large-format book of 456 pages lavishly illustrated with photographs and drawings, about half in full color. Here are 57 subjects, many with subsets, as in gardening, which includes information on soil, cultivation methods, making and using a greenhouse, and specific information on many veggies, herbs, fruits. Some presentations are simplistic, like telling you how to find and evaluate a farm or can produce in only four pages. Building and using a smokehouse gets one page. Using dairy products butters ten pages. Woodworking and furniture making nail down thirty pages. Build and decorate a house and the chairs, tables, beds to furnish it. Build a springhouse, a dam, a well, a water system. Grow vegetables, fruits, grains. Raise bees, fish, chickens, ducks, geese, rabbits, hogs, sheep, goats, cows, horses. Make cheese, maple syrup, beer, wine, bread, soap, candles, baskets. Cook with wood. Spin yarn, use natural dyes, make cloth, quilts, rugs, hammocks. Learn tanning and leather work, tinsmithing, blacksmithing, toolmaking. Celebrate harvest and holidays with traditional decorations, recipes, toys, games, dances. Learn camping, hiking, fishing, canoeing, snowshoeing, skiing. Whew! This book will keep you happily occupied for several decades. Go to Amazon's page for BACK TO BASICS

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GARDEN WAY'S JOY OF GARDENING, by Dick Raymond  I like the way this man handles his rake. Some books are like gold-bearing ore--you have to sift tons of words to find a few nuggets. This book has nuggets on nearly every page. And unlike some authors, Raymond is open-minded to the various gardening methods and has tried them. Even better, he has worked in different soils in different parts of the country. And he is innovative. I am not a fan of tillers and I am biased against chemicals, so Raymond had to overcome my initial skepticism. He did. While he extols the use of his tiller [he has a long relationship with Troy-Bilt, owned by Garden Way, publishers of this book], he also shows how to garden without one. And in most cases he offers organic alternatives to chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Furthermore, he started out on a farm, paid for his first home with a garden and roadside stand, has appeared in food production documentaries and has given gardening classes throughout the country, face-to-face and on radio and television. I do not agree with all he writes, nor is he inclusive of all gardening methods, for instance Fukuoka's no-till, Steiner's biodynamics or Mollison's permaculture. But in gardening, the proof is in the eating and it is clear that Dick Raymond eats very well. Beginning, mid-field and advanced gardeners alike will learn valuable techniques for soil enrichment, bed-building, seed-growing, transplanting, spacing, weed-killing and insect-handling. He is excellent on green manure crops, seeding and harvesting. I was especially taken with his Eternal Yield experimental plots, where he imports only seeds and lime but has improved yields and soil over a ten-year period. "My goal was to plant different sequences of green manure crops to see if they alone could provide all the nutrients food crops need. My guidelines were simple: don't add any fertilizer, compost, or manures to the soil. As for organic matter, till under only the crops that grow on the plot. Do not bring in any outside material--no leaves, no mulch, nothing." This is the best-illustrated gardening book I have found. Hundreds of color photos and drawings on high-quality paper illustrate every lesson. All popular plants are given their own coverage including gourds, peanuts and sunflowers. In the section on pests I learned a technique I am eager to try on the mole army here--sticking pieces of blackberry canes into the runways. There is an insect pest section as well as one on diseases. An eight-page planting guide supplements and synopsizes earlier coverage, there are maps on first- and last-expected frost dates. The index is small but adequate. Should your budget allow only one gardening book, this is as good as you can do. Go to Amazon's page for GARDEN WAY'S JOY OF GARDENING

RODALE'S ALL-NEW ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ORGANIC GARDENING: THE INDISPENSABLE RESOURCE FOR EVERY GARDENER, editors Barbara W. Ellis and Fern M. Bradley.  Like cookbooks, there are hundreds of gardening books. Where to begin? These 690 pages will answer 95 percent of your questions. After gardening for decades I still find myself taking a quick peek here before preparing soil for a specific plant. Four big categories: gardening technique, organic garden management, food crops, ornamental plants. Hundreds of specific entries quickly found. This is your basic gardening reference book. Here's Amazon's page for THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ORGANIC GARDENING

THE SUSTAINABLE VEGETABLE GARDEN: A BACKYARD GUIDE TO HEALTHY SOIL AND HIGHER YIELDS, by John Jeavons.  This is an excellent book for new gardeners and for old gardeners new to the biointensive method. Tells how to build a garden the right way, from the bottom up. If growing one's own food is the best way to stop the insanity of agribusiness, then John Jeavons is a mild-mannered but effective revolutionary leader. He enlightened hundreds of thousands of us with his 1974 groundbreaker How to Grow More Vegetables (than you ever thought possible on less land than you can imagine). Go to Amazon's page THE SUSTAINABLE VEGETABLE GARDEN

THE NEW ORGANIC GROWER: A MASTER'S MANUAL OF TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES FOR THE HOME AND MARKET GARDENER, by Eliot Coleman.  To feed yourself, feed the soil. Coleman has long been gardening under challenging conditions, has learned how to optimize soil fertility to produce health-giving harvests. Here he presents top-notch advice so you can do it too. Go to Amazon's page THE NEW ORGANIC GROWER

FOUR-SEASON HARVEST: ORGANIC VEGETABLES FROM YOUR HOME GARDEN ALL YEAR LONG, by Eliot Coleman. Eat fresh, home-grown vegetables year round? Eliminate canning and freezing? Do this all at low cost? Eliot Coleman does, you can, too, and here is the how. Coleman is a market gardener in Maine who may eat better than Bill Gates. He shows that sunlight and wind protection are more important than temperature--and, by the way, most of the U.S. gets more winter sunlight than Coleman's place. Inexpensive, unheated greenhouses that he calls tall tunnel houses--some say hoop houses--and cold frames protect from wind and keep snow off the veggies. Greenhouse comfort is more to benefit the gardener. The key is what and when to plant. Full info given for planting dates, construction details, sources of seeds, tools, greenhouses. Well illustrated. An essential guide for organic gourmands. Go to Amazon.com for FOUR-SEASON HARVEST

SEED TO SEED, by Suzanne Ashworth 
Sixty million American gardeners buy their seeds from mail order seed companies. In the period 1984-1987, 54 of the 230 seed companies in the U.S. and Canada went out of business, resulting in 943 non-hybrid varieties becoming unavailable. One answer to the extinction of food crop varieties is Seed Savers Exchange, the publisher of Seed to Seed. Begun in 1975, SSE maintains more than 18,000 rare vegetable varieties at Heritage Farm in Decorah, Iowa. (Call 319-382-5990 for catalog and membership information.) Another answer is for individual gardeners to save their own seed from non-hybrid varieties. Varieties that grow and taste exceptionally well in specific areas can be planted year after year from home-grown seed. A further advantage is protection from seed price increases. Ashworth provides definitive information on seed gathering, processing and storage techniques. Twenty family entries include taxonomy, pollination characteristics and techniques, general production and processing techniques. Each of the 160 species entries includes botanical classification; pollination, crossing, and isolation; seed production, harvest and processing; seed viability. Ample black-and-white photographs complement the text. Hybrid seeds are in the control of large companies. You can be in control of heirloom varieties that do best in your garden. Happy eating. Go to Amazon's page SEED TO SEED

 

PERMACULTURE: A DESIGNERS MANUAL, by Bill Mollison.  Bill Mollison is an ecologist of the first rank. In 1981 he received the Right Livelihood Award--the Alternative Nobel Prize--for his work in environmental design. He and David Holmgren coined the word permaculture; Mollison has devoted his life to teaching the concept. Permaculture is humans working with, not against, nature. It's about causing land, water, plants, and animals to synergistically cause multiple benefits and to improve an ecosystem simultaneously. It maximizes functional connections. The many parts become a whole. To create permaculture design is to make the strongest possible statement of our eco-values, a resounding vote against current agribusiness practices. I have four of Mollison's books. This one has it all plus 129 color photos and a gazillion drawings by Andrew Jeeves. It gives you complete knowledge to create your own personal permaculture, a place to work and live in harmony with nature, a place that will nuture your body and your soul. Here is the Amazon's page for PERMACULTURE: A DESIGNERS MANUAL

A PATTERN LANGUAGE: TOWNS, BUILDINGS, CONSTRUCTION, by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein, with Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiksdahl-King, Shlomo Angel.  There are certain design principles that are self-evident truths, commonsense but uncommonly applied to modern towns and buildings, painfully evident in characterless and cheerless houses. Most of us have these evolved truths deep within us but we rarely think of them. Given here are 253 patterns, each consisting of a design challenge, discussion, illustration, and solution. Your knowledge of these patterns can help you to create a home that is a pleasure to live in, one that is imaginative, inspiring, healthful, and psychologically satisfying as well as fully functional. I cannot imagine designing any building without refreshing my memory of these wonderful patterns. First published in 1977, this book has already attained the status of classic. Go to Amazon's page on A PATTERN LANGUAGE

 

BUILDING A MULTI-USE BARN, by John D. Wagner  This is an excellent primer to use if you are new to building. The entire process from stake layout to finish trim is given step-by-step with ample and clear illustrations so that anyone who can use tools can build a building, not just a barn, but a house, garage, workshop, or studio. The project here is a 24 by 30-foot multi-use barn with a monolithic concrete slab floor, wood-framing and gable roof. Included are foundation, framing, plumbing, electrical, heating, insulation, roofing, siding. After you build this, or a smaller building using the same instructions, you will be able to build essentially anything--the principles remain the same. Go to Amazon's page BUILDING A MULTI-USE BARN

PRACTICAL POLE BUILDING CONSTRUCTION: WITH PLANS FOR BARNS, CABINS & OUTBUILDINGS, by Leigh Seddon  Of all the pole building books I have seen, this is the best. Seddon covers the logic of pole building and then gives straightforward instruction on how to do it, with lots of clear drawings and photographs. Included are design, materials, calculating loads, foundations, framing and joinery, roofing and siding, windows and doors, building plans, and an appendix that shows how to calculate sun angles, snow loads, compares insulations, gives recommended nailing schedules, and several other useful items. Plans include a lake house, hillside house, cabin, garage, horse stable, and lean-to animal shelter. If you have never built anything before, it is likely that you will be able to build any or all of these with no more instruction than this book, plus plumbing and electrical help. Go to Amazon's page PRACTICAL POLE BUILDING

  GAVIOTAS: A VILLAGE TO REINVENT THE WORLD, by Alan Weisman 
In 1966, when he was 22, Paolo Lugari and his brother drove over barely passable roads to a desolate area 200 miles east of Bogota, Columbia. The llanos area is a poor-soil barren that grows only a few nutrient-deficient grasses, a vast expanse of sun-baked plains in spite of over 100 inches of rain per year. A place of deadly water and hungry mosquitos. Conditions were so daunting that the Columbian government abandoned an attempt to build a road through the area. Lugari saw an opportunity to create something very special. And he did it. Today Gaviotas is a thriving, sustainable community of hundreds of joyous people studying, inventing, producing, singing and dancing amidst a huge forest that they planted. Residents from all walks of life have designed and built, planted and harvested, birthed, nurtured, taught, and entertained. There are teeter-totters that operate super-efficient pumps to bring water to the school, solar heat to cook meals, solar kettles to sterilize drinking water, ultra-light windmills to provide power. The hospital has been designated one of the 40 most important buildings in the world. Some have called Gaviotas a utopia. Lugari insists that, "Utopia literally means no place. We call Gaviotas a topia because it's real." Gaviotas the village is surprising, uplifting, extraordinary. Gaviotas the nonfiction book is as compelling as a novel, as educational as a textbook, as inspirational as the biography of a great person. If you need to rise early, do not take this book to bed with you. Go to Amazon's page GAVIOTAS

THE BUILDER'S SECRET: LEARNING THE ART OF LIVING THROUGH THE CRAFT OF BUILDING, by George Ehrenhaft.  George Ehrenhaft has opened a new door, one that leads into the mystical, highly personal realm of why remodelers, rehabilitators, and home builders create their personal domains with their own hands. This is touchy territory--one potential subject flatly told Ehrenhaft it was none of his damn business. Others made excuses. I'm glad the author persisted. The result is a balanced offering of widely diverse stories: teacher, housecleaner, teacher, architect, graphic artist, symphony flutist, policeman, artist, builder-writer. Most interviewees began their projects overenthused and underinformed. Lacking knowledge, skills, and tools, they were impelled by financial necessity, curiosity, fantasy, a hunger for a transcendent adventure. Men with wives struggling to understand; women dealing with macho members of the building trades. Personal relationships gone awry. Disaster and achievement. Despair and elation. The author found sentiment, resilience, intuition, testing of limits, reverence for nature, "a conspiracy of forces," and "'being filled with a thrilling and joyous sense of Shelter--with a capital S.'" Like writers who must write, owner-builders must build. Pity those who never feel the natural high of living in their own created shelter. Pity yourself? Or step into the lives of these nine and live the transcendent moments with them. Go to Amazon's page THE BUILDER'S SECRET

Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry patiently keeps showing us how to regain the sanity and goodness that life once held. Here are six essays: Farming and the Global Economy; Conserving Community; Conserving Forest Communities; Private Property and the Common Wealth; The Conservation of Nature and the Preservation of Humanity; Health is Membership. In Conserving Community Berry lists 17 specific guidelines for regaining our lives by rebuilding our communities. They alone are worth far more than the price of the book--if we use them. Berry turns the crank; we need to start the engine. Go here for ANOTHER TURN OF THE CRANK.

Gene Logsdon

Logsdon is a small Ohio farmer who writes about what he knows, and he knows a lot. His early books were written for Rodale, how-to titles that are all out-of-print. His present publisher is Chelsea Green, which will be bringing out a new edition of the book on getting food from water. I have most of Logsdon's books and like them all. Of his recent work, my favorite is THE CONTRARY FARMER.

Helen and Scott Nearing

I discovered Helen and Scott's books in the early 1970s and they inspired and sustained me as I planned my escape from urban California. Not long before she died, Helen reviewed my book and gave it a wonderful testimonial which I will always cherish. No other two people have had a greater influence on the back-to-the-land movement. Helen and Scott were born to privilege and rejected it to live lives that showed by example their commitment to right living. They were vegetarians, they raised most of their food, and they were remarkable in their physical and intellectual capacities. Their physical bodies are dead but their spirits live on in the lives of those now living the good life because of their example. Schocken Books has compiled the two Nearing classics, Living The Good Life, and Continuing The Good Life, into one volume: THE GOOD LIFE: HELEN AND SCOTT NEARING'S SIXTY YEARS OF SELF-SUFFICIENT LIVING.After Scott died at the age of 100 by purposefully not eating, Helen wrote a candid book that gives insight into their private lives and reveals their deep convictions: LOVING AND LEAVING THE GOOD LIFE.

 
 

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