Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
Kingsolver is an avid gardener and homesteader with marvelous writing prowess. This book is a fun and easy read with excellent research. A good introduction, this book reveals what you buy at the store and what you get when you go out to dine. This book is also filled with great stories of homesteading and its rewards. I recommend this book to start off, if you are new to the topic.

Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan
This book is more dense but should alert you as to what the Corporate world and Wall Street are doing to your food supply. As I see it, there is far greater threat to our food than pointing the finger at terrorists. The corporate shenanigans are happening right in your area.

Harvest For Hope by Jane Goodall
This is a very detailed critique of our modern food supply, particularly about the unknown potential dangers and unintended consequences of genetically modified food.

So last winter we decided that we were ready to invest in some well made, heavy duty pruning tools. Being yankees (and environmentalists), we also prefer things that will last and that can be repaired if necessary. Several people recommended Felco pruners, but they are shipped from over seas, and we prefer to source our inputs for the farm locally whenever possible. After much internet research we decided to try Florian brand pruners, and it was a great decision. We use the Mini loppers for large jobs and the smaller handheld pruners for smaller jobs. They were worth every penny. Here’s why:

• They are heavy, well made tools, made right here in the USA, and they come with a lifetime warranty
• They are designed with an amazing ratchet-cut action that adds alot of power to your grip. You do not have to apply much force to cut through large branches, because the ratchet amplifies your force.
• You can get replacement parts for them, or send them down to Connecticut if they need to be repaired
• They deliver a sharp, clean cut every time.

We definitely recommend Florian pruners if you need professional quality pruning or other cutting tools, at a medium price. Three cheers for great tools!

It’s taken some years to find suppliers where we can buy seeds and plants that are adapted to our climate, that will grow well without chemicals, and that give us the opportunity to propagate heritage varieties that are being lost in modern large-scale monoculture. So I thought I’d post a summary of our favorite suppliers in case this is a helpful resource list for other gardeners. The more well-known seed catalogs, like Burpees, well tend to offer hybrid seeds, modern varieties and lots of the same old thing. Because we value biodiversity and see part of our role on this farm as helping to protect genetic biodiversity on this planet, we buy from independent seed houses that carry a good selection of heritage varieties.

Seed Savers Catalog Cover Image

The mother ship of heritage varieties in the US is the Seed Savers Exchange. They have an absolutely amazing quantity of heritage plant varieties, grown by seed propagators all over the country. Their dedication to biodiversity is really inspiring.

We also order alot of our seeds from Johnny’s and Fedco in Maine.

2009 Fedco Catalog Cover

Both carry organic seeds, which we like to buy because we figure that if the parents thrived under organic growing conditions, the offspring will be disease and pest resistant. Plus, it means that the field where the seeds were grown was not dowsed with pesticide and herbicide pollution, something we try to avoid in all our suppliers. An organic gardening friend just turned us on to Landreth’s seeds, the oldest seed house in the US, which we will try out this year. Big agribusiness corporations like Monsanto have been merging and acquiring seed companies all over the world, patenting food animal and crop genes, and suing to shut down farmers who save seeds from their own crops, in an attempt to corner the market on food crop genetics. This is a very scary trend, so in our purchasing decisions we try our best to support the suppliers that are still independent.

Perennial plants are another focus at Grace Note Farm. They include fruits and nuts, and other perennial food crops like sunchokes and mushrooms. Some varieties of fruit that are not commonly eaten in the US, like service berry, beach plum, and currants produce well without needing to be babied as much as commercial fruits like apples, so these are a good choice for growers who do not want to use pesticides/fungicides. These more unusual trees and shrubs can be bought from smaller nurseries like Oikos , Miller nurseries in the Finger Lakes, and St. Lawrence nursery. These last two are especially important for us since we are in the Northeast, and these nurseries develop plants that will do well in our cold climate.

For mushrooms, Fungi Perfecti is the most well-known supplier. They have spawn and can also provide helpful information on growing mushrooms. The owner, Paul Stamets, zealously preaches the benefits of fungi and is becoming a very widely acknowledged expert on mushrooms. We have had good luck ordering from a smaller place called Field and Forest.

Field and Forest Catalog cover

They have excellent customer support. You can tell them what kind of growing medium you want to use (what kind of tree or sawdust, etc. you have) and they can help you pick which mushrooms to grow. When we ordered Shiitake spawn from them the second year, their customer service rep. chose a type that would be harvested at a different time of year than the ones we had already planted. How cool is that!

If you have had success with other independent seed suppliers, let us know in the comments. Now back to my order forms.

Happy Growing!

Cold Frames in snow, sheltering an early crop of salad greens