The New Horse-Powered Farm – Book Review

Review by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The New Horse-Powered Farm
Tools and Systems for the Small-Scale Sustainable Market Grower
by Stephen Leslie
Foreword by Lynn Miller
ISBN: 9781603584166
RRP: £28.99
Paperback, 346 pages
Published by Chelsea Green Publishing on 25 July 2013

For many farmers, particularly those working organically, the financial and ecological cost of fuel used in farm machinery is a real concern. Including working horses in the farming mix can bring a satisfying solution, offering a viable model for a sustainable, resilient small farm. The New Horse-Powered Farm presents all the information a small-scale farmer will need to incorporate draft horses into the farm’s working day.

Using horsepower on the farm, says author Stephen Leslie, is better for the land and better for the soul. “From an ecological standpoint, it’s just so clean, versus burning fossil fuel and the compaction you get with a tractor,” he said. “But on that other level, there is just this unending learning curve that keeps you engaged… This book is not about trying to go back to some idyllic past. It is designed to be a manual to help us move a few steps forward to a more sustainable future.”

The popularity of TV shows such as the BBC’s The Victorian, Edwardian and Wartime Farms demonstrates that there is considerable interest in more traditional ways of working the land. For anyone seriously interested in draft horses and how they can contribute to a closed-loop, resilient farm, The New Horse-Powered Farm will be an essential resource.

Included:

• Getting started with workhorses

• The merits of different draft breeds

• Various training systems for the horse and teamster

• Haying with horses, seeding crops and raising small grains

• In-depth coverage of tools and systems

• Managing a woodlot, farm economics, education, agritourism and more

Stephen Leslie and the methods outlined in his book have been featured in The New York Times. For the past 17 years he has earned his living by farming and gardening with draft horses. He currently manages an organic farm in Vermont.

This is a very detailed book on the use of the horse in farming and market gardening operation today and can be regarded right now already as the handbook for the modern horse-powered farm.

Unlike John Seymour in “The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency” when dealing with the use of horses on farms where he was but looking at the “old” breeds and doing it the very old-fashioned way this book looks at new(er) breeds of draft horses predominately and at more modern implements for horse-farming, many of which seem to have first seen their light of day on Amish farms.

Considering the fact that farming with large tractors and combines and such like is slowly but surely, aside from being not environmentally sustainable, heading towards its end as the cost of fuel and the amount of fuel those huge machines use will soon make them too expensive and thus the horse will, in due course, come back into its own. This book will then, as already now for those transitioning, a most valuable resource and reference.

The book contains lots of photos and illustrations and is well written making it pleasure to simply read as well. Together wish the listed resources and the case studies this must be the ultimate modern guide – so far – to working with horses in farming, market gardening and forestry.

As someone who is advocating a return to the working horse on the farm it is a book I am most happy to recommend.

© 2013

Up Tunket Road – Book Review

Review by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Up Tunket Road
The Education of a Modern Homesteader
by Philip Ackerman-Leist
Illustrations by Erin Ackerman-Leist
312 pages, paperback, 22.6 x 15 x 2.3 cm
Published May 2010 by Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 978-1603580335

Ever since Thoreau’s Walden, the image of the American homesteader has been of someone getting away from civilization, of forging an independent life in the country. Yet if this were ever true, what is the nature and reality of homesteading in the media-saturated, hyper-connected 21st century?

For seven years Philip Ackerman-Leist and his wife, Erin, lived without electricity or running water in an old cabin in the beautiful but remote hills of western New England. Slowly forging their own farm and homestead, they took inspiration from their experiences among the mountain farmers of the Tirolean Alps and were guided by their Vermont neighbors, who taught them about what it truly means to live sustainably in the postmodern homestead – not only to survive, but to thrive in a fragmented landscape and a fractured economy.

Up Tunket Road is the inspiring true story of a young couple who embraced the joys of simple living while also acknowledging its frustrations and complexities.

Ackerman-Leist writes with humor about the inevitable foibles of setting up life off the grid – from hauling frozen laundry uphill to getting locked in the henhouse by their ox.

But he also weaves an instructive narrative that contemplates the future of simple living. His is not a how-to guide, but something much richer and more important – a tale of discovery that will resonate with readers who yearn for a better, more meaningful life, whether they live in the city, country, or somewhere in between.

The author also makes a great point as to homesteading being a state of the mind, to some great degree, and that we must homestead everywhere and this is exactly the same belief that I have had for years.

While not everything is possible to the suburban and urban homesteader, as would be for the rural one, most of the aspects of homesteading still apply regardless and with the right mindset it will enable us who thus homestead to live lighter on the Earth.

Philip Ackerman-Leist and his wife, Erin, farmed in the South Tirol region of the Alps and North Carolina before beginning their twelve-year homesteading venture in Pawlet, Vermont. Ackerman-Leist is a professor at Green Mountain College, where he established the college farm and sustainable agriculture curriculum and is Director of the Green Mountain College Farm & Food Project.

Love the book...

© 2010

THE BIOCHAR DEBATE – Book Review

Review by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

THE BIOCHAR DEBATE
Schumacher Briefing No.16
by James Bruges
published by Green Books November 2009
ISBN 978 1 900322 67 6
210mm x 148mm 96pp in b&w paperback
£8.00
available in the USA via Chelsea Green Books

“There is one way we could save ourselves [from global heating] and that is through the massive burial of charcoal. It would mean farmers turning all their agricultural waste - which contains carbon that plants have spent the summer sequestering - into non-biodegradable charcoal and burying it in the soil ... this scheme would need no subsidy: the farmer would make a profit.” – James Lovelock

Charcoal-making is one of the oldest industrial technologies, and in the last decade there has been a growing wave of excitement about its potential for combating climate change.

This is because burying biochar, that is to say, fine-grained charcoal, is thought to be a highly effective way in which to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

In addition, so usage seems to show, it can increase the yield of food crops and the ability of soil to retain moisture.

Some people are concerned, though, that awarding carbon credits for biochar could have seriously damaging outcomes, and I can but agree with them.

The Biochar Debate agrees with this but describes an alternative approach to carbon credits called the Carbon Maintenance Fund (CMF) that avoids the dangers and pitfalls of the credits.

This would give every government the incentive to enable its businesses, farmers and individuals to increase their country’s carbon pool.

It is based on remote sensing by satellite, a tried and tested technology, which would be applied globally each year to measure the increase or decrease of carbon in plants, soil and roots.

The Biochar Debate sets out experimental and scientific aspects of biochar in the context of global warming, the global economy and negotiations for the future of the Kyoto protocol.

It concludes with suggestions for how any individual – you and me – can make our contribution to saving the Planet.

While it all sounds very nice indeed the question that stands out first and foremost in my mind is “where is all the material for the biochar come from?” And the other question is, obviously, “how well does this work.”

We must also not forget, and the author did not either, in fact, the living carbon sinks, the woods and forests, in my opinion, but then I am a forester.

We would not be in this dilemma today had politicians listened when already in the 1890s scientists warned that basing the economy on fossil fuels, a finite resource, was dangerous, with regards to pollution as well as to the fact that one day the supply would come to an end.

Had we then, and in subsequent decades, listened and begun developing renewables we would, more than likely, not be in the state that we are in today.

Had we also listened to those that were standing against the chemicalization of farming soils would be in a much better health and shape and would absorb carbon properly.

In addition to that we have created a consumer economy and -society where everything is made just no longer to last, where everything has obsolescence after a few years factored in, that we must buy new every few year. This is yet another totally unsustainable way of living. And that aside from the way that advertising leads people to want new things every few years if not even months, and the way people go through cell phones is one example here.

When a book that I am reviewing has about as many Post-It Notes stuck as annotations to the pages then there are pages in the book this is either a sign that it is a good book or one that requires a lot of comments because of errors or what-have-you.

The Biochar Debate falls into the former rather than the latter category and the notes are, in fact, primarily for my own future references.

The author makes a great and convincing point for the use of biochar as a soil enhancer and as a means of extracting carbon (and other greenhouse gases) from the atmosphere.

Remains but the question as to why nothing is being done so far. We do not have another 1,000 years.

The author's point against, basically, carbon trading and carbon credits and especially here about not incorporating biochar into that are well made and very valid indeed.

Carbon credits and the trade in them is nothing but a trade in modern day indulgences permitting rich countries to carry on business as usual with emissions buying credits from the poor nations. What a farce.

The author, James Bruges, was brought up in Kashmir until the age of twelve. He worked as an architect in London, Sudan and India before setting up the practice of Bruges Tozer Partnership with Howard Tozer in Bristol. His books include Sustainability and the Bristol Urban Village Initiative, The Little Earth Book, The Big Earth Book and part of What About China?. He participates in FEASTA and the Quaker Economics Issues Group. With his wife Marion he

keeps in touch with and visits Gandhian NGOs in southern India.

The Biochar Debate is another one of those books that should be made compulsory reading for politicians the world over but especially those in the developed world and here especially the USA and Britain. They may just learn something here in how the fouled up, their predecessors for sure, here and how they must not permit the fossil fuel lobby to block things yet again. And that aside from the fact that oil is way to valuable to be burned.

© 2010

Waiting on a Train – Book Review

Review by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Waiting on a Train
The Embattled Future of Passenger Rail Service
A Year Spent Riding Across America
by James McCommons
304 pages paperback 6” x 9”
ISBN: 9781603580649
Published by: Chelsea Green Publishing October 20, 2009
Price: $17.95

The book “Waiting on a Train” is the story of a passenger rail journey by the author across the United States via the Amtrak long-distance passenger rail service during an entire year, and the author's observations and also the various talks he has had with people involved with the railroads.

From reading this book it becomes rather evident that Britain made the same mistakes as regards to the railroad system the USA did, though some years later under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher,

The only difference between the USA and Britain is that the UK destroyed a relatively well working and affordable passenger rail system and created a “private” one via franchises, none of which, bar one or two, run well, on time, and with value for money.

“Waiting on a Train” is a well written book in which the author, James McCommons, makes the valid call for the resurrecting the nearly dead long-distance passenger rail service in America and also for better goods trains.

Being a non-car driver and -owner I am a great lover and advocate of trains, passenger and good, and this book speaks to my innermost being.

The only way passenger rail services work and will work properly ever at a decent cost to the traveling public, that is to say, fares that the ordinary person can afford if they are in public ownership. Yes, we are talking here about the “N” word, the word called “nationalization”.

Only a proper nationalized public passenger rail service that can offer low fares – even if this be supported by taxes – will ever encourage people to leave their cars at home and use the train, for commuting and, especially, for long-distance travel, or to entice them to desert the plane for the train. For me there would never be a contest; I prefer the train to the plane any time.

The old, the nationalized British railroad service, British Rail, worked just on principle similar to that when it came to passenger transportation at least. That was until British Rail (BR) was destroyed by the government of Margaret Thatcher.

Are the railways the answer to our transportation needs?

The answer, short and sweet, to this, is “yes”, but to all intents and purposes, so it least it would seem, only a nationalized system of sorts will make this possible.

The entire railways system – in the UK and elsewhere – should be in public ownership and have no private shareholders of any kind. Private shareholders, in the main, when it comes to passenger rail systems, utilities, and whatever else, put profit before anything else, and that almost always.

Trains are green and outperform cars and planes alike.

I have greatly enjoyed this book and can all but agree with the “findings” of the author as far as the need for a nationalized railway system in the USA (and elsewhere) and the sooner this is understood by the powers-that-be and citizens alike the better for all of us and especially the environment.

Well run trains at affordable fares will be a way that people can be enticed out of the cars and even out of planes and the environmental footprint of an individual's rail journey as compared to the same journey by car would be that much smaller.

Now let's hear it for the train.

© 2009

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