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This book gives you all the information you need to start your own local foods business. You'll get plain-English advice from a self-proclaimed farm-girl-turned-entrepreneur on:

• Trends in niche agriculture and local foods
• Creating a business plan for a small-scale or hobby venture
• Assessing your home marketplace and uncovering niches not yet served
• Financing options, especially grants and cost-sharing programs
• Free or low-cost marketing ideas
• Basic strategies for surviving the first year in business
• And more

About the author

Sarah Beth Aubrey was born into a family of farmers and was raised to believe, like Scarlett O'Hara, that it is land that sustains after all else. In addition to operating her company, Aubrey's Natural Meats, Aubrey writes and speaks extensively on agriculture, the rural lifestyle and small farm development.

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There's something to be said for simpler times, when our way of life seemed more wholesome ... when our food was grown with fewer pesticides and growth hormones ... when we tended kitchen gardens, kept a flock of chickens and "put up" beans, pears and pickles. So it's easy to see why people across the nation are returning to their roots — and root cellars — and embracing a return to the basics.

With Traditional Kitchen Wisdom you, too, can enjoy the rewards of being more self-reliant by ...

• Growing your own fruits and vegetables in a space as small as a windowsill
• Turning fresh fruit into jams and jellies
• Learning safe canning and freezing methods
• Drying foods and creating your own herbs and spices
• Making homemade wine, beer and naturally flavored vodka
• Raising chickens and honeybees, making your own cheese and more!

Start your own family traditions with Traditional Kitchen Wisdom, and rediscover the pleasure of returning to a greener, healthier and more self-sufficient lifestyle.

Recommended Product for Wiser Living: 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, MOTHER EARTH NEWS is recommending books to readers. For 40 years, MOTHER EARTH NEWS 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.

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Sweet winter squashes, hardy greens, jewel-toned root vegetables, and potatoes of every kind make local eating easy and delicious in the colder months of autumn and winter. Whether these vegetables are gathered straight from the garden, from a well-tended root cellar or from the market, their delectable flavors and nutritional benefits pack a powerful punch. Try them in soups (Celery Root Bisque, Portuguese Kale Soup), main dishes (Ravioli with Smoky Greens, Chicken Pot Pie with Root Vegetables), winter salads (Warm Goat Cheese and Beet Salad, Thai Cabbage Salad), and side dishes (Cashew Carrots, Braised Collards with Bacon). With this collection of more than 250 recipes, you’ll discover how simple and delightful it is to eat locally all year long.

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The step-by-step instructions in Put 'em Up will have the most timid beginners filling their pantries and freezers with the preserved goodness of summer in no time. An extensive Techniques section includes complete how-to for every kind of preserving: refrigerating and freezing, air- and oven-drying, cold- and hot-pack canning, and pickling. And with recipe yields as small as a few pints or as large as several gallons, readers can easily choose recipes that work for the amount of produce and time at hand.

Real food advocate Sherri Brooks Vinton offers recipes with exciting flavor combinations to please contemporary palates and put preserved fruits and vegetables on dinner-party menus everywhere. Pickled Asparagus Wasabi Beans are delicious additions to holiday relish trays; Sweet Pepper Marmalade perks up cool-weather roasts; and Berry Bourbon is an unexpected base for a warming cocktail.

The best versions of tried-and-true favorites are all here too. Bushels of fresh-picked apples are easily turned into applesauce, dried fruit rings, jelly, butter, or even brandy. Falling-off-the-vine tomatoes can be frozen whole, oven dried, canned, or made into a tangy marinara. Options for pickling cucumbers range from Bread and Butter Chips and Dills Spears to Asian Ice-Box Pickles. There's something delicious for every pantry!

Recommended Product for Wiser Living: 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, MOTHER EARTH NEWS is recommending books to readers. For 40 years, MOTHER EARTH NEWS 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.

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The greatest invention since sliced bread may well be the machine that makes the loaves everyone dreams of slicing into — right in home kitchens at the touch of a button. The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook bridges the gap between great taste and convenience, with more than 300 glorious recipes for bread machines. The automatic bread machine makes it possible to enjoy fresh and signature loaves of bread without the time and expense usually involved in bread baking or purchased artisanal breads. Today’s bread machines are versatile, affordable, safe and efficient, turning out perfect loaves time after time.

Try croissants or banana bread for breakfast, lunchtime sandwiches on honey whole wheat bread or tomato bread, a loaf of garlic focaccia or a sage and onion bread-stuffed roast for dinner, or even candied chestnut panettone and pumpkin cloverleaf rolls for the holidays. Classic white loaves, hearty whole-wheat breads, sweet breads, swirled breads, pizza doughs, quick breads, and even jams are easy to make right in the bread machine. Renowned bread baking expert Beth Hensperger’s best bread recipes yield great results — just add the ingredients, and let the machine knead, rise and bake loaf after loaf of fragrant, delicious fresh bread.

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Since Rosalind Creasy popularized the concept of landscaping with edibles a quarter-century ago, interest in eating healthy, fresh, locally grown foods has swept across the nation. More and more Americans are looking to grow clean, delicious produce at home, saving money and natural resources at the same time. And food plants have been freed from the backyard, gracing the finest landscapes — even the White House grounds!

Creasy’s expertise on edibles and how to incorporate them in beautifully designed outdoor environments was first showcased in the original edition of Edible Landscaping (1982), hailed by gardeners everywhere as a groundbreaking classic. Now this highly anticipated new edition presents the latest design and how-to information in a glorious full-color format, featuring more than 300 inspiring photographs.

Drawing on the author’s decades of research and experience, the book presents everything you need to know to create an inviting home landscape that will yield mouthwatering vegetables, fruits, nuts and berries. The comprehensive Encyclopedia of Edibles — a book in itself — provides horticultural information, culinary uses, sources and recommended varieties; and appendices cover the basics of planting and maintenance, and of controlling pests and diseases using organic and environmentally friendly practices.

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Residential consumption represents nearly one quarter of North America's total energy use, and the average homeowner spends thousands of dollars a year on power bills. To help alleviate this problem, Energy-Wise Landscape Design presents hundreds of practical ways everyone can save money, time and effort while making their landscapes more environmentally healthy, ecologically rich and energy efficient.
Combining general guidelines with tips, techniques and actions, this fully illustrated guide explains the many opportunities our landscapes provide for conserving energy. Readers will learn how to:

• lower a home's heating and cooling costs
• minimize fuel used in landscape construction, maintenance and everyday use
• choose landscape products and materials with lower embedded energy costs
• make a positive difference without a major investment or change in lifestyle.

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Where would you find your groceries if your supermarket's shelves were suddenly empty? The threat of earthquakes, trucker strikes, power outages or a global market collapse makes us vulnerable like never before. With spiraling fuel prices and unstable world economies, individuals and communities are demanding more control over their food supply.

Food Security for the Faint of Heart is designed to gently ease readers into a more empowered place so that shocks to our food supply can be handled confidently. As well as acquiring new skills and ideas, there are other compelling reasons to get better prepared. The local economy gains support and encouragement to expand, in turn boosting food's taste and nutritional value, along with the health of people and ecosystems. Community support helps low-income families eat higher quality food, and the preparation provides a psychological edge in an emergency.

Chapters are devoted to useful, transferable skills, including:

• Preserving garden food
• Saving freezer food during a power outage
• Managing through an earthquake
• Preparing quick herbal medicinals
• Foraging for wild food

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More and more people are recognizing the need for nutritious, local, sustainable food, but organic options can be costly, and the produce sections of most supermarkets are packed with fruits and vegetables that have racked up more frequent flier miles than a rock band on world tour. How can urban dwellers without ready access to fertile land enjoy the benefits of traditional gardening? And for those with a yard, how do you maximize the harvest of fresh, healthy edibles?

In From Container to Kitchen, author D.J. Herda shows that there is a way. Written for the novice home gardener as well as the seasoned pro, this fully illustrated, comprehensive guide will show you how to save up to 70% on your produce bill by growing fruits and vegetables in pots. Topics include:

• Selecting the right container size and location
• Optimizing soil composition and nutrients
• Managing light, water and humidity
• Choosing the best fruits and vegetables for container gardening
• Eliminating pests and plant diseases naturally
• Extending the harvest.

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CLEARANCE ITEM. PREVIOUS RETAIL PRICE WAS $16.95. AVAILABLE ONLY WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!

This humorous yet practical gardening guide will help you get "down to earth." Packed with whimsical illustrations and overflowing with useful suggestions, Gardening for the Faint of Heart is ideal for the novice gardener. Learn about everything from planning a garden and getting started to pruning, managing pests, seeding and breeding, greenhouse and container gardening and more. A perfect rainy day read, this book never loses sight of the fact that above all, gardening should be fun.