Ruth Stout style. You can google her and find book titles, Mother Earth articles, and I think there's a video about her system. She died in 1980 in her 90's and had a huge influence on the gardening community, she was the forerunner of all the mulching, lasagna gardening, etc.

I had 12 hundred-square foot raised beds and they just got too labor intensive for me. I started hay mulching and it worked GREAT! Sure enough, as she says, by the third year the soil was fantastic and the work load was massively reduced. All you have to do is fuss at it a little bit, keep adding a little hay here and there. We could taste the difference in the vegetables, and the production increased so much I had to start reducing my planting! We have plenty of farmers around willing to sell and deliver hay, and that's the only input we needed.

I'm sorry I haven't blogged about this, someday I will...I got laid low by lyme disease for several years and everything is on hold.

Here are a couple of links to people who have helped me with gardening/homesteading type issues.

1. Our Half Acre Homestead on YouTube = https://www.youtube.com/user/TheMrsVolfie

They are in Canada and have made about 1500 videos. It is amazing all of the things they do on a small bit of land!

2. Dr. Deb Tolman = http://www.debtolman.com/

Dr. Deb became somewhat well known for her work with the keyhole garden concept. I sent her some $$ on paypal a couple of years ago and had a nice long phone consultation. She is in Texas, not far from here. She taught me how to build my own soil. Sometimes I hear them called lasagna gardens. You layer cardboard, mulch, manure . . . anything biodegradable . . . throw in some worms, and wow . .. great soil. I use 4 ft raised beds, and I have a small greenhouse where I plant in large trash cans.

In my view, gardening in Texas has become increasingly more difficult, because the weather has been so unpredictable. So far so good this year! Today is April 9, and I have been harvesting cabbage, broccoli, carrots and herbs outside . . . tomatoes peppers, malabar spinach, and more herbs in the greenhouse. I had to cover the outside beds once for a frost.

I might post a few pictures later ...

Also permaculturedesignmagazine.com - lots of books & other resources and you can read a couple of issues online. You can also subscribe to a little quarterly, Agroforestry News, there. It covers a lot more than trees, often in a lot of technical depth, & has discussed prehistoric European (sustainable) practices.

AcresUSA.com focuses on farming that rebuilds the soil, and lists a lot of books. I recently bought the first of three volumes on water harvesting, and was extremely impressed. Lots of low-tech (high sophistication) material.

Raintreenursery.com has a great selection of standard & nonstandard perennials, lots of information, and great quality. More varieties of honeyberries & seaberries etc than I've seen elsewhere. Shipping is expensive, but your plants arrive in perfect condition. Order early, because they run out of desirables.

Strictlymedicinalseeds.com has a big selection and he's written a really good authoritative book on what to do with them: teas, decoctions, tinctures, oils, salves, etc. How to and what to use when. Also a medicinal herb cultivation book.

JLHudsonseeds.net Ethnobotanical Catalog of Seeds. Nonprofit, extensive, and really wonderful.

Badgersett.net grows the ultimate neohybrid hazelnut bushes. He's crossed the European with two varieties of American for maximum genetic diversity, hardiness & resistance to our hazelnut blight. Then he's been selecting, recrossing, & reselecting them for 30-some years. Also some pecan-hickory and chestnut crosses that aren't as far along. Hazelnut is a high protein, potentially thousand-year crop (you coppice them). Great book out on it, there & at Chelsea Green.

Redfernfarm.com has a small catalog/newsletter with perennials, and I've bought goldenseal rootlets (only in fall) from them. They are $2 each and small but vigorous. Usually you let them grow for 4 years before harvest & then replant all the small rootlets in another location.

The Charles C. Hart Seed Company, in Wethersfield, Connecticut as a resource for "GE Free Seeds" both in individual package and in bulk, along with a large selection of heirloom seeds...

Here is a link to their Blog Home Page...

Here is a blog post on their website on GMO vs GE, which GMO is actually a natural process involving cross pollination of plants with desired characteristics, while GE is genetic engineering adding gene splices from things other organisms to gain things like bacterial pesticide or herbicide resistant proteins which cannot occur in nature.

Here is a link to their on-line store...

It may be of particular interest to those living in the Northeast US as many of their products have been in use there for about 125 years, and I have used their seeds since I was a child. Excellent people to deal with...

and, like everyone else, juggling multiple things in my life so it will take me quite a while to go through all this fantastic and useful information. Reading over the info here is definitely on my to-do list but I know it is going to take me a while to do.
I very much appreciate this broad topic of resilience but I would vote for spacing these posts at greater intervals than a week. However, if that doesn't work, I can also just bookmark them and attend to them when I can. Either way, I am happy to see this subject discussed.

A book that I enjoyed is Joel Salatin's Folks, this ain't normal: A Farmers's Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World. It's not so much a 'how-to-do' manual but a 'why-we-should do this' manual.

I planted my greenhouse from seed in October (really should have been earlier). It is small . . . only 7 x 16 ft. But it lets me grow some tomatoes, peppers, malabar spinach, and basil. I have tomatoes and peppers in my outside beds too - plants from Walmart that I planted a month ago. Don't know if they will make it though, just depends on when it turns 100 degrees this year. Cold weather crops like cabbage, broccoli, swiss chard, carrots, parsnips, and garlic . . . I plant them outside in the fall and cover them with insulating cloth when it gets cold. When I uncover them, they have a head start. Potatoes have been planted for a month and just now are coming up. Looks like the 80 inches of rain we got last year killed all of the grasshoppers. Yay!! The orange stuff you see is there to keep my free range chickens out of the beds. The picture of the field (you can see some of our Texas wild flowers) is where I want to dig the Walipini. Hope we can harvest before it gets too hot!!

to add to our list. Again, not a practical guide but one of our best philosopher-poets.
The Art of the Common Place
by Wendell Berry