Since 1973, Storey's Country Wisdom Bulletins have offered practical, hands-on instructions designed to help readers master dozens of country living skills quickly and easily. There are now more than 170 titles in this series, and their remarkable popularity reflects the common desire of country and city dwellers alike to cultivate personal independence in everyday life.
Combining today’s issues of creating self-sustaining environments with the age-old sports of hunting, shooting and trapping, Wildlife and Woodlot Management is the ultimate guide to attracting game to your property. Expert outdoorsman Monte Burch teaches a wide variety of techniques based on his own land management practices. Learn to match the vegetation of your land to the type of wildlife you need to attract. Hundreds of diagrams and photographs as well as Burch’s charming, instructional tone make woodlot management easy even for those who lack a green thumb. Wildlife and Woodlot Management offers expert tips on such topics as: Choosing the right piece of land for your needs Maintenance and management practices Improving natural vegetation Attracting bucks, wild turkey, waterfowl, and small game How to love working and helping your land With over 330 pages crammed full of information and chapters covering topics ranging from timber stands to trespassers, Wildlife and Woodlot Management includes all the know-how you need to make your land into a hunting destination. Packed with pertinent details and accurate, easy-to-follow advice, this is a book no land-owning outdoorsman should miss.
Whether you have a few acres of trees in the suburbs or a small commercial forest, you can encourage a healthy and sustainable ecosystem through proper woodland management. This introductory guide shows you how to identify the type, health, and quality of your trees and suggests strategies for keeping your woodland thriving.
Learn how to fill forests with food by viewing agriculture from a remarkably different perspective: that a healthy forest can be maintained while growing a wide range of food, medicinal, and other nontimber products. The practices of forestry and farming are often seen as mutually exclusive, because in the modern world, agriculture involves open fields, straight rows, and machinery to grow crops, while forests are reserved primarily for timber and firewood harvesting. In Farming the Woods, authors Ken Mudge and Steve Gabriel demonstrate that it doesn’t have to be an either-or scenario, but a complementary one; forest farms can be most productive in places where the plow is not: on steep slopes and in shallow soils. Forest farming is an invaluable practice to integrate into any farm or homestead, especially as the need for unique value-added products and supplemental income becomes increasingly important for farmers. Many of the daily indulgences we take for granted, such as coffee, chocolate, and many tropical fruits, all originate in forest ecosystems. But few know that such abundance is also available in the cool temperate forests of North America. Farming the Woods covers in detail how to cultivate, harvest, and market high-value nontimber forest crops such as American ginseng, shiitake mushrooms, ramps (wild leeks), maple syrup, fruit and nut trees, ornamentals, and more. Along with profiles of forest farmers from around the country, readers are also provided comprehensive information on: • historical perspectives of forest farming; • mimicking the forest in a changing climate; • cultivation of medicinal crops; • cultivation of food crops; • creating a forest nursery; • harvesting and utilizing wood products; • the role of animals in the forest farm; and, • how to design your forest farm and manage it once it’s established. Farming the Woods is an essential book for farmers and gardeners who have access to an established woodland, are looking for productive ways to manage it, and are interested in incorporating aspects of agroforestry, permaculture, forest gardening, and sustainable woodlot management into the concept of a whole-farm organism.
