Agrarian Practice

At Cumberland Books we think that the good life is the simple life. You'll find a more detailed explanation of our thinking in this article.

We don’t promote the premodern agrarian approach to simple, family-centered living as the only path or even the best path to the good life. But it is one of the paths, and so should at least be studied and understood if not embraced. More important, it is the best path we know of at the moment. We won’t argue that everyone should follow the agrarian path—but we will argue that anyone following a different path than agrarianism needs to have carefully and honestly concluded that their path does just as well at avoiding modernity’s pitfalls.

The books on this page are focused on practical matters, the how-to of agrarian living. For books that explore agrarianism as a way of life and thought, see the agrarian thought page.

• Joel Salatin has worked for decades to develop a model of small scale farming that is humane, healthy, diverse, and profitable. model is centered on family life. On such a farm, everyone participates from their earliest years, and everyone's contribution is valuable. His books lay out his thinking on how to approach both farm and family so that a farm can provide not just a decent living but a good life.
• Gene Logsdon about small-scale farming in a manner that strikes a good balance between generalities and details. If you suspect farming may have a role in your life but don't know much about how a small scale farm actually works, you will find his books both informative and inspiring.
• Eliot Coleman is one of America's leading practitioners of organic gardening and farming. He has pioneered a "plant-positive" approach to horticulture that surpasses chemical-dependent agriculture in every way—producing vegetables that are exceptionally nutritious, delicious, and healthy.
• Jerome Lange is one of Kentucky's leading practitioners of organic gardening and farming, and a good friend of ours. He has closely followed and adapted the approach pioneered by his hero Eliot Coleman,
• Sir Albert Howard. The nearly forgotten founder of the organic farming movement, Sir Albert Howard was a major influence on Wendell Berry, Joel Salatin, Eliot Coleman, and Jerome Lange. His two books are foundational, yet quite readable and full of practical advice.
• Herrick Kimball. Known as the Deliberate Agrarian, Herrick has created some of the clearest and most detailed plans for building useful farm devices: a chicken plucker, a chicken scalder, and a garden cart, along with a short book on growing garlic and turning it into garlic powder.

• The Encyclopedia of Country Living. This book is mostly about food—how to grow it, how to prepare it, and how to preserve it. It is big (8 1/2 by 11 inches) and it is thick (885 pages), and it is as definitive as a book of this size can be on such a broad topic. But it is also very personal, a thirty-year labor of love.
• Back to Basics: How to Learn and Enjoy Traditional Skills. A great companion for The Encyclopedia of Country Living, this book covers the rest of the skills which are essential to independent rural living. It's not as personal or as comprehensive as Carla Emery's book, but it's still valuable for getting a solid overview of how to provide for basic needs—building a home and furnishing it, raising food and preserving it, generating energy and using it.
• The Complete Tightwad Gazette . Don't be thrown by the title—although frugality is the overarching theme, this is a book about how to work towards the good life by taking direct control of one's circumstances. Not only is it filled with clever and useful tips about how to make do with what you have, it is an inspiring example of how to think clearly about such things.
• The Foxfire Series. This series of books is a treasure trove of information about Appalachian folklore, history, and traditional skills. Best of all, they are direct and unpretentious, being the result of a forty-year-long project which has high school students approaching their parents and grandparents, collecting their wisdom, and setting it down in writing.
• The Plain Talk recordings are conversations about the simple life, where the participants have the time and luxury of telling their story in a detailed and reflective way.

• Square Foot Gardening. Mel Bartholomew has rethought the process of gardening from the ground up, and his approach creates a garden which is abundantly productive while requiring surprisingly small amounts of time and effort to maintain.
• The Apple Grower. Growing apples is tough if you deny yourself the toxic cure-alls celebrated by modern farming. Michael Phillips has delved deeply into the mystery of growing good fruit with minimal inputs. Comprehensive and detailed.
• Growing Great Garlic. Not only a tasty and beneficial food, garlic is a good crop for the beginning gardener. Ron Engeland knows his garlic, and this unpretentious guide covers all stages of garlic growing and processing.
• Keeping a Family Cow. Joann Grohman’s book is down-to-earth, full of detail about every aspect of keeping a cow, and just plain friendly and encouraging; we knew after reading it that we would likely have a cow before long.
• Grass-fed Cattle. An essential reference book for anyone who wants to keep cows, whether for milk or meat or both.
• Oxen: A Teamster's Guide. Interested in getting some useful work out of those cows who mostly stand and graze your pastures? This book will help you turn your cows into draft animals.

• Home Cheese Making. A friendly introduction to a potentially scary process, with clear descriptions of basic techniques and 85 step-by-step recipes.
• Meat Smoking and Smokehouse Design. Rather than padding its pages with recipes, this book gives a detailed explanation of the smoking process, together with a comprehensive survey of the various devices, simple to elaborate, one can construct for smoking food.
• Root Cellaring. Long-term storage of fruits and vegetables is a critical homesteading skill. This book describes the many ways of creating the necessary cool, dark space for storage, along with the specific requirements for one hundred garden crops.
• Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. Canning is a simple and versatile method of preserving the harvest, provided it is done properly. This is essentially an expansion of the famous Ball Blue Book, with 400 recipes that demonstrate the wide variety of foods, simple and prepared, that can be canned.
• Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning. Canning is only two hundred years old, freezing even newer. How did people preserve food in earlier days? This book surveys older methods for extending the life of food, many simple and quite practical.

• Home Comforts. Most of the critical knowledge about how to keep house is no longer passed along, much less the understanding that a well-kept home is central to the good life. Cheryl Mendelson has done the rest of us a valuable service by creating a comprehensive treatment of the domestic arts.
• Prescription for Nutritional Healing. Those who are working to take back responsibility for restoring and maintaining their own health will value this comprehensive reference to dietary supplements, vitamins, minerals and herbs.
• Prescription for Herbal Healing. A companion to Prescription for Nutritional Healing, this is a comprehensive reference to herbal remedies, covering more than 150 common disorders.

• The Soapmaker's Companion. Soapmaking is a practical skill that can save you a lot of money while giving you complete control over an everyday element of home life. This book shows how to make 40 soaps, from simple to luxurious, including laundry and liquid soaps.
• The Candlemaker's Companion. Perhaps not a critical skill these days (but who knows?), candlemaking is a delightful craft to pursue. This book explains how to make rolled, poured, molded, dipped, and decorated candles.
• A-Z of Quilting. From Australia, a clear and comprehensive guide to quilting, with 864 step-by-step, up-close color photographs that illustrate 98 different stitches and techniques.
• A-Z of Embroidery Stitches. Also from Australia, a clear and comprehensive guide to embroidery, with 1416 step-by-step, up-close color photographs that illustrate 84 different stitches and techniques.
• A-Z of Knitting. Also from Australia, the best introduction to knitting we've ever seen.
• A-Z of Crochet. Also from Australia, the best introduction to crochet we've ever seen.

• The Hope Chest: A Legacy of Love. A hope chest can provide not only a repository for a growing dowry but a treasure chest filled with memories of the past and hopes and dreams for the future. If you think it would be good to center your daughter’s training on the creation of a hope chest, this book is a very good place to turn for ideas and inspiration on how to proceed.
• The American Boy's Handy Book. The kids all love this book, which contains dozens of practical and entertaining old-fashioned projects for children to occupy themselves with.
• The Field and Forest Handy Book. And the kids love this one even more, being chock full of old-fashioned lore about how to enjoy the outdoors.

• The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook. Shannon Hayes presents 125 recipes spotlighting the unique flavors and distinct characteristics of foods that come from animals raised on pasture. It discusses the nutritional, environmental, social, and animal-welfare benefits of pasture-based farming as well as simple strategies for finding and preparing grassfed and pasture-raised foods.
• The Farmer and the Grill. Shannon Hayes returns to explore the world of grilling, barbecuing and spit-roasting grassfed and pastured meats. Packed with fool-proof techniques, tasty and easy-to-cook recipes, witty anecdotes and insightful essays
• Great Sausage Recipes. This is the most comprehensive book available on sausage making and meat curing and has sold more than 500,000 copies worldwide. It is easily understood, contains a wide variety of recipes, and is very effective in helping solve common problems.
• The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Cookery. More than simply a cookbook, it combines more than 500 unpretentious, delectable recipes with the wit and wisdom of those who have prepared and eaten such foods for generations. Drawn from the wealth of material gathered by Foxfire students, this engaging volume evokes the foodways of a southern Appalachian community.
• Roadfood offers an extended tour of the most affordable, most enjoyable dining options along America's highways and back roads. Filled with enticing alternatives for chain-weary travelers, Roadfood provides descriptions of and directions to (complete with regional maps) the best lobster shacks on the East Coast; the ultimate barbecue joints down South; the most indulgent steak houses in the Midwest; and dozens of top-notch diners, hotdog stands, ice-cream parlors, and uniquely regional finds in between.