Resources for Beginning Farmers

For those of you who are beginning a sustainable tropical Permaculture farm, here are some links and books titles which will help you on your project:

(BTW: We offer none of this for sale, so you’re on your own finding hard copies)

Our website is: http:EveningRainFarm.com/   (see our nursery)

Here is the local Hawaii island forum website:  http://sensiblesimplicity.lefora.com/
Start by browsing their forum topics. You can find all sorts of informative conversations about sustainability issues, and many of the members are on the Big Island and connecting with each other by organizing get-togethers and sharing resources with each other.

For a solid resource of many major tropical fruit trees, you can view the entire text of “Fruits of Warm Climates” on line.
I think bound copies can be had for $70.

http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/index.html

The 3 volume “Permacopia” by Hunter Beyer and Franklin Martin. We reach for these books more than any others. the set is upwards of $60.
The author lives on island, and sells copies locally:

http://www.permacopia.com/

You really can’t go wrong with this classic, hefty volume: “Permaculture: a Designer’s Manual” by Bill Mollison. A brilliant man, brilliant theories and practices. You can also purchase 47 hours of recorded lectures on disc, as Bill Mollison teaches an entire Permaculture design course.

http://permacultureplants.net/

Try Craig elevitch’s site:  www.agroforestry.net
In particular, download his document: www.agroforestry.net/pubs/Hawaii_Homegrown_Start-Up_Guide.pdf
This article has many other links for the beginning tropical gardener, including: http://www.hawaiifruit.net/
Craig has gone far in promoting agroforestry in the tropics. He has written some valuable books, and he has made much of his writings available for free on line.

Also try http://echonet.org/content/agriculturalResources    for “Echo Development Notes” which are excellent documents
these can be purchased bound as “Amaranth to Zai holes” and “Echo Development Notes #52-Present” (a great browse!)
and then in particular, find: echo technical notes: “selecting the best plants for the tropical subsistence farm” by Franklin Martin
Echo used to sell tropical seeds as well, but we recently had no response from them.
Their seeds are particularly suited to the tropics, though some of them are adapted to dry tropics.

http://www.tradewindsfruit.com/   has descriptions and some photos of some of the more obscure plants. A good browse, and they sell seeds as well.

For loads more details, Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA) has published thousands of pages of documents concerning simple technology and food production in the third world. They can be downloaded for free.

http://www.journeytoforever.org/farm_library/VITAlist.html

If you still need more books and links, see Karin’s “Links We Like”

Have fun with this stuff!

EveningRainFarm website update

We’ve just made a pretty big update to our website which should help make things easier to read.  We’ve also added a Facebook page here if you’d like to be a fan.

With this new website you should see many more content updates along with a slew of new photos.

Please leave a comment below if you have any comments or suggestions.

World View Links

These are the blogs that I frequent. The first three are filled with a blend of opinion, wisdom, proposals, perspectives. The fourth is a daily updated series of news links.

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/

http://www.kunstler.com/blog/

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/BreakingNews.html

- Scott

Links we Like

www.awok.com
www.teach12.com
www.lessonsforhope.org
www.sevenstories.com
www.kk.org/cooltools
www.permacultureactivist.net
www.pfaf.org/leaflets/altfood.php
www.echotech.org

If Scott and I had to choose a small handful of books for tropical sustainable living our list would be:

• Permacopia
• Ferment and Human Nutrition (esp if you want to really get into producing your own food: your sweetener, your salt, your vinegar etc and store stuff in clever ways)
• Square Foot Gardening- for beginners and people who don’t want to make a career out of it!)
• Permaculture
• Solar Living Source Book (for basics on systems)

But, if we could have more:

For Building/Systems

• Built by Hand: Vernacular Buildings Around the World –Komatsu, Komatsu and Steen
• A Pattern Language — Christopher Alexander
• Solar Living Source Book — Real Goods

For Medicinals

• Healing Power of Rainforest Herbs — Leslie Taylor
• Herbal Medicine-Makers Handbook: A Home Manual — James Green

For Agriculture

• Permaculture — Bill Mollison
• Permacopia Books (1-3)– D. Hunter Beyer , Dr. Franklin Martin
• Square Foot Gardening — Mel Bartholomew
• Plants in Hawaiian Culture (ethnobotany) — Beatrice Krauss
• The Right Tree in the Right Place, Arbor Day in Hawai’i — Hawaiian Electric Company
• Agroforestry Guides for Pacific Islands — Craig Elevitch, Kim Wilkinson
• IL31 Bambus-Bamboo — Institute for Lightweight Structures, University of Stuttgart, Karl Kramer
• Common Forest Trees of Hawaii (Native and Introduced) — Elbert Little, Jr, Roger Skolmen
• The New Oxford Book of Food Plants — Vaughan and Geissler
• How to Grow More Vegetables — John Jeavons
• Hawaii Organic Growers Guide –
• Tools for Agriculture: A Buyer’s Guide to Appropriate Equipment — Intermediate Technology

For Food

• Ferment and Human Nutrition — Bill Mollison
• For General Homesteading (i have to go down to our library and get the details on these)

ken kern

john seymore