I don't have time to write a post for today, so you guys are just going to have to make do with a book giveaway.Today's book giveaway is Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community. This book, by Heather Flores, is not only a great introduction to gardening, but it also turns the whole act of growing food into a social movement.
If you want to learn more about not just permaculture, garden design, using grey water and community gardening but also ideas like seed saving, guerrilla gardening, eating your weeds and living a low-energy lifestyle, this book will get you started. While some people are a little off-put by the oftentimes preachy new-agey writing style, there's still some really great content to get you thinking differently about your yard.
From the Library Journal review by Sue O'Brien:
Certified permaculture designer Flores advocates living an ecologically friendly lifestyle by creating gardens. Following a foreword by Toby Hemenway (Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture), she discusses the identification of garden sites, the water cycle and water conservation, soils and composting, plants, how to save seed, project design, the fostering of community involvement, the inclusion of children in projects, the sharing of information, and activism.
Many of Flores's ideas are for the extremely committed. She advocates dumpster digging, composting human feces, and living life without appliances like refrigerators. She also suggests growing food on land, not necessarily with the landowner's permission, and espouses gray-water conservation techniques that may be illegal in some communities.
While growing your own food is a worthy goal, Flores doesn't always seem to recognize the hard work involved. She also doesn't expand on all of her ideas, but she does offer an extensive list of resources for further research. Flores has an engaging style and is clearly passionate about her subject, and her debut book provides an alternative viewpoint, but it will probably not interest mainstream audiences.
Hmmm. After reading that review, this book sounds perfect for a lot of my readers!
Anyway, if you would like to be entered into the drawing for this book, leave your name in the comments. The giveaway is open until Friday, January 23rd, 6:00 pm PST. I'll be announcing the winner most likely later that evening.
158 comments:
I live in the suburb of a large Canadian West Coast city. Typical of our British cultural inheritance, we are besotted with lawns and decorative gardens.
This year I have planted a fruit tree in the front yard and plan to convert the foundation plantings to growing tomatoes this summer. We have plans to establish raised vegie gardens in our back yard this spring.
I would like to see my front lawn disappear, even though we have most of it in dandelions, for which our neighbours hate us. Since living here we have not used either pesticides nor herbicides to maintain a semblance of lawn, we just keep it cut. I feel confident that we can raise good crops in our lawn areas, without worry of residual poisons in outr soil. GEM
Please dont enter me in this- I already have the book. I bought it when you said we were going to do a bookclub on it. It is a good book- a tad difficult to stay focused in, but I like Ms. Flores delivery on the subject. Anyway I encourage everyone to read it.
We have no front lawn to speak of, and our back yard is a communal one with washing lines in the middle of it. Living in England does make this a bit difficult sometimes. I miss giant useless lawns to convert.
I would love to win the book, though. It would be a great resource for our Women's Environmental Group AND our Transition Southampton group--garden sharing might be a future project, and it would be great if we could make a huge visual statement with it.
Are any of your towns in the US talking about transition? www.transitiontowns.org/ Just wondering.... a lot of the homesteader movements would fit in so well, and would be more inclusive within the community.
I'm interested!
Thanks for offering this giveaway.
This looks like a great book. Please enter me in the drawing.
I'd like food instead of a lawn :)
We have 2 acreas out back and my garde is not very big. I really want to do more. This might help.
Please include me in your drawing.
Thanks for the opportunity to win! I've been wanting this book since you first mentioned it.
Jan
Sounds interesting!
Sounds fabulous! Thanks!
Wow, this sounds like a wonderful book. Thanks for posting. :)
Sounds great! I've been considering converting my front lawn over to perennial peanut and am currently trying to prepare a raised bed in the backyard and have planted pots of veggies. Thanks!
I'm interested. Removing "lawn" from my yard is one of my New Year's resolutions. - Carmen
This book looks great! Getting a veggie garden going is top on my list of things-to-do this year!
Even if I don't win, I will have to check the library for this book, it seems just the kind of thing I am interested in
I'm in!
Thanks!
Count me in please! I've been gradually doing this for a while and just got my hubby on board! The potential for change is immense.
Put me in, please. I'm actually planning on turning the one sunny spot on my front lawn into an herb garden this summer, and inviting my neighbors to take what they need. It might save me from taking basil bouquets everywhere I go this summer.Last summer, it grew so productively that I was literally showing up at people houses with bouquets of the stuff.
Please enter me in the drawing.
What a great giveaway. This year we moved into a house that actually has space for a veggie garden adn we want to start a one. Please enter me because I could really use this. Thanks.
Oh, I am SO in on this. Of course, I may have to use the book to (metaphorically) beat my husband with.
Fern
What a great giveaway! Count me in please.
This sounds like a great resource for me as I expand my garden in the backyard and take up more lawn! I could use all the help I can get ;)
Thanks!
Jess
Please enter me in this contest. :-)
Sounds wonderful, thanks =)
Name's George, by the way.
This sounds like a great book. We're doing the urban homesteader thing for a few more years until my husband graduates and we can afford to own some land, so this would be a wonderful resource.
Sign me up please!
I am in...I have wanted to read this one for quite a while!
I would love this book!
This would be a great book to have in my library!
I've been eying up this book on Amazon.com for a while. Thanks for the chance to win :-)
I would be very interested in reading this book... please enter me. :)
I'm planting food and minimizing my lawn this year. Pick me, pick me! (:
I'm planting my tropical 12 acres lawn in bananas, macadamia, citrus, and some veggies, come on down and join the party.
Global crude oil production peaked in 2008.
The media, governments, world leaders, and public should focus on this issue.
Global crude oil production had been rising briskly until 2004, then plateaued for four years. Because oil producers were extracting at maximum effort to profit from high oil prices, this plateau is a clear indication of Peak Oil.
Then in August and September of 2008 while oil prices were still very high, global crude oil production fell nearly one million barrels per day, clear evidence of Peak Oil (See Rembrandt Koppelaar, Editor of "Oil Watch Monthly," December 2008, page 1) http://www.peakoil.nl/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/2008_december_oilwatch_monthly.pdf.
Peak Oil is now.
Credit for accurate Peak Oil predictions (within a few years) goes to the following (projected year for peak given in parentheses):
* Association for the Study of Peak Oil (2007)
* Rembrandt Koppelaar, Editor of “Oil Watch Monthly” (2008)
* Tony Eriksen, Oil stock analyst; Samuel Foucher, oil analyst; and Stuart Staniford, Physicist [Wikipedia Oil Megaprojects] (2008)
* Matthew Simmons, Energy investment banker, (2007)
* T. Boone Pickens, Oil and gas investor (2007)
* U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (2005)
* Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Princeton professor and retired shell geologist (2005)
* Sam Sam Bakhtiari, Retired Iranian National Oil Company geologist (2005)
* Chris Skrebowski, Editor of “Petroleum Review” (2010)
* Sadad Al Husseini, former head of production and exploration, Saudi Aramco (2008)
* Energy Watch Group in Germany (2006)
* Fredrik Robelius, Oil analyst and author of "Giant Oil Fields" (2008 to 2018)
Oil production will now begin to decline terminally.
Within a year or two, it is likely that oil prices will skyrocket as supply falls below demand. OPEC cuts could exacerbate the gap between supply and demand and drive prices even higher.
Independent studies indicate that global crude oil production will now decline from 74 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. During the same time, demand will increase. Oil supplies will be even tighter for the U.S. As oil producing nations consume more and more oil domestically they will export less and less. Because demand is high in China, India, the Middle East, and other oil producing nations, once global oil production begins to decline, demand will always be higher than supply. And since the U.S. represents one fourth of global oil demand, whatever oil we conserve will be consumed elsewhere. Thus, conservation in the U.S. will not slow oil depletion rates significantly.
Alternatives will not even begin to fill the gap. There is no plan nor capital for a so-called electric economy. And most alternatives yield electric power, but we need liquid fuels for tractors/combines, 18 wheel trucks, trains, ships, and mining equipment. The independent scientists of the Energy Watch Group conclude in a 2007 report titled: “Peak Oil Could Trigger Meltdown of Society:”
"By 2020, and even more by 2030, global oil supply will be dramatically lower. This will create a supply gap which can hardly be closed by growing contributions from other fossil, nuclear or alternative energy sources in this time frame."
With increasing costs for gasoline and diesel, along with declining taxes and declining gasoline tax revenues, states and local governments will eventually have to cut staff and curtail highway maintenance. Eventually, gasoline stations will close, and state and local highway workers won’t be able to get to work. We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel and gasoline powered trucks for bridge maintenance, culvert cleaning to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, and roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, large transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables from great distances. With the highways out, there will be no food coming from far away, and without the power grid virtually nothing modern works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated building systems.
Documented here:
http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html
http://survivingpeakoil.blogspot.com/
I was thinking about this book! We are in the process of converting our backyard space to an "edible estate".
Just discovered your blog and I LOVE it! Please throw my name in the hat! ~Stephanie
I'm in :D
Sounds like a great book!
Best wishes, Kristin, Norway
I'd love to be on the list to win. Our urban back yard is mainly shade in the back, but I've planted our sunny side yard for two years now, and am eyeing up the front yard now. At the very least, it's going to be more perennials than grass in the next year or two.
Love it! With 2 acres, I have a big garden, but I also love squeezing in plants in other places, too. It is on my reading list - but I hope I win it!
I would love to be added to the list! This sounds like a great book.
I would love to be entered in this (currently trying to convince my fiancée to ditch the grass and grow something useful... plus it would have the added bonus of freaking out our borderline OCD neighbour)
Sign me up. We just moved to this house in May and we've been planning to convert a large section of the front yard to edibles, but we don't really have a plan. Could use some advice.
My friend is trying to get me to buy a house in her neighborhood so she, "Won't be the only one who has veggies in the front lawn." I'd love to win the drawing. :)
looks like a good read!
What a coincidence! This past like weekend we spent hauling manure and mixing it with leaves in the first installment of creating veggie beds in our front lawn. There is a lot of work to do, but lots of fun too. In our desert like climate, it seems so foolish to waste our precious little water on grass. I would love to get further insights on these ideas by reading this book. By the way, how is your hair? I took the challenge with you, and mine is moderately gross right now.
We just bought a house so for the first time in years I'll have space for a real garden. I've had this book on reserve at the library for ages, but haven't made any progress up the queue, so I'm assuming it's a lost cause.
We are trying to do this more and more every year. Thanks for the chance to win a book that would help us!
This book would be inspirational for our local FNL group. We like getting together but have only had edible garden bike tours so far.
count me in!
Sounds like a good read!
We're in the planning stages of swapping every bit of lawn possible into productive gardens and/or xeriscaping- this book would be a tremendous help, to give us some more ideas and strategies. Thanks for doing the giveaway!
Sounds interesting. Count me in!!
I have no lawn, just two square foot boxes I cleared and built on a nasty slope. Please enter me in this contest, maybe it would give me more ideas for areas I can use. BTW, peeing your garden REALLY does keep bears away. This is from someone who had bear prints through her radishes, carrots, and salad mix before CC came up with that precious gem. And my personal favorite.
We just moved to a new house with a huge lawn, and a few overgrown planting boxes. I really want to be able to grow my own food, but I've never lived anywhere with a garden I have to take care of so I'm totally intimidated.
This books just sounds more awesome each time I hear about it!
Please enter me in!
I wouldn't mind setting an example in my neighborhood. Sounds like a great idea, please count me in.
Hi Crunchy! I'd love to read this book, it completely looks like it would be right up my alley.
Enter me too, please! Getting more community-involved is something that is on my list o' things to do this spring.
Thanks,Susan
Sign me up! I'm in the process of considering where and how to plant more food in my yard, and I'll take any resources I can get. :-)
Count me in, please.
Please include me in the drawing - I'm going to take over lawn care duties from hubby(with force if necessary!). He likes the overly manicured golf course look, but it's my turn now, and I want food!
I'm in
Love your blog! This book sounds great!
-Maureen
I'm interested too :) I'm trying to start growing more things but don't really know where to start :)
count me in!!
i am so down!
I am in the process of buying my first home and this would be great preparation. I can't wait to have my own garden to grow my own veggies!
Brynne
Please enter me in your drawing.
I have converted about 50% of my lawn into garden with a veggie garden in the back, and apple and cherry trees, as well as blueberries in the front. I grow pole beans and squash between the blueberries, and corn along the front fence. It is BEAUTIFUL in the summer!
I want to plant a sustainable garden in my backyard, but I have no idea where to start. This book would be great for my family. Thanks for the giveaway.
(Jennifer)
Oh, you can bet I'd love this book. We're planning on putting in an attractive veggie garden in our front yard this Spring.
Oh, another book I would love to have!
Currently making plans to "downsize" from a London decked garden to a rural smallholding....
Megan - I am currently reading The Transition Handboook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience, and am really enjoying it.
I plan on writing about it soon, but there are some people who are doing some transition town work...
I want that book!
Count me in! Thanks!
I'm doing okay on the gardening part (I think), but the social movement part... not so much. :) Enter me, please!
Would love to read this!
I would love the book. We have a small garden but room to do much more. Plus we have a neighbor I wouldn't mind driving up the wall (she leaves her very large dog roam free & it digs in my garden).
Sounds great. Thanks for the chance.
Oh goody. Love a giveaway. With so much wasted green space where I live it would be wonderful to have an edible garden.
Please count me in. Thank you. :)
Thanks for the link to Amazon so I could read others' comments/rating. Many complained that the book's focus was about teaching about turning lawns into gardens, but then didn't teach HOW to turn our lawn into a garden.
So, is does this book teach, or at least show us HOW to turn lawns into gardens, or does it just talk about it? If it's the latter, thanks, but let someone else win it 8^)
If you ever give away perennial veggies or fruit bushes/trees, I'm entering those for sure!
I would love to read this and I have a few friends I would pass it along to also. One is currently trying to figure out what to do with her lawn (well dirt front yard).
We will be searching for a new home soon and a yard is the most important thing I am looking for. (we currently live in an apt.) I can't wait to have a garden!
That sounds like it would be a great resource for ideas and planning. Please enter me in the drawing. Thanks!
Each year my garden in my smalll yard gets a little bigger and the lawn reduces. I couldn't get rid of the whole thing. Where would be play soccer? But more is good.
Sign me up!
Thanks!
My husband would love to dig up all our lawn for a garden but I'm not sure our landlords would love him for it. Instead we've planted a couple of fruit trees on it;-)
I'm hoping to start converting my lawn this year, I'm in!
This would be great! We have 1 1/2 acres and we'd love to turn the grassy yard areas into a garden! Thanks for adding me to the drawing.
I would like to be entered - thank you!
I would love this book. I am starting a square foot garden in my front yard this spring!
Please include me in this drawing too. I have been struggling with our garden and need help.
I'd LOVE to win this book! I've been on a journey of greening for a while, and this would be great for giiving me the inspiration I need to do the front garden!
Pick me! Pick me! But in all sincerity, I currently live in the midst of Californian suburban hell, and am hungry to propose some changes in the community. I am annoyed at the water wasted in order to maintain lawns that were never meant to grow here. Maybe I would convince some other folks if I had more resources like this to use for information!
I need this book!
Melissa
I'm in the beginning stages of ripping up lawn and replacing it with something a little more useful. This book sounds like a fantastic read. Please enter me!
When I was a teenager, a Cambodian family moved in up the street in our little pocket of suburbia. They put in at least corn in the front yard. I remember folks being a bit puzzled, but chalking it up to cultural differences. Nobody made a big fuss. I'm planning to put my foodstuffs mostly into my back yard, but will overseed the front yard with clover - the better for the rabbits to snack on! I would love to have this book as a reference for more Clever Ideas. Thanks for running this contest, Crunch!
in reading this book.
Wow!!! Thanks for posting this!! This IS perfect for me!! It sounds so wonderful!
kayceewilliams at gmail dot com
Sweet - enter me in the draw please!
Moved to town from an acreage 4 yrs ago. Hate it! Have been looking for an acreage, not quite so far out to get back out of town. Just told DH, this past weekend, if we don't move this yr (have been looking for about a yr) then I'm lasagna-ing the entire yard!! Timely reading.
Oh yeah, this book is right up my alley! I'm in for the drawing!
enter, enter, enter.
Please throw my name in for consideration. I would love to read this then pass it on.
This is a book I've considered buying several times...would be nice to add it to my library for free!
Lee in KY
This is on my list of 6 books that I've promised myself I'll read this year, so please enter me in the drawing. (And thanks for mentioning the book. I think I first saw it on your blog a while back.)
hope all is well.
I'm in! I've been wondering about this book since the book club about it. Thanks!
Hi! This looks like a really interesting book. Thanks for the chance to win.
Brandi
lawyer180@yahoo.com
Yes, enter me please! I have grown veggies in my yard for the past several years. In face, I don't even have grass in my current yard because it's so shady!
I love this book! I've checked it out from the library a bunch of times and would love my own copy. I won a blanket last year but I hope I'm eligible for this drawing too.
l'd love to enter to win this book.
I've been pondering this book - wondering if it would really be of use to me, a fairly dedicated gardner from way back - but I am intregued by the community garden aspect. I participated in a 3 family "community garden" last year with varried success, and would like to see what food for thought this book had. pun intended I guess.
The book sounds terrific!
pick me, pick me, pick me....please.
We bought our first house this fall and I'm so excited to chop up the back yard for a vegetable garden. I'm also looking forward to composting! This book would be great.
Put me in. The new lifestyle could be very aptly called "Half-Farmer Half-X" way of life.
Mr. Naoki Shiomi, is the originator of the "Half-Farmer, Half-X" (半农半X) concept and authored the book carrying the same title, and founded the "Half-Farmer, Half-X Research Center” at Ayabe, Kyoto, Japan. Half-Farming, Half-X Research Center Official Website http://www.towanoe.jp/xseed/
The phrase, "Half-Farmer, Half-X" (半农半X) is drawing much attention as the new key phrase for a lifestyle, a way of life, for the 21st century. "Half-Farmer" refers to "a lifestyle with a touch of farming," and the X in "Half-X" refers to an individual's profession / passion / purpose or social mission or natural calling. The synergy is inspiring / enlightening to the individual’s pursuit of wealth / health / happiness, while making real contributions to the world.
This concept can form an excellent alliance with Permaculture (the most famous Australian cultural export, courtesy of Bill Mollison). By the way, someone once said, to the effect, that if you do not know anything about Permaculture, it is high time you get interested, in the coming convergence of three crises: Food / Fuel / Finance!
Due to its transformational nature of the alliance, I would prefer to call those joining in the movement as TransFarmers ….. transforming themselves, the earth and the world.
Can anyone think of a better single English word for the lifestyle so described?
See more details available at www.sohominium.blogspot.com.
Eric Y.F. Lim
I live in the southwestern desert, yet I've planted many different edible plants in my backyard. I know I could do even better, and would love tips on how to build an "edible" community. I've also spoken to fellow employees and suggested that we build a community where each grows a variety of edible plants, taking a piece of the communal "pie" so that we all get a healthy smorgasbord of fruits and vegetables. Yes, this takes advance planning, but well worth the effort. I would love to read this book in order to improve my own edible arden and to build community in my neighborhood and within my professional community.
I would so love to win this and give it to my husband. He would love it.
Looks like a great book! Count me in.
I really want this book! Perfect giveaway since now is the time many of us gardeners are putting into action this spring's garden plans.
sign me up!
I'd love this book. We have 1/3 acre of land in a suburb of Los Angeles. We let our lawn go because it wastes so much water. We want to do something more productive with the land and are very interested in growing our own food. Unfortunately, we don't know anything about gardening. This book would be a real life-saver for us.
-- Janell
Charlene:
I would LOVE this book.
I've been wishing I could have done the book club
count me in! Thanks gain Crunchy!
I'd love this book. I have a big lawn that once was farm land. It has good fertile soil. I have been thinking about ways to build my garden bigger.
Thanks!
Caron in MA
Please enter me in the drawing. Thanks for doing this and all your give aways
ELP
This would be such an asset for anyone to have in their library. My husband and I had been talking about doing something like this but we have no idea on how to get started. Please enter me for the drawing. Thank you so much.
This is precisely what I want to do to our teeny yard! Thanks for the resource!
Please count me in.
Ooooh, count me in please!
I'd love to win this!
I'd love to win this--I've been wanting to read it for quite awhile.
i'd love to be entered into the drawing! thanks:)
Sounds like a fascinating book!
I really need this kind of help. Thanks for the chance.
In in!
Been wondering about this book... maybe I'll be lucky and avoid retail!
Yay! I'm a veggie gardener, and a lot of my designing is based in permaculture, but I don't have this book yet!
Thanks for the great blog! Keep it crunchy!
Count me in! we do all local food in Minneapolis! japansara [at] hotmail dot com
count me in too! i plan on starting a garden soon
sign me up!
Please add me to your list.
Count me in. Thank you.
Sounds like a great book!! I'd love to read it. Please enter me.
Please enter me in for this book. We cleared out a third of our yard for a future garden and can really use this one.
please enter. me in your drawing
I would very much like the book, I am on my fourth year of trying to convince hubby to let me have a garden. Every year I get exactly two pots and two tomato plants, and every year I fail. I think that if I had some inground garden or even square foot garden, I might grow something. Also, we just moved to a house with a bit of land, half an acre, and I want to tear out the front bushes and plant something like blueberries and need help convicing hubby without having to try in a pot for four years!!!
Please enter me for the drawing. Thank you!
I already have a category named after this book. I might as well attempt to get myself a copy eh? ;)
~Tara
I have not real Lawn but an little deck I would like to do something cool with
I would love to check this out :) Thanks for the giveaway :D
anastasia-at-mediamafia-dot-org
Oh, I've had that on my wish list for almost a year! I'm especially interested in water conservation while growing vegetables, because we get less than 2 inches of rain per year here.
Hey, I'd be interested in this book. I've been thinking about doing this for a while. I wonder if this book is in our library.
I would love to get this book. I bought a rental property about 3 years ago with the intention of eventually moving there. 'Bout 2 miles from my house,and almost an acre of land. Year 1: like an idiot, mowed the whole thing, just like the previous owner had done. Year 2: Stopped mowing the back and planted a vegetable garden on part of it. Year 3: Stopped mowing the side and enlarged veggie garden and planted fruit trees. Can't believe I wasted all that time mowing. Year 4: Meningioma brain tumor diagnosis (large but operable and very survivable, surgery next week). However priorities have changed and Year 4 may include not mowing the front, and moving there soon. Can't believe I wasted all that time mowing.
Angela
I would like to read this.
rsgrandinetti@yahoo.com
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