Comprehensive, informative, entertaining

It took me a while to make my way through this book, which was so kindly loaned to me. There is alot of information here and it took some time to digest, but the text is so charmingly readable and accessable, it felt more like I was having a conversation with a wise old friend.

“We gardeners are healthy, joyous, natural creatures. We are practical, patient, optimistic. We declare our optimism every year, every season, with every act of planting.”

Ms. Deppe covers a wealth of material with step-by-step instructions on being more self reliant when it comes to food production. Beginning with the plant-gardener covenant and the 33 golden gardener rules, she puts emphasis on 5 crops for survival- potatoes, corn, beans, squash and eggs. There are chapters offering strategies for folks with celiacs or dairy intolerance, how we can deal with climate change in the garden, raising ducks and/or chickens, even how just about anyone, regardless of physical fitness, can garden comfortably and consistently.  Throughout, there is a real joy in the writing. There’s a neat little song she sings to her ducks sung to the tune of “if you’re happy and you know it” that just made me smile. That being said, this is real science and a lot of real practical knowledge, backed up by her years of experience. She can even be a little revolutionary:

“Corn is at the core of modern agribusiness, the most important food crop in North America. In no other crop are the values of modern commercial agribusiness as thoroughly embedded. There is nothing we can do that is ultimately subversive – there is no act of gardening that is so profound a rebellion, there is no act of eating that is so potent a blow for food quality and food system sanity – as to take back the corn crop in our own backyards, and grow, breed, eat, and save seed of corn based upon an entirely different set of values.”

All of this is rounded out with some nice glossy photos, personal anecdotes, recipes, notes and references and a full index. I can see this as a real staple in the library of the gardener who serious about growing their own food in good times and bad.