"Nan turned to see Ben's face turn as hard and white as a sauerkraut crock. When he did not respond, Nan figured that he was just going to back off as he usually did, the shy and retiring husbandman. She did not know her history. She did not know that shy and retiring husbandmen have been known to revolt against oppression with pitchforks drawn." -The Last of the Husbandmen In The Last of the Husbandmen, Gene Logsdon looks to his own roots in Ohio farming life to depict the personal triumphs and tragedies, clashes and compromises, and abiding human character of American farming families and communities. From the Great Depression, when farmers tilled the fields with plow horses, to the corporate farms and government subsidy programs of the present, this novel presents the complex transformation of a livelihood and of a way of life. Two friends, one rich by local standards, and the other of more modest means, grow to manhood in a lifelong contest of will and character. In response to many of the same circumstances-war, love, moonshining, the Klan, weather, the economy-their different approaches and solutions to dealing with their situations put them at odds with each other, but we are left with a deeper understanding of the world that they have inherited and have chosen. Part morality play and part personal recollection, The Last of the Husbandmen is both a lighthearted look at the past and a profound statement about the present state of farming life. It is also a novel that captures the spirit of those who have chosen to work the land they love.

Amidst Mad Cow scares and consumer concerns about how farm animals are bred, fed, and raised, many farmers and homesteaders are rediscovering the traditional practice of pastoral farming. Grasses, clovers, and forbs are the natural diet of cattle, horses, and sheep, and are vital supplements for hogs, chickens, and turkeys. Consumers increasingly seek the health benefits of meat from animals raised in green paddocks instead of in muddy feedlots. In All Flesh Is Grass: The Pleasures and Promises of Pasture Farming, Gene Logsdon explains that well-managed pastures are nutritious and palatable-virtual salads for livestock. Leafy pastures also hold the soil, foster biodiversity, and create lovely landscapes. Grass farming might be the solution for a stressed agricultural system based on an industrial model and propped up by federal subsidies. In his clear and conversational style, Logsdon explains historically effective practices and new techniques. His warm, informative profiles of successful grass farmers offer inspiration and ideas. His narrative is enriched by his own experience as a "contrary farmer" on his artisan-scale farm near Upper Sandusky, Ohio. All Flesh Is Grass will have broad appeal to the sustainable commercial farmer, the home-food producer, and all consumers who care about their food.

First published in 1977, this book--from one of America's most famous and prolific agricultural writers--became an almost instant classic among homestead gardeners and small farmers. Now fully updated and available once more, Small-Scale Grain Raising offers a entirely new generation of readers the best introduction to a wide range of both common and lesser-known specialty grains and related field crops, from corn, wheat, and rye to buckwheat, millet, rice, spelt, flax, and even beans and sunflowers.

More and more Americans are seeking out locally grown foods, yet one of the real stumbling blocks to their efforts has been finding local sources for grains, which are grown mainly on large, distant corporate farms. At the same time, commodity prices for grains--and the products made from them--have skyrocketed due to rising energy costs and increased demand. In this book, Gene Logsdon proves that anyone who has access to a large garden or small farm can (and should) think outside the agribusiness box and learn to grow healthy whole grains or beans--the base of our culinary food pyramid--alongside their fruits and vegetables.

Starting from the simple but revolutionary concept of the garden "pancake patch," Logsdon opens up our eyes to a whole world of plants that we wrongly assume only the agricultural "big boys" can grow. He succinctly covers all the basics, from planting and dealing with pests, weeds, and diseases to harvesting, processing, storing, and using whole grains. There are even a few recipes sprinkled throughout, along with more than a little wit and wisdom.

Never has there been a better time, or a more receptive audience, for this book. Localvores, serious home gardeners, CSA farmers, and whole-foods advocates--in fact, all people who value fresh, high-quality foods--will find a field full of information and ideas in this once and future classic.

In his insightful new book, Holy Shit: Managing Manure to Save Mankind, contrary farmer Gene Logsdon provides the inside story of manure-our greatest, yet most misunderstood, natural resource. He begins by lamenting a modern society that not only throws away both animal and human manure-worth billions of dollars in fertilizer value-but that spends a staggering amount of money to do so. This wastefulness makes even less sense as the supply of mined or chemically synthesized fertilizers dwindles and their cost skyrockets. In fact, he argues, if we do not learn how to turn our manures into fertilizer to keep food production in line with increasing population, our civilization, like so many that went before it, will inevitably decline.

With his trademark humor, his years of experience writing about both farming and waste management, and his uncanny eye for the small but important details, Logsdon artfully describes how to manage farm manure, pet manure and human manure to make fertilizer and humus. He covers the field, so to speak, discussing topics like:

How to select the right pitchfork for the job and use it correctly

How to operate a small manure spreader

How to build a barn manure pack with farm animal manure

How to compost cat and dog waste

How to recycle toilet water for irrigation purposes, and

How to get rid ourselves of our irrational paranoia about feces and urine.

Gene Logsdon does not mince words. This fresh, fascinating and entertaining look at an earthy, but absolutely crucial subject, is a small gem and is destined to become a classic of our agricultural literature.

When Gene Logsdon realized that he experienced the same creative joy from farming as he did from writing, he suspected that agriculture itself was a form of art. Thus began his search for the origins of the artistic impulse in the agrarian lifestyle. The Mother of All Arts is the culmination of Logsdon's journey, his account of friendships with farmers and artists driven by the urge to create. He chronicles his long relationship with Wendell Berry and discovers the playful humor of several new agrarian writers. He reveals insights gleaned from conversations with Andrew Wyeth and his family of artists. Through his association with musicians such as Willie Nelson and his involvement with Farm Aid, Logsdon learns how music -- blues, jazz, country, and even rock 'n' roll -- is also rooted in agriculture. Logsdon sheds new light on the work of rural painters, writers, and musicians and suggests that their art could be created only by those who work intimately with the land. Unlike the gritty realism or abstract expressionism often favored by contemporary critics, agrarian art evokes familiar feelings of community and comfort. Most important, Logsdon convincingly demonstrates that diminishing the connection between art and nature lessens the social and aesthetic value of both. The Mother of All Arts explores these cultural connections and traces the development of a new agrarian culture that Logsdon believes will eventually replace the model brought about by the industrial revolution. Humorous and introspective, the book is neither conventional cultural criticism nor traditional art criticism. It is a unique, lively meditation on the nature and purpose of art -- and on the life well-lived -- by one of the truly original voices of rural America.

"This book," the author tells us in his preface, "is intended to be a picture of life on a farm in Southern Ohio in the 1930s." RFD is a faithful portrait of farm life as thousands of men and women experienced it from one end of the country to the other and from pioneering times to the present century. Originally published in 1938 to enthusiastic reviews and commercial success, RFD is the story of one couple's trials with leaving the comforts of city life for a chance to get back to the land. Charles Allen Smart was a New York novelist and prep-school teacher when he inherited his aunt's farm in Chillicothe, Ohio. He and his wife moved into a rustic stone farmhouse, determined to combine their lives as working farmers with their active intellectual life, love of art, and political progressivism. They upset some in their small town by staging parts of Clifford Odets's play Waiting for Lefty, but they won respect for their hard work and honest dealings. Smart conveys the feel of their lives at a time when living in the country was a meaningful distinction in America. He also writes movingly of his concerns regarding America's materialism, the rise of industrial agriculture, burgeoning chain stores, and frayed communities. Told with sensitivity, gusto, and a fierce honesty, RFD became a classic because embedded in its charms as a first-rate farm memoir is the universal story of one couple's earnest, joyful attempt to live meaningful lives. Ohio University Press is especially pleased to reissue this midwestern classic with a new foreword by noted farm writer Gene Logsdon.

Gene Logsdon has found an imaginative way to introduce gardeners to amore total enjoyment of nature -- fauna as well as flora. From suburb tocountryside, every gardener knows that there are many pests who delight in one'sprecious creations -- rabbits devour petunias, raccoons eat the almost ripe sweetcorn, deer browse the morning glories, crows pull up young corn sprouts. How cangardeners and wildlife live together in harmony. Gene knows.

"This is an enjoyable book that, for a brief while, will take many of its readers home." News-Journal (Mansfield, OH)

" Logsdon] offers warmth and insight.. The simpler life is within our reach if we will choose it." Booklist

"This is a quiet, reflective work that describes in some detail the difficulty of developing and maintaining a lifestyle supported by the land, something easier planned than maintained.... a memoir of the spiritual path of one escapee." Bloomsbury Review

"Deliciously irreverent, endearingly self-deprecating, full of good humor, Gene Logsdon s latest work is his personal testament to home, the retaining of which has been (Carol aside) the passion of his life." Ohio Ecological Food & Arm Association News

"Gene Logsdon has lived by failing according to most people s standards of success, and has made a good life. A good book, too. I like You Can Go Home Again (to name one reason of several) because it comes from experience. It has to do, not with speculation or theory or wishful thinking, but with what is possible." Wendell Berry

"Gene Logsdon demonstrates once again that a combination of intelligence, scholarship, passion, and fervent patriotism can equal only one characteristic these days, a contrary mind of a high order." Wes Jackson, The Land Institute

"In this vigorous memoir of his search for the good life, Gene Logsdon tells us why America s agrarian values matter to our future as well as to our past. Living simply, respecting the land, taking pleasure from the work of our hands, supplying many of our own needs, acting as neighbors those values have not been lost, they ve only been displaced, shoved to the margins. And Logsdon shows how we might draw them back to the center of our lives." Scott Russell Sanders

Here is a book for everyone who has dreamed about going back to the land to live a simpler more meaningful life. Gene Logsdon s story embodies both the frustrations and longing so many of us feel as we search for our essential selves and a happy harmonious economic existence. The measure of his courage and contrariness is that he has been successful. In You Can Go Home Again, he tells us what motivated him and what success has meant."

Amidst Mad Cow scares and consumer concerns about how farm animals are bred, fed, and raised, many farmers and homesteaders are rediscovering the traditional practice of pastoral farming. Grasses, clovers, and forbs are the natural diet of cattle, horses, and sheep, and are vital supplements for hogs, chickens, and turkeys. Consumers increasingly seek the health benefits of meat from animals raised in green paddocks instead of in muddy feedlots. In All Flesh Is Grass: The Pleasures and Promises of Pasture Farming, Gene Logsdon explains that well-managed pastures are nutritious and palatable-virtual salads for livestock. Leafy pastures also hold the soil, foster biodiversity, and create lovely landscapes. Grass farming might be the solution for a stressed agricultural system based on an industrial model and propped up by federal subsidies. In his clear and conversational style, Logsdon explains historically effective practices and new techniques. His warm, informative profiles of successful grass farmers offer inspiration and ideas. His narrative is enriched by his own experience as a "contrary farmer" on his artisan-scale farm near Upper Sandusky, Ohio. All Flesh Is Grass will have broad appeal to the sustainable commercial farmer, the home-food producer, and all consumers who care about their food.

Gene Logsdon has become something of a rabble-rouser in progressive farm circles, stirring up debates and controversies with his popular New Farm magazine column, "The Contrary Farmer." One of Logsdons principle contrarieties is the opinion thatpopular images of the vanishing American farmer, notwithstandinggreater numbers of people in the U.S. will soon be growing and raising a greater share of their own food than at any time since the last century. Instead of vanishing, more and more farmers will be cottage farming, part-time.This detailed and personal account of how Logsdons family uses the art and science of agriculture to achieve a reasonably happy and ecologically sane way of life in an example for all who seek a sustainable lifestyle. In "The Contrary Farmer," Logsdon offers the tried-and-true, practical advice of a manual for the cottage farmer, as well as the subtler delights of a meditation in praise of work and pleasure. "The Contrary Farmer" will give its readers tools and tenets, but also hilarious commentaries and beautiful evocations of the Ohio countryside that Logsdon knows as his place in the universe.