November 24, 2008

Historic Agricultural Literature

I collect a few things like stones, tools, puppets and agricultural books. My favorites are those published before the "Green Revolution" when fertilizer meant manure or soiling crops and pest control were chickens and field rotations. Some of my favorites:

Farmers of Forty Centuries; Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan; FH King 1911 and the The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers. Sutton, 1913.
The Small Farmers's Journal often lists booksellers of Farm Literature and has reprinted some treasures within its own pages.
I'll post a list of some great old farming books on the sidebar soon. In the meanwhile, and its not as satisfying as having those beautiful old pages sliding through your fingers, here are a couple of sites online that have great digitalized collections:

http://chla.library.cornell.edu
"The Core Historical Literature of Agriculture (CHLA) is a core electronic collection of agricultural texts published between the early nineteenth century and the middle to late twentieth century. Full-text materials cover agricultural economics, agricultural engineering, animal science, crops and their protection, food science,forestry, human nutrition, rural sociology, and soil science".

http://soilandhealth.org
Free digitalized library on line with a collection of books on holistic agriculture, health and self-sufficient homestead living.

http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library.html
An excellent online collection of classic small farm books

4 comments:

Ottawa Gardener said...

Came by your blog through Patricks and am looking forward to reading more. Welcome to the blogosphere and thanks for the links! I don't think I have gone to soilandhealth.org so I'll have to head on over and see what they offer.

Just have to say that my word verification today was hersions which is just brilliant. No, it's not a version, it's a hersion of the text....

anne said...

Thanks for the welcome. Not sure if thats a spelling error I've made....or your brilliant word. Brilliant for recognizing it as such none the less.

Bishops Homegrown said...

Hody,

found you through Patricks blog. Looks like you've got a good thing going for you here. I too enjoy the pre Green Revolution agriculture books. I really enjoy anything Luther Burbank had written and can't seem to say enough about it in all honesty.

Anyhow, be sure to check out our message board where Patrick, Ottawa Gardener and myself all post, I think you will enjoy it there!

http://alanbishop.proboards60.com

Ottawa Gardener said...

Not, it was the 'word verification' that I got to post this comment. It was just too funny given your blog.