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Tritt ein in eine Welt voller Geschichten

Hören und Lesen

Zach Loeks

Start a peaceful revolution by planting an edible ecosystem and sharing the experience with your neighbors

Humans have always thrived in rich, diverse, edible ecosystems. Yet most cities and suburbs are blanketed by lawns, ornamentals, and a lack of biodiversity, let alone anything edible. It is within these sterile landscapes that seeds of an edible ecosystem lie.

The Edible Ecosystem Solution is a comprehensive, practical guidebook that looks at underutilized spaces to reveal the many opportunities for landscape transformation that are both far-reaching and immediately beneficial and enjoyable. Contents include:

 • Hundreds of full-color infographics, illustrations, and photographs that clearly outline the principles and concepts of edible landscape design and benefits
 • How to get started with as little as 25 square feet of land
 • How to transition a garden plot into a place of edible abundance and an edible biodiversity hot spot, living laboratory, and a source point for transitioning and transforming community and culture
 • Choosing appropriate plants for insects, wildlife, and food production
 • Scaling up and networking backyard edible ecosystems at the neighborhood level and beyond to build community food security and resilience.

The Edible Ecosystem Solution is for everyone with access to a bit of yard, a desire for food security, biodiversity, and a beautiful and resilient community, and for anyone who wants to reclaim humanity's place in a rich, abundant, edible ecosystem.

Greg Peterson

New Society Publishers

Mother Earth News Wiser Living Series

The Edible Ecosystem Solution: Growing Biodiversity in Your Backyard and Beyond

Rob Avis

Michelle Avis

Takota Coen

“A fresh, integrative, and holistic perspective on how to orientate oneself to the process of establishing your dreams and visions on the land.” —Richard Perkins, author of Regenerative Agriculture

Building Your Permaculture Property offers a revolutionary holistic method to overcome overwhelm in the complex process of resilient land design. It distills the authors’ decades of experience as engineers, farmers, educators, and consultants into a five-step process complete with principles, practices, templates, and workflow tools to help you: • Clarify your vision, values, and resources 
 • Diagnose your land and resources for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats 
 • Design your land and resources to meet your vision and values 
 • Implement the right design to enhance your strengths and improve your weakest resource 
 • Establish benchmarks to monitor the sustainability and success of your development. 

 When designing a regenerative permaculture property, too many land stewards suffer from option paralysis, a lack of integrated holistic design, fruitless trial-and-error attempts, wasted money, and the frustration that results from too much information and no context.

Building Your Permaculture Property is the essential guide for everyone looking to cut through the noise and establish an ecologically regenerative, financially sustainable, enjoyable, and thriving permaculture property, anywhere in the world.

 “Highlights the need for permaculture design thinking in creating resilient, regenerative, landscapes and communities. Through this work, Rob, Michelle, and Takota make a valuable contribution to the ongoing evolution of permaculture thinking and action.” —David Holmgren, permaculture co-originator

 “Every farm, every ranch, and every homestead can benefit from thinking deeper about how human intent engages with the places we’re blessed to call home.” —Michael Phillips, author of The Holistic Orchard

Adam Farnsworth

Building Your Permaculture Property: A Five-Step Process to Design and Develop Land

Dan Chiras

Grow vegetables year-round in a greenhouse powered only by solar energy 

Originally developed in China to feed millions, Chinese greenhouses are earth-sheltered, solar-heated, east-west oriented, intelligently glazed, and well-insulated. They have proven highly effective in growing warm-weather vegetables and fruits like green peppers and tomatoes in cold climates through fall, winter, and early spring using passive solar energy as the sole heat source. 

The Chinese Greenhouse is a full-color comprehensive guide to these passive solar greenhouses for self-sufficiency and growing year-round in soil or aquaponic grow beds with no additional heat. Coverage includes: 

• How to design, build, and operate a Chinese greenhouse 

• How to improve performance via short-term and long-term heat banking 

• How to provide additional heat to make your greenhouse operate even more effectively 

• How to cool the greenhouse during the summer. 

Become a more self-sufficient gardener, growing and harvesting a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables year-round, with your own Chinese greenhouse.

The Chinese Greenhouse: Design and Build a Low-Cost, Passive Solar Greenhouse

Fedor Lazutin

The updated bestselling guide to laid-back beekeeping for all, naturally! 
 
 Are you a beginner beekeeper curious about bees or a practicing beekeeper looking for natural alternatives that work? Then this book is for you! 
 
 In the second edition of the bestselling beekeeping guide Keeping Bees with a Smile , Fedor Lazutin, one of Europe's most successful natural beekeepers, shares the bee-friendly approach to apiculture that is fun, healthful, rewarding, and accessible to all. This new edition includes dozens of color photographs, new hive management techniques, and an updated version of "Lazutin hive" plans. Additional coverage includes: 
 
 • Keeping bees naturally without interfering in their lives 
 • Starting an apiary for free by attracting local bee swarms 
 • Building low-maintenance hives that mimic how bees live in nature 
 • Keeping colonies healthy and strong without any drugs, sugar, or gimmickry 
 • Helping bees to overwinter successfully even in harsh climates 
 • Enhancing local nectar plant resources 
 • Producing truly natural honey without robbing the bees 
 • Reversing the global bee decline... right in your backyard! 
 
 Keeping Bees with a Smile is an invaluable resource for apiculture beginners and professionals alike, complete with plans for making bee-friendly, well-insulated horizontal hives with extra-deep frames, plus other fascinating beekeeping advice you won't find anywhere else.

Keeping Bees with a Smile: Principles and Practice of Natural Beekeeping

Mark Pettus

Rob Roy

The only how-to manual on the subject directed to mainstream owner-builders 
 
 An earth-sheltered, earth-roofed home has the least impact upon the land of all housing styles, leaving almost zero footprint on the planet. 
 
 Earth-Sheltered Houses is a practical guide for those who want to build their own underground home at moderate cost. It describes the benefits of sheltering a home with earth, including the added comfort and energy efficiency from the moderating influence of the earth on the home's temperature-keeping it warm in the winter and cool in the summer-low maintenance, and the protection against fire, sound, earthquake and storm afforded by the earth. Extra benefits from adding an earth or other living roof option include greater longevity of the roof substrate, fine aesthetics, and environmental harmony. 
 
 The book covers all of the various construction techniques involved including details on planning, excavation, footings, floor, walls, framing, roofing, waterproofing, insulation and drainage. Specific methods appropriate for the inexperienced owner-builder are a particular focus and include: 
 
 • pouring one's own footings and/or floor 
 • the use of dry-stacked (surface-bonded) concrete block walls 
 • post-and-beam framing 
 • plank-and-beam roofing, and 
 • drainage methods and self-adhesive waterproofing membranes. 
 
 
 
 The time-tested, easy-to-learn construction techniques described in Earth-Sheltered Houses will enable readers to embark upon their own building projects with confidence, backed up by a comprehensive resources section that lists all the latest products such as waterproofing membranes, types of rigid insulation and drainage products that will protect the building against water damage and heat loss.

Earth-Sheltered Houses: How to Build an Affordable Underground Home

Peter Mack

Chris Magwood

Straw bale houses are easy to build, affordable, super energy efficient, environmentally friendly, attractive, and can be designed to match the builder’s personal space needs, esthetics and budget. Despite mushrooming interest in the technique, however, most straw bale books focus on “selling” the dream of straw bale building, but don’t adequately address the most critical issues faced by bale house builders. Moreover, since many developments in this field are recent, few books are completely up to date with the latest techniques.

More Straw Bale Building is designed to fill this gap. A completely rewritten edition of the 20,000-copy best--selling original, it leads the potential builder through the entire process of building a bale structure, tackling all the practical issues: finding and choosing bales; developing sound building plans; roofing; electrical, plumbing, and heating systems; building code compliance; and special concerns for builders in northern climates. New material includes:

more extensive sections on electric wiring and plumbing
updated sections on bale finishes and finishing
a section on prefabricated straw bale walls
a wider selection of case studies, photographs and illustrations
a section on common mistakes
budgeting for low-, medium- and high-cost projects, and new testing data that is in no other straw bale book.

Down-to earth and complete, More Straw Bale Building makes the remarkable benefits of straw bale building available in the most comprehensive and practical book on the subject to date.

Chris Magwood and Peter Mack are professional straw bale house builders and consultants who have constructed over 40 straw bale structures and have taught workshops and seminars in several countries. Chris is editor of The Last Straw Journal, an international quarterly devoted to straw-bale building, and the coauthor of Straw Bale Details: A Manual for Designers and Builders (New Society Publishers, 2003).

More Straw Bale Building: How to Plan, Design and Build with Straw

All those of us without traditional skills need to know to build with timber framing 
 
 Many natural building methods rely upon the use of post and beam frame structures that are then in-filled with straw, cob, cordwood, or more conventional wall materials. But traditional timber framing employs the use of finely crafted jointing and wooden pegs, requiring a high degree of craftsmanship and training, as well as much time and expense. However, there is another way... 
 
 Timber Framing for the Rest of Us describes the timber framing methods used by most contractors, farmers, and owner-builders, methods that use modern metal fasteners, special screws, and common sense building principles to accomplish the same goal in much less time. And while there are many good books on traditional timber framing, this is the first to describe in depth these more common fastening methods. The book includes everything an owner-builder needs to know about building strong and beautiful structural frames from heavy timbers, including: 
 
 • the historical background of timber framing 
 • crucial design and structural considerations 
 • procuring timbers-including different woods, and recycled materials 
 • foundations, roofs, and in-filling consdierations 
 • the common fasteners. 
 
 A detailed case study of a timber frame project from start to finish completes this practical and comprehensive guide, along with a useful appendix of span tables and a bibliography. 
 
 Highly illustrated, this book enables 'the rest of us' to build like the professionals and will appeal to owner-builders, contractors and architects alike.

Timber Framing for the Rest of Us: A Guide to Contemporary Post and Beam Construction

Scott Davis

Microhydro features the smallest version of the renewable engery technology dubbed the simplest, most reliable and least expensive way to generate power off grid. Highly illustrated and practical, it is a complete guide to designing and constructing reliable hydroelectric power systems.

Microhydro: Clean Power from Water


 Books for Wiser Living from Mother Earth News 

 Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more-sustainable lifestyles, New Society Publishers has joined forces with Mother Earth News. For more than 30 years, Mother Earth has been North America's "Original Guide to Living Wisely," creating books and magazines for people with a 
 passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature. Across the countryside and in our cities, New Society Publishers and Mother Earth News are leading the way to a wiser, more sustainable world. 
