An Agricultural Testament

"Howard's discoveries and methods, and their implications, are given in detail in An Agricultural Testament. They are of enormous usefulness to gardeners and farmers, and to anyone who may be interested in the history and the problems of land use.But aside from its practical worth, Howard's book is valuable for his ability to place his facts and insights within the perspective of history. This book is a critique of civilizations, judging them not by their artefacts and victories, but by their response to the sacred duty of handing over to the next generation, unimpaired, the heritage of a fertile soil." - Wendell Berry, The Last Whole Earth Catalog

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Howard, Albert

Gardening & Landscape Design

dminoz

“Recently we have seen a great back-to-the-land movement, with many young professional people returning to small scale farming; thus it is great fun to read about someone who did exactly the same thing in 1864. In that year, Mr. Edmund Morris gave up his business and city life for a farm of ten acres, made a go of mixed farming and then wrote a book about it. Mr. Morris proves Abraham Lincoln's prediction: ‘The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.’ Kudos to A Distant Mirror for resurrecting this fascinating treasure.” - Sally Fallon Morell, President, The Weston A. Price Foundation
This book may be about farming and homesteading, and indeed it is a delightfully readable autobiography of a farmer in the America of the 1860s, but it also about much, much more. The challenges that faced the author are timeless, as are his courage, commitment, and ingenuity. There are insights for anyone, farmer or not, in this book.
“As you would have your children intelligent, virtuous, and happy, and their memory, in later life, of early home a pleasant one, so make your farm and your children’s home your business of life, then adorn that business throughout. If you would inspire your own children and your neighbors with the nobleness of your business, then draw about you such an array of beauty as no one but the cultivator of the soil can collect. Let every foot of your farm show the touch of refinement. While you are arranging your fields for convenient and successful cropping, let it be done with order and neatness. While building the fence, let it be beautiful as well as substantial. While arranging your vegetable gardens and orchards do not overlook geometrical regularity. Do not, on any account, omit the planting of flowers and the various kinds of fruit trees.”CONTENTS
<ol>
<li>City experiences ~ moderate expectations</li> <li>Practical views ~ safety of investments in land</li>
<li>Resolved to go ~ escape from business ~ choosing a location</li>
<li>Buying A farm ~ a long search ~ anxiety to sell ~ rorced to quit</li>
<li>Making a purchase ~ first impressions</li>
<li>Planting a peach orchard ~ how to preserve peach trees</li>
<li>Planting raspberries and strawberries ~ tricks of the nursery</li>
<li>Blackberries ~ a remarkable Coincidence</li>
<li>The garden ~ female management ~ comforts and profits</li>
<li>Cheated in a cow ~ a good and a bad one ~ the saint of the barnyard</li>
<li>A cloud of weeds ~ great sales of plants</li>
<li>Pigs and poultry ~ luck and ill luck</li>
<li>City and country life contrasted</li>
<li>Two acres in truck ~ revolution in agriculture</li>
<li>Birds and the services they render</li>
<li>Close of my first Year ~ its loss and gain</li>
<li>My second year ~ trenching the garden ~ strawberry profits</li>
<li>raspberries ~ The Lawtons</li>
<li>Liquid manures ~ an illustration</li>
<li>My third year ~ liquid manure ~ three years’ results</li>
<li>A barnyard manufactory ~ land Enough ~ faith in manure</li>
<li>Profits of fruit-growing ~ the trade in berries</li>
<li>Gentleman farming ~ establishing a Home</li>
<li>Unsuccessful men ~ rebellion not ruinous to northern agriculture</li>
<li>Where to locate - East or West</li>
</ol>

Ten Acres is Enough: How a Very Small Farm can keep a Very Large Family

Biographies & Memoirs

Morris, Edmund

Historical

This book by Eugene Marais is a passionate, insightful account into the world of termites. It is a meticulously researched expose of their complex, highly structured community life.
Originally translated into English in 1937, the quality of research remains as relevant today as it was when it was first published. This illuminating account will not only appeal to those with a scientific interest in termites, but will similarly enthrall readers who are new to their captivating world. An exceptional feature of his detailed research is the extraordinary psychological life of the termite.
While the studies are based in South Africa, the extensive research also includes the termites of Magnetic Island, Australia. You will be taken on an exciting journey into the amazing life of termites, as their astonishing world of hierarchy and roles within their community is revealed in captivating detail.
His years of unceasing work on the veld led Eugène Marais to formulate his theory that the termite nest is similar in every respect to the organism of an animal. He observed that the workers and soldiers resemble red and white blood cells, while the fungus gardens are the digestive organ. The queen functions as the brain, controlling the collective mind, and the sexual flight of the kings and queens is similar in every aspect to the escape of spermatozoa and ova.
Marais was also the author of The Soul of the Ape. It was always his intention that his two bodies of work, on termites and apes, were companion pieces in the search for an understanding of the psyche that would span the gulf between the insect and primate worlds. The point of Marais’ work was, always, the mystery of consciousness itself, on which grounds it is as relevant as ever.“He offers a vision of nature as a whole, whose parts obey different time-laws, move in affinities and linkages we could learn to see: parts making wholes on their own level, but seen by our divisive brains as a multitude of individualities, a flock of birds, a species of plant or beast. We are just at the start of an understanding of the heavens as a web of interlocking clocks, all differently set: an understanding that is not intellectual, but woven into experience. Marais brings this thought down into the plain, the hedgerow, the garden.” - Doris Lessing in The New StatesmanReviews"I have never read a book written in such a unique style. It is as though Eugene Marais breathes life into the words, animating the lives and struggles of the white ants in such a way that they almost seem human."
"As a safari Guide in the Okavango Botswana for many years, I used this book as a basis for presenting a fascination for the smaller creatures of the African bush, my home for my entire life and which I was privileged to share with many clients from different countries. Termite mounds are really interesting and Eugene Marais compared the infrastructure of a termitary to that of the human body. Writing from the heart, this scientific author instills a wonder in the reader, of the incredible intracacies of nature, in a light-hearted, easily readable manner."
"Brilliant and thought provoking material."
Contents
<ol>
<li>The Beginning of a Termitary</li>
<li>Unsolved Secrets</li>
<li>Language in the Insect World</li>
<li>What is the Psyche?</li>
<li>Luminosity in the Animal Kingdom</li>
<li>The Composite Animal</li>
<li>Somatic Death</li>
<li>The Development of the Composite Animal</li>
<li>The Birth of the Termite Community</li>
<li>Pain and Travail in Nature</li>
<li>Uninherited Instincts</li>
<li>The Mysterious Power which Governs</li>
<li>The Water Supply</li>
<li>The First Architects</li>
<li>The Queen in her Cell</li>
</ol>

The Soul of the White Ant

History

Marais, Eugène

Africa

“These people are unsurpassed by any Indian race in perfection of physique; they are long lived, vigorous in youth and age, capable of great endurance and enjoy a remarkable freedom from disease in general.” – Sir Robert McCarrison“We come as researchers straight to health without intervention, and to health in the full dictionary sense of the word: wholeness – particularly, sound physique of every organ of the body and freedom from disease. This is the knowledge that we all want to have. We want to know what full health is, whether the tremendous part illness and ailments play in modern civilized countries is really necessary and, if not, upon what health primarily depends. We can ourselves attain to health – or at least with our modern skill in investigation we should be able to do so – if this full health exists in any part of our world today. We will at least learn more about how to be healthy ourselves, and how to bring healthy children into the world, by studying successful human examples than we can by any other way.By studying the wings of birds in flight, we have made our machines carry us through the air. In the same way, by studying one of the healthiest peoples of the world, we might so improve our methods of health that we can become a really healthy people ourselves.” – Guy WrenchThe Hunza of northern Pakistan were famous for their extraordinary vitality and health. Dr Wrench argues that in part at least, this is because their food was not made ‘sophisticated’, by the artificial processes typically applied to modern processed food. How these processes affect our food is dealt with in great detail in this book.The answer that Dr Wrench uncovered in his researches goes deeper than just the food, though. The real answer lies in what was special about the Hunza’s water supply. This book is an outstanding synthesis of research.ContentsThe Hunza PeopleA Revolution in OutlookThe Shift to Experimental ScienceThe StartContinuity and HeredityOther Whole-diet ExperimentsFragmentationThe Cause of DiseaseThe Hunza FoodThe Cultivation of Hunza FoodProgress by ReturnAn Experiment

The Wheel of Health: A study of the Hunza people and the keys to health

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Wrench, Dr Guy

Diets & Weight Loss

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