2009 NH Outside Calendar Available Now

Our beautiful 2009 NH Outside calendar is now available. The calendar contains excerpts from published NH Outside columns, illustrated with original artwork by volunteer artists and spiced with daily tips and tidbits to help increase awareness of the natural world.

Subtitled connecting you with the wisdom and wonder of the natural world, the calendar itself reflects the purpose of our collaborative writing project: to give our many natural resources volunteers who love to write another way to share the humor, insight, and wonder they've found in the world outside their doorways.

We recruit people with a passion for the natural world and offer training, professional editing, and ongoing support in exchange for their written work. Most of their essays reflect on a private experience or encounter with the world just outside their doorways.

The only aim of our project: to connect readers to nature in some concrete, meaningful way. Every week we distribute a new essay to print media statewide and publish it to our NH Outside web page.

Last year's calendar won a first-place award from the Association for Communication Excellence (ACE), an international association of communicators and information technologists. We think you'll find this year's edition every bit as gorgeous and useful. At $8.95 each ($7.95 for bulk orders), we expect the calendars to disappear quickly.

New Book Features History, Economics of New Hampshire Dairy Industry

A new book, “The History and Economics of the New Hampshire Dairy Industry,” documents the beginning of dairy farming in New Hampshire to the present day.

UNH Cooperative Extension published the fully-illustrated book, featuring color photos of today’s industry as well as antique pictures of yesteryears. It contains the collective expertise of 10 authors and was edited by John Porter, professor and dairy specialist, Emeritus, UNH Cooperative Extension, who also co-authored “Preserving Old Barns.” Granite State Dairy Promotion sponsored the publication of the book at the request of the New England Family Dairy Farms Cooperative.

Chapters include information on history, modern dairy farming, producer-distributors and commercial processors, milk marketing, ecology, open space, the role of the University of New Hampshire in the industry, economics, and the future of dairy farming.

Although this book is about the New Hampshire dairy industry, a lot of the history and economics parallel what occurred throughout New England over the years. There is a milk marketing chapter, one of the best descriptions of this complex pricing system written to date.

The thousands of old barns that dot the New Hampshire countryside are a testimony to the dairy industry that was “king” in its day. Today it continues to generate millions of dollars of product value and maintain the open space that makes New Hampshire a desirable place to live. This book gives an appreciation of what took place on the New Hampshire countryside over the years.

Click here for the order form, or send a check for $24 ($19.95 plus shipping and handling), payable to UNH Cooperative Extension and mail to: UNH Cooperative Extension Publications Center, Nesmith Hall, 131 Main St., Durham, NH 03824. For bookstores interested in wholesale prices, call UNH Cooperative Extension Publications Manager Holly Young at (603) 862-1564.

New! Integrated Landscaping: Following Nature’s Lead
 
Integrated Landscaping: Following Nature’s Lead is a new publication for New Hampshire and other gardeners, landscapers, contractors, businesses and municipalities in the Northeast that want to create beautiful, functional landscapes based on natural ecosystems.

Integrated Landscaping: Following Nature’s Lead is a fully illustrated book. Photos, drawings, and sketches on almost every page provide clear examples of the concepts presented.

Most landscape manuals describe a linear sequence of processes: design, plant selection, installation, and ongoing maintenance. Integrated Landscaping offers a holistic approach that addresses these processes simultaneously. This new way of thinking treats each site as a system of plant and animal communities, considering their interrelationships to each other and their environment.

This manual will help New Hampshire and other landscapers working in the Northeast on either existing or new sites to:

• Establish landscapes that look and feel as if they belong here.
• Integrate natural principles into beautiful, functional landscapes.
• Create landscapes that sustain themselves with minimum cost, energy, and effort.
• Think in terms of plant systems, rather than mere collections of individual plants.
• Use and apply plant-system models designed for challenging conditions.
• Find alternatives to invasive species that offer the aesthetic characteristics they provide.
• Create landscapes that benefit wildlife, both above and below ground.

The extensive appendices provide further information on all topics presented along with plant selection charts and lists.
Cost is $19.95, plus shipping and handling, for a total of $24. Click here for the order form. Payable to UNH Cooperative Extension and mail to: UNH Cooperative Extension Publications Center, Nesmith Hall, 131 Main St., Durham, NH 03824.

Landscaping at the Water’s Edge: An Ecological Approach
A Manual for NH Landowners and Landscapers Now Available

No matter where you live in New Hampshire, the actions you take in your landscape can have far reaching effects on water quality. Why? Because we are all connected to the water cycle and we all live in a watershed, the land area that drains into a surface water body such as a lake, river, or wetland.

“Landscaping at the Water’s Edge: An Ecological Approach” is a new publication for New Hampshire landowners and landscapers that will explain how our landscaping choices impact surface and ground waters and demonstrates how, with simple observations, ecologically-based design and low impact maintenance practices, you can protect, and even improve, the quality of our water resources.

Authors are UNH Cooperative Extension specialists and educators with expertise in horticulture, water resources, turf grass, entomology, planting and maintaining landscapes and home lawn care. These educators partnered with a sustainable and ecological designer and other experts united to provide information and expertise to help landscapers and property owners living along New Hampshire’s lakes, ponds, rivers and streams make decisions about landscape design and maintenance that will reduce pollution and environmental degradation.

“Landscaping at the Water’s Edge: An Ecological Approach” is a fully illustrated book. Photos and sketches on almost every page provide clear examples of the concepts presented. The appendices carry extensive information pertinent to state regulations, along with recommended plant lists and other resources.
             
Cost is $20. Click here for the order form. Payable to UNH Cooperative Extension and mail to: UNH Cooperative Extension Publications Center, Nesmith Hall, 131 Main St., Durham, NH 03824.

• Lively, easy-to-read text and useful charts
• Pen and ink illustrations, and black & white photos of selected plants
• Sections on plant selection and care
• Specialty plant lists and an index for easy referencing

Written by Cathy Neal and Margaret Hagen of UNH Cooperative Extension, along with Leslie van Berkum of van Berkum Nurseries, this book is published by the New Hampshire Plant Growers' Association in cooperation with UNH Cooperative Extension.

Click here for the order form. Payable to UNH Cooperative Extension and mail to: UNH Cooperative Extension Publications Center, Nesmith Hall, 131 Main St., Durham, NH 03824.