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Eliot Coleman From Amazon.com Choosing locally grown organic food is a sustainable living trend that’s taken hold throughout North America. Celebrated farming expert Eliot Coleman helped start this movement with The New Organic Grower published 20 years ago. He continues to lead the way, pushing the limits of the harvest season while working his world-renowned organic farm in Harborside, Maine. Now, with his long-awaited new book, The Winter Harvest Handbook, anyone can have access to his hard-won experience. Gardeners and farmers can use the innovative, highly successful methods Coleman describes in this comprehensive handbook to raise crops throughout the coldest of winters. Building on the techniques that hundreds of thousands of farmers and gardeners adopted from The New Organic Grower and Four-Season Harvest, this new book focuses on growing produce of unparalleled freshness and quality in customized unheated or, in some cases, minimally heated, movable plastic greenhouses. Coleman offers clear, concise details on greenhouse construction and maintenance, planting schedules, crop management, harvesting practices, and even marketing methods in this complete, meticulous, and illustrated guide. Readers have access to all the techniques that have proven to produce higher-quality crops on Coleman’s own farm. His painstaking research and experimentation with more than 30 different crops will be valuable to small farmers, homesteaders, and experienced home gardeners who seek to expand their production seasons. A passionate advocate for the revival of small-scale sustainable farming, Coleman provides a practical model for supplying fresh, locally grown produce during the winter season, even in climates where conventional wisdom says it “just can’t be done.”
Peak Oil Resources Review: Winter farming? Being a Michigan transplant from Virginia, I have often been struck by the apparent "need" to move farther south (or just south for that matter) in order to get into good growing country. The techniques of the Winter Harvest Handbook prove otherwise. That Coleman can successfully farm in the depths of winter (in Maine of all places) without unnecessary inputs of fossil fuels, indicates that his techniques have the veracity of truth backing them up. These methods are animated as much by what philosophers call the Natural Law as it is by the outcomes of experimental design. Doctors and scientists often ask "Where's the data"? It can be found in this book, and in the various restaurants, farmer's markets, and homes of the multitudes that are fed by these techniques. Not only is it organic, but it resurrects cold weather farming techniques that have nearly been forgotten. The data that supports these efforts is here...it is convincing... and it rests with the results. I would be remiss if I didn't mention my enjoyment of Coleman's writing. Naturally, I have found immeasurable value in the facts and options suggested in the Winter Harvest Handbook. His manner of illustrating these concepts and philosophies maintains a character that is disarming. While it is clear that he is a committed advocate for deep organic farming, Eliot has a manner of communicating his hard-earned wisdom and experience in a way that is not off-putting or "Wholier than thou" (to borrow a phrase from the book, complete with intentional misspelling). I suppose it is not too much of a stretch to suggest that Eliot has a genuine gift for what I can only describe as a grandfatherly manner of instruction. I could carry on at length about this book, but I would only manage to do an injustice to Eliot's work. Suffice it to say that my firm approval of this work is found in letting my local CSA farm aware of these techniques, while also figuring out how to implement them on a much smaller scale at home.
Eliot Coleman has over 30 years experience in all aspects of organic farming, including field vegetables, greenhouse vegetables, rotational grazing of cattle and sheep, and range poultry. He is the author of The New Organic Grower (Chelsea Green, 1989, revised, expanded second edition, 1995), Four Season Harvest (Chelsea Green, 1992, revised, expanded second edition, 1999) and The Winter Harvest Manual. He has contributed chapters to three scientific books on organic agriculture and has written extensively on the subject since 1975. He also wrote the foreward to Keeping Food Fresh: Old World Techniques and Recipes (1999), by the gardeners and farmers of Terre Vivant. During his careers as a commercial market gardener, the director of agricultural research projects, and as a teacher and lecturer on organic gardening he has studied, practiced and perfected his craft. He served for two years as the Executive Director of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements and was an advisor to the US Department of Agriculture during their landmark 1979-80 study, Report and Recommendations on Organic Farming. He has conducted study tours of organic farms, market gardens, orchards, and vineyards in Europe and has successfully combined European ideas with his own to develop and popularize a complete system of tools and equipment for organic vegetable growers. He shares that expertise through his lectures and writings, and has served as a tool consultant to a number of companies. He presently consults and designs tools for Johnny's Selected Seeds. With his wife Barbara Damrosch, he was the host of the TV series Gardening Naturally on The Learning Channel. He and Barbara presently operate a commercial year-round market garden, in addition to horticultural research projects, at Four Season Farm in Harborside, Maine. For more information visit fourseasonfarm.com.
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The
Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep
Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses