Essential advice from finding your plot to selling your produce and everything in between Growing your own food and living off the land is an aspiration for many, but where do you start and how do you make it work? Providing a truly comprehensive insight and packed with practical guidance for the 21st century smallholder, this book is for anyone considering, starting out or in the throes of smallholding. Addressing the challenges and pitfalls, as well as the joys, and with over 400 illustrations.
Smallholding as a concept is not limited to small-scale farming, and anyone can bring parts of it to their everyday lifestyle, whether it’s a window box to grow produce, a garden to keep chickens or a field or two for other livestock. Providing a comprehensive overview of smallholding for the beginner, Smallholding is a practical guide to growing food and farming livestock. It helps the reader learn how to incorporate some self-sufficiency into their lifestyle, to become knowledgeable enough to keep livestock, and to enjoy working and being productive with the land they have. It also gives information about making a profit from the fruits of labour, such as selling surplus home grown produce at the farm gate or farmers’ markets. Contents include an A-Z growing guide for fruits and vegetables, topics such as buying or renting land, soil health, composting, fruit trees, pasture management, stock fencing; and detailed livestock information about keeping bees, caring for poultry, goats, llamas and alpacas, pigs, sheep and cattle, and the legal requirements that come with it. Smallholding is a practical, comprehensive guide to smallholding for beginners, aimed at people who have access to land, as well as those growing produce in their back garden. 5m Books
The diary of two people's first experiance, in the first years of small holding....And all the humourous, bad, good and frustrating bits that go with it.
SLAVERY, SMALLHOLDING AND TOURISM explores the political economy of development in the British Virgin Islands -- from plantations, through the evolution of a smallholding economy, to the rise of tourism. The study argues that the demise of plantation economy in the BVI ushered in a century of imperial disinterest persisting until recently, when a new 'monocrop' -- tourism -- became ascendant. Using an historical and anthropological approach, O'Neal reveals that the trend toward reliance on tourism and other dependent industries echoes for many BVIslanders -- the 'Belongers' -- their heritage. Part of the Classic Dissertation Series from Quid Pro Books, the book adds a new Foreword by Vassar's Colleen Ballerino Cohen and additional commentary by UC-Irvine's Bill Maurer, who shows how even the emergence of a financial services industry may be understood through the insights that O'Neal presents in his study. Quality eBook formatting features active Contents, linked notes, original tables and maps, and Index.
This antique text contains a guide to the various buildings, machinery and tools that are found on a small farm. It provides information on economics and maintenance, as well as the equipment required for profitable and productive business. Including simple, concise descriptions, helpful diagrams, comments on usage, and much more besides, this text will prove invaluable to the novice farmer, and makes for a valuable addition to collections agricultural literature. Although old, much of the information contained herein is timeless. The chapters of this book include: 'What is necessary and What is Economic to Invest In', 'Hand Tools', 'Hand tools for The Land', 'Hand Tools for The Workshop', 'Hand-propelled Equipment', 'Horse and Pony-Drawn Equipment', 'Auto-Culto, ''B-M-B''', 'Other Mechanical Units', 'Buildings', etcetera. We are proud to republish this vintage volume, now complete with a new introduction on agricultural tools and machinery.
by Liz Shankland Smallholdings are a popular way to increase self-sufficiency, and come in many shapes and sizes. Many people choose to keep a smallholding in order to downshift to a calmer pace of life, and to ensure that their produce is healthy and fresh. From larger smallholdings with livestock to simply growing fruit and veg on a plot of land, this manual provides comprehensive advice on every aspect of the process. Even for the experienced smallholder, information about being wildlife-friendly and money-making ensure that this is an essential investment for the future of your smallholding. The information is presented with clear, pictorial step-by-step guides to help make the most of smallholdings of every size and age.
The late Byzantine period was a time characterized by both civil strife and foreign invasion, framed by two cataclysmic events: the fall of Constantinople to the western Europeans in 1204 and again to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Mark C. Bartusis here opens an extraordinary window on the Byzantine Empire during its last centuries by providing the first comprehensive treatment of the dying empire's military. Although the Byzantine army was highly visible, it was increasingly ineffective in preventing the incursion of western European crusaders into the Aegean, the advance of the Ottoman Turks into Europe, and the slow decline and eventual fall of the thousand-year Byzantine Empire. Using all the available Greek, western European, Slavic, and Turkish sources, Bartusis describes the evolution of the army both as an institution and as an instrument of imperial policy. He considers the army's size, organization, administration, and the varieties of soldiers, and he examines Byzantine feudalism and the army's impact on society and the economy. In its extensive use of soldier companies composed of foreign mercenaries, the Byzantine army had many parallels with those of western Europe; in the final analysis, Bartusis contends, the death of Byzantium was attributable more to a shrinking fiscal base than to any lack of creative military thinking on the part of its leaders.
The persistence of a raced-based division of labor has been a compelling reality in all former slave societies in the Americas. One can trace this to nineteenth-century abolition movements across the Americas which did not lead to (and were not intended to result in) a transition from race-based slave labor to race-neutral wage labor for former slaves. Rather, the abolition of slavery led to the emergence of multi-racial societies wherein capital/labor relations were characterized by new forms of extra-market coercion that were explicitly linked to racial categories. Post-slavery Brazilian society is a classic example of this pattern. Working within the context of the origin of the wage labor category in classical political economy, Baronov begins by questioning the central role of wage-labor within capitalist production through an examination of key works by Smith, Ricardo, and Marx, as well as the historical conditions informing their analyses. The study then turns to the specific case of Brazil between 1850-1888, comparing the abolition of slavery in three Brazilian regions: the northeast sugar region, the Paraiba Valley, and Western Sao Paulo. Through this analysis, Baronov provides a critique of the dominant interpretation of abolition (as a transition from slave labor to wage labor) and suggests an alternative interpretation that places a greater emphasis on the role of non-wage labor forms and extra-market factors in the shaping of the post-slavery social order.
