NEW! The NOFA Organic Lawn and Turf Handbook

This 104-page, comprehensive and practical handbook details methods for growing and managing beautiful, healthy, organic turfgrass. Written and edited by scientists and NOFA accredited organic landscapers as a natural companion to NOFA’s professional organic lawn and turf courses, it also stands alone as a unique and valuable resource for all landscapers.

This book is aimed at professionals but will be a useful resource for anyone interested in creating beautiful organic lawns, parks or athletic fields in the Northeast.

Price: 25.00
Shipping/Handling: 3.00

Standards for Organic Land Care: Practices for Design and Maintenance of Ecological Landscapes

The Organic Land Care Program of the CT and MA chapters of NOFA have made available the first comprehensive Standards for Organic Land Care. The Standards go far beyond how to grow an organic lawn. They present a philosophy of ecological stewardship in designing and maintaining landscapes. Over 60 pages long, the Standards are the result of more than two years' work by landscape professionals, scientists and citizen activists. The Organic Land Care Program was formed in 1999 to extend the vision and principles of organic agriculture to the care of the landscapes where most people live, work, and carry out their daily lives.

Copies of the Standards for Organic Land Care are available for $20 plus $3 shipping and handling. If you would like more than 9 copies, note that there is a price break - 10 or more copies cost $12.50 each plus $3 shipping. Please contact Bill Duesing at (203) 888-5146 or bduesing@cs.com if you would like to order in quantity.

Price: 20.00
Shipping/Handling: 3.00

Organic Soil Fertility Management

by Steve Gilman
There is a complex foodweb that makes mineral dirt into fertile, living soil. This Handbook reflects that understanding of soil as more than an NPK sponge—an organism—as revealed in the work of Dr. Elaine Ingham and many organic farmers and researchers. The farmer, for better or worse, consciously or unawares, influences the balance between bacteria and fungi, acid and alkali, air and water, between each of many minerals and between minerals and organic matter. Soil’s health shows up in signs the farmer can either read or test for. As Gilman’s book explains, soil responds readily to well-planned, well-timed tillage, cover cropping/resting and feeding.

Organic Soil Fertility Management was created under a program of NOFA/Mass and is now included as part of the Interstate Council/SARE series.

Steve Gilman, who also wrote NOFA's Organic Weed Management, has been farming organically since 1976, growing herbs and vegetables in the Saratoga, N.Y. area. He is a longtime presenter and writer on organic matters. Recently, he served as Managing Director of the North East Organic Network (NEON), a USDA research project administered through Cornell University. Steve has also served in numerous capacities on the boards of NOFA-NY and the NOFA
Price: 7.95
Shipping/Handling: 2.00

Organic Weed Management

by Steve Gilman
Weeds can be enemy, useful indicator, valued guardian, health-giving medicine. After reading this book, you’re likely to see (and grow) things differently, perhaps viewing your weeds as distinctive, informative neighbors—not all of whom can stay! A commercial farmer, Gilman devotes several chapters to strategies of control: stale seedbed, use of the stirrup hoe and weedeating machines, mulching and timing. He helped pioneer the biostrip approach—periodically-mowed strips of biodiverse growth between cultivated rows which amount to intentional sod where weeds might otherwise grow and which beneficial insects can inhabit.

Organic Weed Management was created under a program of NOFA/Mass and is now included as part of the Interstate Council/SARE series.

Steve Gilman, who also wrote NOFA's Organic Soil Fertility Management, has been farming organically since 1976, growing herbs and vegetables in the Saratoga, N.Y. area. He is a longtime presenter and writer on organic matters. Recently, he served as Managing Director of the North East Organic Network (NEON), a USDA research project administered through Cornell University. Steve has also served in numerous capacities on the boards of NOFA-NY and the NOFA Interstate Council.
Price: 7.95
Shipping/Handling: 2.00

Vegetable Crop Health: Helping Nature Control Diseases and Pests Organically

by by Brian Caldwell
Skilled farmers will appreciate this balanced, thorough presentation on creating a low-pest growing situation. Vegetable Crop Health includes farmer-friendly chapters on organic pest management with heavy emphasis on proven no-spray cultural techniques that reduce pest numbers and damage. The book includes a full chapter on farm design and crop rotation toward this end. It gives a crop-by-crop discussion of specific pest management practices, including spray-based "rescue" treatments.

The manual unlocks secrets of host plant resistance, soil health, trap cropping, cover crops, field layout, row covers and manipulating the overall farm environment.

Brian Caldwell has been a commercial organic vegetable grower for over 20 years, a Cornell Cooperative Extension Educator, and is now Farm Education Coordinator for NOFA-NY.
Price: 7.95
Shipping/Handling: 2.00

Whole Farm Planning: Ecological Imperatives, Personal Values and Economics

by Elizabeth Henderson and Karl North
This manual takes the desire to make a living farming and shows how to turn it into reality through a "workbook" approach that is both personal and planetary.

Worksheets and exercises coax out the often-underrated dreams and desires, priorities and objectives that show the way to work that feeds rather than exhausts. It offers “what you need to understand about” the ecosystems that sustain the farm, social structures and processes, and the economics of the farm and food system.

The tools in Whole Farm Planning, borrowed in part from Holistic Management™, are powerful because they’re centered around including all that adds up to life.

Elizabeth Henderson is a partner at Peacework Organic Farm in western New York, often NOFA’s emissary to the world outside the Northeast, and author of several books on organic agriculture. Karl North operates the farm he built in 1980, Northland Sheep Dairy. He has studied and has written on Holistic Management for NOFA periodicals.

Price: 7.95
Shipping/Handling: 2.00

Compost, Vermicompost and Compost Tea: Feeding the Soil on the Organic Farm

by Grace Gershuny
This book on the basic biology and expanding lore of composting explains the requirements of the National Organic Program (NOP) and offers a host of practical suggestions from professional composters for small-scale as well as larger-scale composting operations.

The pages of Compost, Vermicompost and Compost Tea list materials used and their sources, plus recipes for soil mixes. Gershuny defines the elements of compost quality and stability, tells where, when and how to use compost, and explains its disease-suppressing properties. There's a section on how to adjust C:N ratios, moisture and nutrient content and what materials to avoid. The volume covers current findings about compost tea and effective microorganisms (EM) as well as worm-powered composting and the biodynamic method.

Grace Gershuny is the author with Joe Smillie of The Soul of Soil (Chelsea Green) and is herself the author of Start with the Soil (Rodale Press). She developed NOFA's first organic certification program in 1977 and was a founding member of the Organic Trade Association. From 1994 - 99 she served on the staff of USDA's National Organic Program. Grace teaches about gardening and agriculture issues at the Institute for Social Ecology and at Sterling College, both in Vermont. She is now consulting for the organic industry and working on a book about the real meaning of organic. She still grows most of her own veggies at her homestead in Barnet, VT.Price: 7.95

Price: 7.95
Shipping/Handling: 2.00

Soil Resiliency and Health: Crop Rotation and Cover Cropping on the Organic Farm

by Seth Kroeck
This book describes the tool of crop rotation and its close relative, cover cropping, for their use in building soil in nutrient level, freedom from pest and disease and general balance and health. It is convincing as well about the financial benefits, and better use of a farmer’s time, that rotation planning can bring. Kroek clarifies the theory and practice by breaking down crops into groupings according to not just plant family, but also time of planting, time to maturity, nutrient needs and other parameters. Crop Rotation and Cover Cropping gives examples of relatively simple 6-unit rotations, along with more detailed and complex 12- and 24-unit examples.

Seth Kroek has been working and managing organic farms in the Northeast and California for the past eight years. He is currently working his own farm, Crystal Spring Community Farm in Brunswick, Me. with his wife, Maura, and their son Griffin.
Price: 7.95
Shipping/Handling: 2.00

Humane, Healthy Poultry Production: A Manual for Organic Growers

by Karma Glos
The best poultry raising techniques for both layer and broiler production involve being considerate friends with your birds. Space considerations, lighting, housing, outdoor access, equipment all receive close, knowledgeable attention in this detailed handbook. What breeds to choose? How and what to feed them? Glos offers a chapter on each question, including ten pages on diagnosing disease and restoring and protecting birds' health using organic health care practices.

Specific management issues for egg and meat birds and turkeys and waterfowl receive attention, along with slaughtering procedures and packing and marketing ideas. Interspersed are detailed accounts of the author's own experiences on her Kingbird Farm.

Karma Glos, the daughter of homesteading parents, majored in field biology at Evergreen State College in her home state of Washington and worked with the U.S. Forest Service studying small mammal ecology. She and her husband, Michael, have been building Kingbird Farm in upstate New York since 1995. Their operation includes hogs, poultry, beef, vegetables and herbs with the help of many draft horses. She admits having "a passion for healthful, innovative livestock husbandry practices."
Price: 7.95
Shipping/Handling: 2.00

Marketing and Community Relations

by Rebecca Bosch
This rare bit of marketing sense inspires us to sell organic products in an organic way. Detailed descriptions of marketing techniques fill the book—ones that have proven successful by tapping into the better side of human nature and fully respecting the spirit and biological underpinnings of communities and the Earth.

To reverse the harm that capitalism and conventional marketing are associated with, Bosch sensibly proposes that organic business owners calculate their real income/profit needs ("define enough") before designing a marketing plan—partly also in order to allow the sense of a job done rather than one that’s forever open-ended.

With good humor and a detailed resource section, Marketing and Community Relations will help set any small-business boat afloat and on course.

Rebecca Bosch is an entrepreneur, writer and nutrition activist. "Good Stuff by Mom & Me," the business that she began with her mom, produces low processed organic, raw, gluten-free foods and offers periodic classes in diet and lifestyle change. She makes her home in Ithaca, N.Y
Price: 7.95
Shipping/Handling: 2.00

Organic Dairy Production

by Sarah Flack
Healthful organic milk comes from healthy cows…which come from good livestock management including access to high-quality stored forages (hay, silage) and pastures. Which in turn come from healthy soils. The quality of these elements all depend on the observation skills and practices of the farmer, says the author in this detailed manual on organic dairying in the Northeast.

In chapters on soils, plants and livestock, Flack offers the practices developed in her own and other farmers' experiences dairying successfully under organic principles. There's an overview of the many preventive and treatment health options available, and blunt advice for marketing fluid milk and value-added dairy products. Organic Dairy Production discusses the regulations governing both milk and value-added production, labeling and sales.

Profiles of individual farms help shed light on aspects of dairying and value-added production.

Sarah Flack is a sought-after workshop presenter, an agricultural consultant and organic & biodynamic farmer. She does independent organic certification inspections and consults on grass farming and farm design and business management. She has trained in homeopathy for livestock, medicinal herbs and production of value-added meat and dairy products. She helped found the Vermont Grassfarmers Association and is involved with NOFA-VT. She is presently president of the board of directors of the Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association.
Price: 7.95
Shipping/Handling: 2.00

The Wisdom of Plant Heritage: Organic Seed Production and Saving

by Bryan Connolly with contributing editor CR Lawn
A how-to for the small producer—the best techniques of the art of growing seed.
Seeds are precious because they contain the knowledge of how to live and propagate under most of the challenging conditions that earth, air, fire and water can create. Organic farmers (and all farmers and eaters) today must learn how to let no more of that vital reservoir of knowledge slip away, while using seeds to grow and sell food.

In the manual, Connolly ties in the goals of farming with the principles of genetics. He clarifies the biologic and economic differences between hybrid and open-pollinated seed, describe the most successful propagation techniques and offer tips for harvesting, preparing and storing the seed you've saved. They describe how to do a germination test before planting or selling.

Organic Seed Production and Saving importantly gives crop-family-by-crop-family advice and fascinating lore. In a section on commercial seed production and sales, it offers profiles of six seed companies, part of whose business is protecting the genetic heritage of the crop plant world. There is a list of seed sources and seed-saving references.

Bryan Connolly is a seed grower for Fedco and Baker Creek Seeds and an heirloom curcurbit and corn seed grower. He has worked locating heirloom varieties for seed sales. CR Lawn is founder of Fedco Seeds and heads the Restoring Our Seed project, which, like this NOFA Handbook Project, is supported by SARE. Restoring Our Seed sponsors conferences and creates printed materials about saving endangered seed.
Price: 7.95
Shipping/Handling: 2.00

Additonally you can order the whole set (not including The NOFA Organic Lawn and Turf Handbook or Standards for Organic Land Care), postage paid, by sending a check for $80.00 to NOFA/MA, 411 Sheldon Road, Barre, MA 01005