John H. Tullock - The New American Homestead: Sustainable, Self-Sufficient Living in the Country or in the City

Copyright 2012 by John H. Tullock. All rights reserved.

Howell Book House

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2011945555

ISBN: 978-1-118-02417-1 (pbk); ISBN: 978-1-118-18231-4 (ebk); ISBN: 978-1-118-18322-9 (ebk); ISBN: 978-1-118-18323-6 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

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Book production by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Composition Services

To Jerry Yarnell and everyone else who works hard and refuses to give up on their dreams.

Acknowledgments

Fifty years of growing, reading, and sharing with others have informed the text of this book, and thanking everyone who had a part is simply an impossible task. My grandparents, Clarence and Faye Boswell, played the greatest role in developing my interest in and love for both the natural world and the controlled spaces of farm and garden. In school, some special teachers, including in particular the late Mildred Luttrell, encouraged me to exercise my creativity and to communicate my thoughts through the written word. And throughout the lifelong adventure of gardening I have been privileged to encounter people from every state and several countries that share my enthusiasm for growing plants and enjoying them in every way from the purely aesthetic to the deliciously practical. Standouts among them are the late Sidney Arnold, Barry Glick, Monte Stanley, Lisa Stanley, Terry Richman, Scott Morrell, Graham Byars, Dr. Ken McFarland, Dr. Dave Etnier, Liz Etnier, Pat Rakes, J.R. and Peggy Shute, and the late Dr. Jack Sharp. Thanks are also due to the many people who send their gardening questions to me each month through Tennessee Gardener magazine. By helping you, I add to my own knowledge of gardening and the challenges it can sometimes pose.

Special appreciation goes to my agent, Grace Freedson, and to John Wiley & Sons acquisitions editor Pam Morouzis, for encouraging me to develop my original concept of a cooking from the garden book into a more comprehensive guide to sustainable living in the modern urban/suburban environment. To my project editor, Suzanne Snyder, thanks for your patience, your enthusiasm, and your well-crafted adjustments that make this a much better book than I began with. Kudos to the production team for the attractive design and helpful illustrations.

Introduction

The Principles of Permaculture

I am sitting cross-legged on the luxuriously soft grass beneath a spreading sugar maple. The shade tempers the 80-degree heat of June. A faint breeze now and then stirs the humid air and shakes the blousy white flower clusters of the hydrangea bushes like a cheerleaders pom-poms. Beside me in a white-painted lawn chair made of hand-shaped wooden slats sits my grandmother, breaking beans into a bowl. She grasps each bean by the little piece of stem attached to one end and bends it sharply backward, snapping off the tip and removing the string along one side of the pod. Then she quickly breaks the pod into pieces and drops them into the bowl.

Supposedly, I am helping her with this chore, but my bowl is filling at a rate half that of hers. I have trouble concentrating on bean breaking. Too much else is going on. All around me, lush foliage glows shades of green in the morning sunshine. Near the house, the hydrangeas, orange daylilies, and a climbing rose dapple the green with summer colors. Raspberries slowly ripen on their thorny canes that always look cold and wet like a glass of iced tea. Green tomatoes the size of tennis balls hang from their vines, caged in sheep wire as if they might somehow escape the garden. And long, long rows of deep green corn promise roasting ears. Soon. Maybe by the Fourth of July. The syrupy smell of fallen apples reaches me from the orchard, and I can hear the drone of insects and the calls of a dozen kinds of birds, all following the scent to an easy meal. In a sunny spot of lawn, apple slices lie drying between sheets of gauzy fabric. Earlier in the season, that same cloth shielded tender tobacco seedlings from frosty nights, tobacco being the main cash crop hereabouts. Shaded by the apple trees, chickens cluck and flutter, separated from the vegetable and strawberry patch by a wire fence. Beyond the orchard, the railroad separates the house and four acres surrounding it from the rest of my grandfathers farm. A tangle of small trees, vines, and numerous kinds of wild plants stretches along the right-of-way. Orange and purple milkweeds, dusty-pink Joe Pye weed, bright purple ironweed, and Queen Annes lace are all seemingly placed there for the swallowtail and monarch butterflies, the fritillaries and skippers that visit them repeatedly, a kaleidoscope of color and movement as long as the sun is up.