CITY CHICKS: Keeping Micro-flocks of Chickens as Garden Helpers, Compost Makers, Bio-recyclers and Local Food Suppliers, by Patricia Foreman 460 ppb

There are many books about keeping chickens, City Chicks is the only book that explaines how to emply their skill sets. The local foods movement is mushrooming and chickens are the mascot. City Chicks brings fresh, innovative and new information about keeping — and employing — backyard flocks of urban chickens.

City Chicks describes in detail how to develope your very own “Chicken Have More Plan” for increased self-sufficiency. Learn how to create hyper-fertile soils to produce hyper-nutritious food from your gardens. Instead of using oil-based chemicals, chickens can help produce fertilizer and compost; they can turn yard waste into garden soil. Hens can also be used as mobile, clucking, (organic and non-toxic), pesticiders, herbiciders, and insecticiders.

And chickens can be of community and civic service. One chicken eats about 7 pounds of food “waste” a month. A few hundred households keeping micro-flocks of laying hens can divert tons of yard and food biomass “waste” from trash collection saving municipalities millions, even billions of tax payer dollars. To quote City Chicks:

“What if a city had 2,000 households with three hens (or more) each? That could translate to 252 tons of food waste diverted from landfills each year ... Add to that number the tons of yard waste (grass clippings and leaves) that can hens can help convert into compost and the amount is as enormous as the tax-savings of NOT having to handle, transport and store all that biomass waste”. (Page 20 to 21)

This 460 page book has over 120 photos, sketches, and tables bringing visual clarity and simplicity to complex concepts. To see two examples click here:

• Chicken Skill Sets (page 18) and,

• Chickens in Recycling and Food Production Systems (page 19).

City Chicks ushers in a new paradigm of how to use these versatile, clucking, feathered bipeds in a variety of roles that help decrease carbon foot-prints, save tax payer dollars and support local food supply production.

City Chicks shows how you can:

• Have fresh, heart-healthy eggs, daily from your backyard home flock.
• Employ your chicken’s “skill sets” as garden workers, organic pesticiders, herbiciders, fertilizers, compost creators and top soil enhancers.
• Take the best care of your flock and become a Chicken Whisperer.
• City Chicks also explores the civic side of chickens and how they can be employed as clucking city workers helping to divert food and yard waste from landfills. This can save millions of tax payer dollars.
• Be a Primary Poultry Health Care Practitioner to save on, and even avoid, vet bills.
• The Poultry’s Pharmacy shows you how to make and use effective, inexpensive home treatments.
• Draft and pass local laws allowing laying hens within your town or city.

• Avoid roosters and why you don’t want them.

• Do much, much more with chickens than you ever thought possible, including outrageous chicken tricks.

Learn how others

• Have built urban chicken tractors, hen huts, condos and chicken chateaus to blend in with neighborhood landscape and architecture.
• Join in urban eco-agro-tourism with annual coop and garden home tours.
• Start or join local poultry clubs and blogs.
• Keep small flocks to help preserve endangered breeds of chickens.
• Draft and pass local laws allowing laying hens within their town's limits.

"City Chicks is a revelation! It's time someone connected gardenng to raising and keeping hens. This book is filled with excellent adice so that everyone can confidently practice good earth stewardship, not to mention have a prize garden!". — Michael Metallo, President, National Gardening Association

City Chicks Look Inside

Raves & Reviews

Available paperback: Suggested Retail: $22.50, 460 pages, index, bibliography, resources, over 120 photos, graphics and tables,ISBN 970-9624648-5-0

Kindle Version for ebook $9.99: City Chicks: Keeping Micro-Flocks of Chickens  

iBook edition from Apple iTunes:

 

CHICKEN TRACTOR: The Permaculture Guide to Happy Hens and Healthy Soil. The all new Straw Bale Edition. by Andy Lee and Patricia Foreman, 351ppb.

The definition of a chicken tractor has evolved to mean employing your chickens skill-sets in a variety of different tasks that benefit you, your garden and yard. The chickens peck and scratch the soil to clean your beds, eat pest bugs and weed seeds, and fertilize the beds with their manure. Best of all, they provide eggs and meat with that old-fashioned flavor and homegrown goodness.

Expanded, updated and even more detailed. Learn how to raise homestead flocks for eggs, meat and money. Loads of photos and diagrams make important information visual and easy to understand.

Process birds in your backyard with exact, step-by-step explanations. Over 50 processing photos and diagrams—to let you do it right, efficiently and humanely each and every time.

This incredibly popular hands-on book is a grass-roots best seller.It has helped thousands of folks have better gardens and has rekindled an interest in the backyard flocks and heritage breeds of poultry. It has literally, changed the lives of millions of chickens all over the world by taking them out of factory farms, and putting in the gardens where they are happier, more productive and healthier.Look Inside Raves & Reviews

Available paperback:Suggested Retail: $19.95, 312 pages, index, bibliography, resources, over 100 photos, graphics and tables,ISBN 978-0-9843382-0-7

Kindle Version for ebook $9.99:

iBook edition from Apple iTunes:

 

BACKYARD MARKET GARDENING:

The Entrepreneur's Guide to Selling What You Grow

by Andy Lee and Patricia Foreman, 351ppb. The greatest opportunities can sometimes be found in our own backyards. This is true for the small-scale farmer/gardener who dreams of selling the fruits of their labors to an appreciative public. Discover how easy and profitable it is to grow and sell vegetables, fruits, flower, Herbs and small livestock from your backyard market garden. Make Money at Home!

This inspirational, dirt-under-the-fingernails book with its earthy humor, has helped inspire "the gardener next door" to grow food not only for themselves, but others as well and make money while doing what they love.

The authors have over 20 years of vegetable growing & small business experience into this handbook for beginning & experienced agricultural entrepreneurs. A complete guide to business management & marketing for the small scale vegetable grower. Contains a wealth of information on budgets, crop planning, direct marketing, farmers' markets, roadside & farm stands, food cooperatives, caterers, mail order, restaurants, pick your own, wholesale distributors, producers' cooperatives, & subscription marketing services such as clientele membership clubs, community supported farms, & home deliveries. Covers innovative & appropriately scaled equipment for the greenhouses & fields, labor requirements & training methods, locating & improving land for growing & retailing sites, & gives a very strong argument for the economic & ecologic benefits of organic & sustainable growing methods.

Written by "a master farmer who has walked his talk", Backyard Market Gardening is the flagship book that has helped spawn farmers' markets and community farms across America. It has inspired thousands of communities to pursue local food self-sufficiency. "An easy, entertaining read that is very rewarding to the soul, the soil and the flow of capital".

Twice selected by the Rodale Book Club as the "Editors Choice" for the Book-of-the-Month.|

Available paperback:Suggested Retail: $19.95, 312 pages, index, bibliography, resources, over 100 photos, graphics and tables,ISBN 978-0-9843382-0-7

Kindle Version for ebook $9.99:

iBook edition from Apple iTunes:

 

Look Inside

Raves & Reviews

Market gardening, as described by Andy Lee, is very rewarding to the soul,the soil, the environmet, and the flow of capital." — Jim Hightower

This is THE book that shows you how to do what you can, with what you have, and where you are."

— George DeVault, Organic Gardening Magazine

Andrew Lee has crafted a fantastic guide for those new to organic gardening, and has done so with style, wit and humor. He walks you through soil types, composting, marketing techniques, and tool selection. He also compares and contrasts Community Supported Farms, Farmers' Markets, Subscription Farming, etc. Andrew Lee covers it all. And on top of that he has produced a lively and entertaining read in the process.

—A Customer, Amazon.com Review

DAY RANGE POULTRY:

Every Chicken Owner's Guide to Grazing Gardens and Improving Pastures, including the management of breeder flocks, egg handling, incubating, hatchery management, building shelters, marketing, advertising, soils regeneration, compost creation, processing poultry humanely and efficiently, and much, much more!

by Andy Lee and Patricia Foreman, 265ppb.

This is the book that tells you just about everything you need to know to raise poultry on pasture from the egg up through processing. Based on years of hands-on experiences—both success and failures—the authors hold back nothing about the realities, advantages, disadvantages and the rewards of small-scale poultry production systems for income and community food self-sufficiency. Hard to find information on raising turkeys and small-scale breeder flocks and incubation production. Foreword by everybody's favorite contrary farmer, Gene Logsdon.

Day Range Poultry Look Inside

Table of Contents

Available paperback:Suggested Retail: $22.00, 308 pages, index, bibliography, resources, over 80 photos, graphics and tables

ISBN 0-9624648-7-2

 

 

A Tiny Home to Call Your Own: Living Well in Just Right Houses by Patricia Foreman and Andy Lee, 208ppb

You can live in an attractive, aesthetically appealing, upscale house AND you can do it so that it is quality built, architecturally beautiful, highly marketable and profitable. Small is beautiful and functional in housing. Smaller scale homes can be more livable, cozy, homey, enjoyable, low maintenance, and easy to clean. Tiny houses (300 sq.ft. to around 1,000 sq.ft.) can be more affordable and socially responsible than the current trend of "McMansionization" that is chewing up America. Some of them can be built on existing lots without requiring new land purchase.

Impress neighbors with style and freedom rather than with large scale, impersonally built square footage.

Uses for Tiny Houses include:

• Anyone who wants less space to maintain in exchange for more time, freedom and money.

• For folks to have an an independent place of their own, yet be close by, such as an elderly parent, student, or return-to-the-nest kid.

• Newly weds, newly divorced, singles (for what ever reason) and for those with hermit-like tendencies who simply want their own space — to themselves.

• Your personal "away space", home office, professional work space, writer's or artist's studio or rental for extra passive income.

• As a starter house designed for future expansion as the family grows and money becomes available.

• To host guests separately, they can be close by, but not" in your face" space. You know those visiting "in-law" stories.

• A vacation home by the lake or in the woods — that doesn't cost a bundle AND has all the creature comforts of home.

Table of Contents

Click Here to Read Reviews of A Tiny Home to Call Your Own

To view published reviews about this book and Tiny Homes, click the link below:

Better Homes & Gardens Remodeling, July 2005

Virginia Living Magazine, December 2004

The New York Times, November 2004

Available paperback:Suggested Retail: $9.95, 208 pages, index, bibliography, resources, over 80 photos, graphics and tables

 

FAMILY FRIENDLY FARMING: A Multigenerational Home-Based Business Testament

Joel Salatin (and family), 400ppb.

Family friendly farming offers hope for stressed families, dissatisfied employees, and hurried-harried lifestyles.  It is no secret that family farms are in trouble. The average age of US farmers is over 60 and the brightest, best young people flee from farming. This leaves our precious rural landscape not cared for by true stewards of the land. Owners who think in terms of seasons and generations, instead of 4th quarter profits. Joel and his family have demonstrated, and openly shared, their experiences, both successes and failures about what it take to have a successful, Earth friendly family farm. If you are thinking about farming this book is not only one you must read - but it is one you must study. Hats off and a standing ovation to the Salatin family for helping show us the way to a better paradigm of food production. | Table of Contents

YOU CAN FARM: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Start and $ucceed in a Farming Enterprise

Joel Salatin, 480ppb.

If you dream of living on a farm this book is required reading to help assure your success. A good test of whether or not you are really cut out for the farm life is the attitude you have after reading this book. Joel does an excellent job laying out the good and the bad of farm life. 

"...a farm life can be a wonderful family experience. The best way to ensure it will be a successful experience is to go into it with as much knowledge as you can gather before you start farming. Reading this book is an excellent place to start." Allan Nation, Editor, Stockman Grass Farmer |Table of Contents

 

SALAD BAR BEEF

Joel Salitin, 368ppb, illustrated & index :

• $30/hr Wages

• No Vet Bills

• Minimal Machinery

• Profit from Small Herds

• Fertilizer & Grain Independence

• "Cheer-leader" Buyers

Joel Salatin, author of Pastured Poultry Profits, gives his step-by-step system of producing clean, healthy, humanely raised, unstressed beef on pastures that are smorgasbord salad bars rather than just grass. Wishing you could do more with that 10 acre pasture than lease it to neighbors? This book shows you how to get a $500/acre return on small farms. In his lively, articulate and insightful writing style, Joel details his tried and proven method that can change the way we raise beef. |Table of Contents

PASTURED POULTRY PROFIT$: Net $25,000 in 6 months on 20 acres

Joel Salatin, 330 ppb Through photos, illustrations and well-written text you learn how the Salatins at Polyface Farm created a successful and satisfying home-based poultry business in rural Virginia. Their well-developed business and marketing methods are models we can all follow to create successful at-home enterprise. Buying chicks, feeding and caring for them, improving the soil, building portable pens, processing and selling to loyal customers. Joel takes you on an exciting journey through the growth of the business. If you are considering an at home business in agriculture, you owe it to yourself to buy this book and study it.

Table of Contents

 

 

 

HOLY COWS & HOG HEAVEN: The Food Buyer's Guide to Farm Friendly Food

Joel Salatin, 134 ppb

Holy Cows and Hog Heaven is written by an honest-to-goodness-dirt-under-the-fingernails, optimistic, clean food farmer to:

• Empower food buyers to pursue positive alternatives to the industrialized food system.

• Bring clean food farmers and their patrons into a teamwork relationship.

• Marry the best of western technology with the soul of the eastern ethics.

• Educate food buyers about productions.

• Create a food system that enhances natures's ecology for the future generations.

Holy Cows and Hog Heaven has one overriding objective:

Encourage every food buyer to embrace the notion that menus are a conscious decision, creating the next generation's world one bite at a time. Table of Contents