Farming the Woods: An Integrated Permaculture Approach to Growing Food and Medicinals in Temperate Forests

It really is eye-opening to what I believe many of us could begin returning to. I was recently reading another book that had a chapter on reforestation, mycology, and wildflowers called "Invent Soup" by Brock Bachelder. I'm actually reading several books on the atm, but this book is very thorough and digestible. I don't feel like it's too over my head, but here's to the future of many, many future forest-dwelling, soup, and dessert lovers! Once the machines do what they do! The Forests and the Soup are Real! The Dessert Too!

je recommande ce livre pour découvrir la culture dans les bois en pays tempéré.la place des espèces sauvages est encore sous-représentée pour un tel projet...mais c'est un bon début.

This is a very complete and up to date book on Forest Farming. For those of you which are new to the concept, the matter is clearly explained in as much details needed to fully understand the matter at hands. Also, it has a nice part of the introduction addressed to beginners, which in my opinion makes it very accessible.The subjects of the book are as diverse as they are well explained, illustrated and analyzed. After a bit of history, the book brings us to most likely the biggest challenge of our age, climate change. I liked the hands on approach and that it provides solutions and how to exploit this, instead of mourning something that would eventually end.Next up is the actual food part, fruits, nuts, and more. It presents the better adapted plants, discusses yields, harvests, etc. But, forest cultivation is so much more, and next chapter brings us to mushrooms and even medicinal plants.Those two subjects each have their own chapter, and cover about 100 pages together. This made me very happy, as I had been thinking about buying a book on mushroom farming, but I don't think I need to do so anymore with all the info in this one.Since a forest is also about renewal, the following chapter is on how to manage a nursery and propagate your plants.Since trees are also plants, they need to be managed as well, but the author explores a multitude of things to do with the wood.... what is good for woodworking, how to calculate the amount of wood to heat your home, or how to choose an efficient stove to burn it in... They have a talk on mass heaters, which I think is the future of all heating.Last chapters talk about animals, and finally, once you have every aspect covered, it's time to design YOUR forest, in terms of your needs, your location, and they show you how to achieve your goal with permaculture and ecosystems that you create.What I really liked about this book, is that it's been written with the results of experimental grounds in mind. The author often can explain why they made their choices, and explain a particular situation very well. On top of this, they backed themselves with lots of environmental data (current or projected), studies and other scientific papers. Diagrams explain systems and processes, charts explain numbers and lots of pictures allow easy showing of projects. The book is literally littered with tidbits of information, like how to make tincture from hawrtorn berries, or make yourself a cup of birch twig tea. It really is an approach that implies no waste, or at least, as little as humanely possible.If you have a green fiber, are interested in permaculture, sustainable practices, want to be more self-sufficient, want to go off the grid, or just want to read a damn good book, this was a buy worth my money and my time. Has a place of choice in my library.

Thank you!

I got this book at the same time I bought Restoration Agriculture. At first I was a little disappointed that Restoration Agriculture was written more as a casual conversational style book, with the author expressing his opinions and providing defence of them, (though it won me over and I came to love it), this book is the distinct opposite. It is a deep dive into different growing projects and the permaculture philosophy behind it, even going so far as to give cost estimate breakdowns of multiple methods of growing mushrooms, propagating plants for sale and raising ducks among others. They use a control group and test several methods and give the breakdowns for each. This is not a light read at all. It’s very in-depth, though less so on the philosophical side, and more on the practical side. If this is what you’re looking for, it’s totally worth picking up. If you’re looking for more of a read-on-the-couch-with-tea book about permaculture, try Restoration Agriculture instead. This book is a hold-my-calls-for-the-next-three-days-I’ll-be-in-here-taking-notes kind of read.