The Resilient Farm and Homestead, Revised and Expanded Edition: 20 Years of Permaculture and Whole Systems Design

"This is one of the most practical, down-to-earth, dirt-under-the-fingernails, comprehensive explanations of all things homesteading and small farming. Whether you're just dreaming or an old hand, Ben Falk's longer experience horizon is invaluable."--Joel Salatin, cofounder, Polyface Farm; author of Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal

Informed by twenty years of successful land management and the professional design experience of his pioneering firm Whole Systems Design, LLC, author Ben Falk updates his classic text and delivers the definitive twenty-first century systems thinking manual in self-reliance--sure to empower readers to prioritize projects, make positive lifestyle decisions, and take strategic steps toward a regenerative future.

In The Resilient Farm and Homestead, Revised and Expanded Edition Falk describes how he has transformed a degraded hillside in the frigid Vermont climate into a thriving, biodiverse Eden that now provides year-round abundance for his family and community.

First published in 2013, The Resilient Farm and Homestead is a comprehensive how-to guide for building durable and productive land-based systems through the reciprocal interplay of humans and the natural world. In the ten years since he first published this seminal work, Falk has deepened his wisdom in harnessing nature-based solutions for increasingly challenging times, including addressing severe climate disruptions like drought and flood conditions.

The book covers every strategy Falk and his team have tested on the Whole Systems Research Farms over the past two decades and includes detailed information on earthworks, gravity-fed water systems, soil fertility management, growing nutrient-dense food and medicine, fuelwood production, agroforestry, managed grazing, and much more.

Complete with full-color photography and detailed design drawings, The Resilient Farm and Homestead, Revised and Expanded Edition includes new information on:

• Designing greenhouses and microclimates
• Reinvigorating human health and embodying a vigorous lifestyle
• Raising children on a homestead
• Creating failure-proof and resilient energy systems
• Focusing on permaculture beekeeping
• Cultivating proven cold climate plants
• Overcoming analysis paralysis and mastering the art of knowing where to start and when to take strategic risks
• And much, much more!

In an age that feels defined by disconnection, disease, and decline, The Resilient Farm and Homestead, Revised and Expanded Edition offers a roadmap to conquering uncertainty, maximizing efficiency, and creating a bountiful, manageable landscape that will endure.

"Essential reading for the serious prepper as well as for everyone interested in creating a more resilient lifestyle."--Carol Deppe, author of The Resilient Gardener

"This intelligent, challenging book, rooted somewhere between back-to-the-land idealism and radical survivalism, sees resilience as both planting and building for the use of future generations, but also as preparing food, water, shelter, and the human body and psyche for the onset of any imaginable extreme emergency. . . . The result is a comprehensive, open-ended, theoretical and practical system for a post-carbon-dependent life."--Publishers Weekly (starred review of first edition)

Author: Ben Falk
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing Company
Published: 02/08/2024
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 2.10lbs
Size: 9.70h x 8.30w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9781645021100


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 04/01/2024 pg. 31

About the Author
Ben Falk, M.A.L.D, developed Whole Systems Design, LLC, as a land-based response to biological and cultural extinction and the increasing separation between people and elemental things. Life as a designer, builder, ecologist, tree-tender, and backcountry traveler continually informs Ben's integrative approach to developing landscapes and buildings. His home landscape and the WSD studio site in Vermont's Mad River Valley serve as a proving ground for the innovative land developments featured in the projects of Whole Systems Design. Ben has studied architecture and landscape architecture at the graduate level and holds master of arts in landscape design degree. He has taught design courses at the University of Vermont and Harvard's Arnold Arboretum as well as on permaculture design, microclimate design, and design for climate change. He recently served on the board of directors at the Yestermorrow Design-Build School, where he also teaches from time to time. He is the author of The Resilient Homestead: Innovative Permaculture Systems for the Home and Farm.