PERMANENT AGRICULTURE - ABUNDANCE BY DESIGN

"In true permaculture style, this book combines empowering vision with grounded common sense, strategic thinking with nuts and bolts information... likely to become the classic design manual for those with the energy and enthusiasm to become the garden farmers of the future.."

- David Holmgren, from the Foreword

"Peter Bane's broad and well-tested experience in ecological living, expressed here in clear and engaging prose, will guide homeowners, gardeners, and small farmers toward designing and living in lushly productive and harmonious landscapes."

---Toby Hemenway, author of Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture

Permaculture is a practical way to apply ecological design to food, housing, and energy systems. Whether you have a quarter-acre or 25 acres, want to raise fruits, vegetables and livestock by simpler, more productive and sustainable methods, or simply want your home and garden to truly meet your needs, this book shows how to build community resilience and create more prosperous households and neighborhoods. The Permaculture Handbook is a step-by-step, fully illustrated guide to practical permaculture for city and country, rounded out by extensive case studies of four successful farmsteads and market gardens.

This comprehensive manual casts garden farming as both an economic opportunity and a strategy for living well with less money. It shows how, by mimicking the intelligence of nature and applying appropriate technologies such as solar and environmental design, permaculture can:

• Create an abundance of fresh, nourishing local produce
• Reduce dependence on expensive, polluting fossil fuels
• Drought-proof our communities
• Convert waste into wealth.

Permaculture is about working with the earth and with each other to repair and enrich the living world that sustains us. The Permaculture Handbook is the definitive, practical North American guide to this revolutionary practice, and is a must-read for anyone concerned about creating food security, resilience and a legacy of abundance rather than depletion.

"Peter Bane's contribution to domestic self-reliant security in this comprehensive handbook is nothing short of remarkable... A gem of a manual." ---Joel Salatin, author of Folks, This Ain't Normal and owner/operator of Polyface Farm

"Bane has taken the single most urgent question of our times "How shall we live?" and given a real and viable answer."---Sharon Astyk, writer, farmer, teacher and author of Making Home

Peter Bane is a permaculture teacher and site designer who has published and edited Permaculture Activist magazine for over 20 years. He helped create Earthaven Ecovillage in North Carolina, and is now pioneering suburban farming in Bloomington, Indiana.