February 2026

Followers of Eliot Coleman’s farming and gardening work over the decades, as well as those interested in learning more about soil health and fertility, will enjoy this newest book from this well-known and longtime Maine farmer and gardener. “The Self-Fed Farm and Garden,” as the title implies, details the systems used at Coleman’s Four Season […]

Fruit exploration is more of a passion than a pastime for those of us easily distracted by roadside apple trees, relic farm orchards, or a lone pear tree standing strong where an old farmstead once stood. We often park on the soft shoulder of a gravel road to get a closer look or knock on

In his latest novel, Wendell Berry, 91, again invites the reader into the fictional town of Port William, Kentucky. Renowned as an essayist and poet, Berry, through a trove of eight novels and dozens of short stories, captures the history, pride, and heartache of this small, rural community spanning time from the Civil War to

Sometimes when I am eating a fruit or vegetable, or especially a mushroom, I wonder, “Who ate this first? How did they figure out that it was safe to eat? How did they know that it takes three batches of cooking water to render this edible, that two still makes you ill?” I suspect curiosity,

Every winter I stock up on black oil sunflower seeds and fancy mix for the feeders. It’s meant for the birds, but gray squirrels and red squirrels are frequent visitors. Squirrels are common backyard visitors no matter where you live, yet scientists know surprisingly little about their behavior and ecology in their native range. They

Alicia Kennedy’s “On Eating: The Making & Unmaking of My Appetites” is a memoir that, like all good memoirs, explores culture and politics via stories of the self. In it, Kennedy reflects on some of the foods that have impacted her life: apples, lamb, mushrooms. Within her personal stories are well-researched food histories and acute

When I started reading Paul Hawken’s “Carbon: The Book of Life,” I settled in, expecting an extensive description of how carbon impacts our lives and the planet. The first sentence made that clear: “Carbon moves ceaselessly through the four realms—the biosphere, oceans, land, and atmosphere.” However, after only 30 pages, I was thrown for a

“Botany of Empire” by Banu Subramaniam situates the history and practice of botany in the larger context of European colonialism and its ongoing impacts and continued structure in our current world. Laid out in five parts, with multiple chapters in each, Subramaniam begins each new section with quotes, some botanically based and others drawing from