Our little farm Adventures in sustainable living

Peter Wohlleben (The Power of Trees, 2023) has written best-selling books about the natural world while living with his wife, Miriam, in a forester's lodge near the German village of Eifel. Here the couple provides a detailed look at their decades-long experiment in sustainable living. Their small farm grew to include an extensive vegetable garden, fruit and nut trees, and chickens, goats, sheep, horses, and bees. In brief yet information-packed chapters, the authors take readers on a tour of various aspects of their farm, discuss how to deal with problems like slugs and mice, and share some lessons they learned the hard way (chickens really need a secure coop to avoid predators). The conversational tone will be welcome to those seeking specifics as readers new to the sustainable lifestyle. The Wohllebens did not purchase expensive equipment and stress that a key part of success is doing what is manageable and allows time for enjoyment. They practice "variety instead of quantity" and their advice, which also includes some recipes, adds up to a solid title to recommend to beginners.

One couple's experiences with sustainable living in the mountains of northwest Germany. In this latest, Peter Wohlleben, author of The Hidden Life of Trees and The Heartbeat of Trees, among other books about ecology, teams with his wife, Miriam, to share their journey in natural living. In the early 1990s, the Wohllebens moved to a small village in the Eifel range. Having accepted a position as a forester for a local community, Peter was given access to "a 1930s lodge built in the style typical for the area at that time; an outbuilding that originally housed a chicken coop and a pigsty; and the remains of a vegetable garden almost the size of a football field." In addition to more vegetables, the couple added fruit trees, berry bushes, herbs, chickens, sheep, goats, and beehives. The authors describe themselves as "enthusiastic but not fanatical," as they worked to maintain a manageable workload, and they lay out the planning that went into each project--e.g., choosing what to plant, creating a system for crop rotation, handling garden pests, preserving their bounty--as well as the challenges they faced along the way. Among them was a merciless fox that had them reconsidering chickens as their first animal choice for the farm. In addition to the daily care of their animals, they also had to care for orphaned and rejected baby animals. Although becoming completely self-sufficient was not realistic for the Wohllebens ("Time is the limiting factor in any plan for self-sufficiency"), as is the case for many, they wanted to source more of their food from their own garden and inspire others to do the same. The book includes numerous recipes inspired by the authors' garden, including parsnip cream soup, plum butter, and fresh goat cheese. A great source of inspiration for anyone wishing to become more self-sufficient. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.