Parker Produce Library

You can learn a lot about a person by looking at his or her bookshelf. In fact, when you're trying to learn about your farmer, the bookshelf can tell you nearly everything you need to know. Though a quick glance at the Parker Produce library is not a substitute for getting out to the farm, walking through the gardens, picking up a handful of soil and smelling the tomatoes, it will give you a good idea of our philosophies about farming and life in general. I encourage everyone to read all of these books and think about their message. If that happened, the world would be a different place.

A is for Agriculture

The first section of our bookshelf is dedicated to agricultural works. This includes our manuals and some books about the philosophies of sustainable agriculture.

The Rodale Book of Compostingedited by Deborah L. Martin and Grace Gershuny. A methodology for creating compost in a sustainable fashion. Mimicking nature and trying to keep up with her is the best way to make compost. This book has some great ideas for methods, ingredients and more.

The New Organic Grower Elliot Coleman. Coleman is easily the biggest influence in the methodology that began Parker Produce. He is an inventor, an author, a world traveler and farmer extrodinaire. I believe this is a text book for one of his classes at the College of the Atlantic. I read it cover to cover. It's interesting even if you are not a farmer and never have any intention of becoming one.

Four Season Harvest Elliot Coleman. See above. Coleman's material is worth reading for everyone.

The Self Reliant Homestead Charles Sanders. A great all around idea. There are several of this type of work out there and they are all interesting in presenting ideas for living sustainably by living independently of the system.

The Organic Gardener's Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control Ellis & Bradley. A massive volume of ideas for fighting pests without the use of chemicals and toxins that are dumped on conventional food in the industrial system.

Micro Eco-Farming Barbara Berst Adams. An interesting read about some folks that are trying to do things a bit differently in the world of commercial agriculture.

Rodale's Illustrated Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening Published by Rodale Press. This is another one that is meant to be a reference manual but is so interesting and well illustrated with photographs that I read it from cover to cover.

Worms Eat My Garbage Mary Appelhof. A great idea for small scall composting. Everyone should be composting as some 80% of landfill matter is organic material, i.e. shouldn't be there.

Salad Bar Beef Joel Salatin. This man is very interesting and even though I have no intention of growing beef cattle, this book is amazing. He has great ideas for reshaping the way fertility is added to a farm. And the ideas don't stop there.

Pastured Poultry Profits Joel Salatin. Another book of amazing agricultural insight from one of (in my opinion) the most eccentric, forward thinking farmers I know about. Along with Elliot Coleman, he is probably going to make a profound impact on the future of agriculture in this country.

You Can Farm Joel Salatin. See above.

Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal Joel Salatin. A bit nutty at times and I certainly don't agree with everything he says...but this is one of those books you'll find yourself nodding in agreement with at times. Other times you'll be yelling at the pages in disagreement. In my opinion, that's a great book.

Chicken Tractor Andy Lee. A wonderful book about a permacultural method for producing chickens/eggs with ingenuity and old time farm sense in an effort to dissengage from the current poultry methods of the CAFOs and industrial models.

B is for a Better understanding of history

This section of the bookshelf is dedicated to history. Incidentally, it is not the history that I learned in school. This is history as lived by the people who made it. Not the 'leaders', 'statesmen' and government officials, but the laborers, the workers, the civil rights leaders, the women, the victims...the people.

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. History, pure and simple. This isn't the triumphant voyage of Columbus we learned about in school. Rather, it's the genocide of the Native People of North America. And that's just the beginning.

Scott Nearing: The Making of a Homesteader, John Saltmarsh. I am trying to find time to read everything by Scott Nearing. This quasi-biography was a mistaken purchase when I wasn't paying attention in a local book store. I thought I was buying one of Nearing's works. This just made me want to do so more fervently.

C is for Change

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver. A year in the life of an author and her family after they decided to stick to a local food chain. Everyone should read this book!

The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan. Pollan follows three seperate food chains and in doing so, reveals the truth about our food system. If more people knew and thought about more of this information, we would live in a different world.

Failed States, Noam Chomsky. I won't go into a lot of detail about this or any of the following productions by Chomsky. He's the most widely read intellectual and political thinker on the planet...except in the United States. Read a few pages of any of his works and you'll understand why he's kept out of the mainstream. He's correct. Anything by Chomsky...read it!

The Imperial Presidency, Noam Chomsky

Year 501, Noam Chomsky

Hedgemony or Survival, Noam Chomsky

Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau

The World Without Us, Alan Weisman. A wonderful thought experiment that everyone should contemplate. Also, it gives some wonderful facts in a storied fashion about the history behind some of the world's most horrendous environmental problems. A must read!

Becoming Vegan, Davis and Melina. I'm not saying you should become vegan. I'm simply saying you should think about what we're saying. Don't just eat what you eat without thought. That's what got us where we are today.

The World Peace Diet, Will Tuttle, PhD. Don't read this book unless you're ready for your world to be turned upside down and unless you're ready to be set on a path that demands you gain more knowledge about what you're putting into your body. That said...everyone needs to read this book.