The Book Cover

Title: Building Projects for Backyard Farmers and Home Gardeners: A Guide to 21 Handmade Structures for Homegrown Harvests
Author: Chris Gleason
Publisher: Fox Chapel Publishing
ISBN: 978-1565235434
Pages: 160
★★★★★

Synopsis:

(Taken from Amazon.com) This is a practical and engaging guide to transforming an ordinary backyard into a productive farm. Homesteading is experiencing a revival among both rural and urban residents who want to get back to basics and live closer to the land. With this book, homeowners will obtain both inspiration and instruction for transforming their grassy yard into a lush farm that can produce all the food they need.

The author is an experienced woodworker and homesteader who shows how to plan and design a backyard farm. He offers expert advice for making all of the essential hard-working structures that are needed to sustain small-scale agriculture.

Step-by-step instructions are provided for 10 projects including green houses, beehives, rabbit hutches, raised beds, potting sheds, trellises, fences, and more. Readers learn how to create an irrigation system, harvest rainwater, and keep their farms environmentally sound. Each detailed plan is accompanied by the author’s clear, instructive drawings.

More than just a manual, the book also offers entertaining and enlightening interviews with both experts and “average Joe” farmers. We learn what motivates them to become backyard farmers, the lessons that they have to share, and maybe even a couple of funny stories along the way.

Review

My husband and I have been discussing changing our lifestyle for a while and becoming more self-sufficient.  After all, isn’t that our human right to be able to grow food in order to support our families? While many people are not in a place where they can have their own backyard farm or home garden (i.e. apartments or HOA restricted) we are blessed with a huge backyard and better yet, no HOA.

When I saw that I had the chance to review this book, I was incredibly excited. After all, we needed ideas on how to build things. Plus, we didn’t want to have to spend a ton of money. I know the saying goes — spend some to save some but we’d really like to limit that as much as possible. I felt that it was possible that Building Projects for Backyard Farmers & Home Gardeners would give us the ideas on how to do things ourselves.

One particular feature that I found particularly useful was that it tells you how many vegetable plants you need per person and how much space they will take up. For example, if your family is big tomato family then you’ll need 1-4 plants a person and it takes up about 48 sq inches.  Sweet. (Oh how I miss actually being able to EAT tomatoes.)

There are about 21 projects in this book including:

• Rainwater Harvesting System – This is probably the most wonderful thing we could do for our own garden. In Florida we have two season (wet and dry). During the summer months, it rains almost every day. Then once “winter” hits, we often have a very dry season which puts us onto water restriction from the community. Harvesting our own rainwater would help us through those dry seasons. That is for sure!
• Irrigation Strategies — These include overhead watering, drip irrigation, and soaker hoses.
• Garden Cart – You move a LOT of stuff around while you are gardening and although people usually use wheelbarrows, they aren’t usually big enough for needs. If you have ever dragged around mulch, hay, or stone, you’ll understand what I mean. How many trips do you really feel like doing, anyway?
• Compost Box – Compost provides an amazing fertilizer for gardens (plants, trees, whatever!) Plus it really puts our food scraps (including left over vegetables, fruit peels, etc.) to use. We get a TON of leaves from our Oak trees. I hate those darn trees, but the dead leaves would be a welcome addition to a compost box. I really like the idea that what we take from the Earth, we are also giving back to the Earth as well. It makes me sound like such a hippy, but I don’t care. There is something poetic about giving back to the garden that gives to you.
• Vermiculture Bin – This is a bin created to use worms to speed up and improve the overall quality of your composting.  The worms in a vermiculture bin break down scraps and produce a very powerful and organic fertilizer (i.e. worm castings).
• Easy Plank Raised Beds – Have you seen the raised garden beds for sale? They are often really expensive. I have seen many that are 200+$ for a handmade wooden bed. The good news is, you can make this yourself and it is EASY. You can make this project with scrap wood or the wood from wood pallets, which we get for free!
• Stacked Lumber Raised Bed – Just another version of a raised bed. Personally, I really love the look of these! In this particular plan they give you directions on how to build a beautiful trellis, which is much needed for vine plants like tomatoes or cucumbers!
• Potato Planter – Did you know that you can grow approximately 100lbs of potatos in a compact 2ft by 2ft area?  The directions they give includes wood made from a wood pallet. (Remember how I said you can often find them for FREE??!)
• Tiered Lettuce Rack – ever think to shelve your lettuce? I had no idea that was even possible. I think lettuce is a must in gardens and this seems like a great way to conserve space and add a little variety to your home garden.
• Wall of Tomatoes – I think this looks absolutely awesome! You will have to get the book to build it but it’s definitely a useful AND decorative wall of tomatoes.
• Bean Leaner – I bet this would be great on an apartment patio.
• Squash Ramp – This is a corral for your favorite sprawling squashes and melons. (Cantalope, cucumber, honeydew, pumpkin, etc.)
• Grapevine Ladder – This is AWESOME and I cannot wait to make this. It’s like a pergola for grapes. Doesn’t that sound like the coolest concept? I think I will be doing this against our backyard shed.
• Pea Trellis – Just like it says but the materials it recommends is actually pretty cool.
• Greenhouse – Using a greenhouse will help jumpstart early plant growth before planting.  This project uses recycled windows. There is a window place near us who has a dumpster out back that has hundreds of old windows and guess where they will end up going — the dump. What a good way to recycle old windows!
• Cold Frame – This is kind of the inbetween tool you would use from sprouting in the greenhouse and before planting into the ground. This helps allow the plant to harden off prior to planting.
• Wire Mesh Cloche – This helps protect your plants from frost. Florida doesn’t get really cold, but when it does, it can do so really quickly and really irritate plants. Creating a wire mesh cloche would be a great project to add for the cooler months.
• PVC Cloche – I swear, you can do so much with PVC that it’s a bit crazy.
• Top Bar Bee Hive – We’re not doing bees – ever. But, I’d definitely love some organic honey. Yum!
• Rabbit Hutch – Rabbits smell, big time. They are soft and cuddly and sooooo cute. But, they stink. The hutch in Building Projects for Backyard Farmers & Home Gardeners, though, is spacious and looks like it could be nicely personalized. If I was somehow tricked into getting a rabbit for the girls, though, the hutches in this book are ideal for us.

Besides just given project ideas, we are also given the materials list, which is incredibly important and directions on how to make these projects. It’s not just an idea book, but a guide to create these projects into your own garden. Inspirational gardeners are also profiled and I found their stories rather interesting.

I only had a few issues with the book, one being the fact that such a highly image detailed book was very slow to load using the required Bluefire Reader app on my iPad. So if you are going to purchase this book, I definitely recommend getting the physical copy over the kindle or nook version. In fact, I don’t even think it’s available in e-format for the public so you probably do not even have to worry about that.

The other issue I had was that it only included two backyard projects for animals — the bees and the rabbit hutch. I would have loved if it included plans for a chicken coop and a chicken brooder. I mean, that’s a huge part of backyard farmers. That would have been more important then the rabbit hutch. (I mean, just how is rabbits needed for backyard farming? I don’t know…)

Overall, I found this book really informative and I cannot wait to utilize a lot of these projects in my own backyard garden.