Eight Acres

I love to read and I love the process of critically reviewing a book and noting down my thoughts.  I hope you find it useful for finding books that you need.  Some of the books are sent to me to review, some I buy new or secondhand and some are from the library.  No matter where the book comes from I try to give my honest assessment.  Sometimes I read a book that I don't like for one reason or another, and I tend to not review that book at all, I don't see the value in writing about something I didn't enjoy.  I aim for about one review a month.  Sometimes I'm reading more than one at a time, but I at least try to FINISH one a month! One of my bookshelves! I include affiliate links where possible, and I make a few cents in Amazon vouchers every time someone clicks on my link.  This year so far I've accumulated $10.95 in Amazon credit.  If you were going to buy something from Amazon anyway, getting there through my links doesn't cost you an...

Raw milk is confusing.  I only realised that after we got our house cow Bella.  And found that we couldn't even share her milk.  I didn't know raw milk was such a big deal.  Here's my review of the Raw Milk Answer Book - over on my house cow ebook blog . Buy my ebook "Our Experience with House Cows" on  Scribd ,  Lulu  and  Amazon , or email on eight.acres.liz at gmail.com to arrange delivery.  More information about the book on my  house cow eBook blog here . Reviews of "Our Experience with House Cows" Kim from the Little Black Cow Blog Fiona from Live at Arbordale Farm Marie from Go Milk the Cow Renata from Sunnyside Farm Fun Gavin from Little Green Cheese  (and The Greening of Gavin)

I read a lot of books, and I like to share with you the ones that I think will be useful.  I know that there are many things that you need to learn by doing rather than reading, but I still learn an awful lot from reading!  You can find  all my book reviews here , also please see my  Amazon book shop  (links to a page on my blog) if you want to browse the books I recommend.  If you purchase through my site I get a small percentage as Amazon book vouchers (so it goes straight to buying more books for me to review!) and it doesn't cost you any extra. Here's what I read in 2014 Valley Bee open day - learning about bee keeping Silent Spring - book review Teaming with Microbes - book review Keeping a family cow - book review The Stockmen - The making of an Australian legend Can cows save the planet? - book review Which Joel Salatin book should I read? Reviews of homesteading and real food books A garden book and a cook book that ...

A few weeks ago ABC's farming program, Landline, featured a segment on "a fruit and vegetable wholesaler in Adelaide [who] has made it her mission to provide top chefs with produce to really make a plate pop".  It was quite hilarious to see chefs rave on about mini heirloom veges, unusual salad greens and fancy herbs, because that's about all I can grow in my own garden!  There's not much that I grow that makes it past miniature, apart from the greens and the herbs that grow like weeds.  When I cooked dinner with some tiny thinned carrots, kale and chopped chervil, I told Pete it was "fine dining" and that my garden is a success after all! fine food from my garden Growing and eating much of our own food has given us a different perspective on food and dining out.  We used to go out for pub dinners every couple of weeks, but then we both realised that most of the "food" was either frozen and deep fried, or straight from a packet, and it ...

I have a backlog of books to review, and three of them are garden books, I thought they made an interesting contrast to each other, so I may as well review them all together.  I read a lot of books, most of them related to farming and gardening.  Even though many of them repeat the same themes I always learn at least one or two new things from each book, and these books were no different. The first book was one of a few that I requested from Wakefield Press.  Its called " Clueless in the Garden - a guide of the horticulturally hopeless ", by Yvonne Cunnington.  I usually only read about vegetable gardens, so I was surprised to find that most of this book was about all kinds of garden.  Its published in Canada, so you just have to remember to turn around the north and south references, but at least the temperatures are in celsius.  The references to deer and snow are not so relevant to my garden, but I kind of enjoy reading about them anyway.  The...

I finally watched Food Inc. when it was screened on SBS1 a few weeks ago.  I know I’m really behind, the film was first released in 2008!  I haven’t read Michael Pollen’s, The Omnivore’s Dilemma yet either, but I have read Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation , which was also featured in the film.  I was already aware of most of the information covered by the film, which aims to expose our industrialised food system.  It covers a broad range of food topics and is a good, and suitably shocking, introduction for anyone who previously had no idea how bad the food system really is.  For those who are already knowledgeable in this area, it may leave you with more questions than answers and a feeling that there is so much more to this discussion that could not be covered in a single film, but that's not such a bad thing either. The film starts with chicken farmers in one of the southern states of the USA .  The first farmer isn’t allowed to film inside his c...

In February I started a series on interviews with various bloggers who grow their own food.  I wanted to help readers who weren't sure where to start with growing their own.  Over the course of several weeks we heard from: Linda of Witch's Kitchen Gavin of the Greening of Gavin Ohio Farmgirl from Adventures in the Goodland Emma from Craving Fresh Tanya of Lovely Greens and myself It was really interesting to see the common themes in the interviews and also the differences due to size of the gardens and different climates and locations.  Nearly everyone stressed the importance of planning the garden carefully, planting easy yielding crops and not giving up!  I hope you enjoyed reading each of the interviews as much as I did, and I hope you all got some ideas about your own gardens, whether you're just starting or an experienced gardener. Since I wrote my interview, I have read a couple of books by Lolo Houbein, One Magic Square and Outside the Magic Sq...