All Flesh Is Grass: The Pleasures and Promises of Pasture Farming - Softcover

Logsdon, Gene

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804010692 ISBN 13: 9780804010696

Publisher: Swallow Press, 2004

Synopsis

Amidst Mad Cow scares and consumer concerns about how farm animals are bred, fed, and raised, many farmers and homesteaders are rediscovering the traditional practice of pastoral farming. Grasses, clovers, and forbs are the natural diet of cattle, horses, and sheep, and are vital supplements for hogs, chickens, and turkeys. Consumers increasingly seek the health benefits of meat from animals raised in green paddocks instead of in muddy feedlots.

In All Flesh Is Grass: The Pleasures and Promises of Pasture Farming, Gene Logsdon explains that well-managed pastures are nutritious and palatable—virtual salads for livestock. Leafy pastures also hold the soil, foster biodiversity, and create lovely landscapes. Grass farming might be the solution for a stressed agricultural system based on an industrial model and propped up by federal subsidies.

In his clear and conversational style, Logsdon explains historically effective practices and new techniques. His warm, informative profiles of successful grass farmers offer inspiration and ideas. His narrative is enriched by his own experience as a “contrary farmer” on his artisan-scale farm near Upper Sandusky, Ohio.

All Flesh Is Grass will have broad appeal to the sustainable commercial farmer, the home-food producer, and all consumers who care about their food.

About this title

About the Author

Gene Logsdon (1931-2016) was the author of more than thirty books and countless magazine articles on agrarian issues including small-scale farming and sustainable living. He is the author of four Swallow Press/Ohio University Press books: All Flesh Is Grass: The Pleasures and Promises of Pasture Farming, The Man Who Created Paradise: A Fable, Wyeth People, and The Last of the Husbandmen: A Novel of Farming Life.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Logsdon, an Ohio farmer who has written more than 20 books, brings his gentle iconoclasm to the case against the grain feeding of livestock in favor of pasture farming. His arguments against grain feeding: the too-heavy investment in machinery for sowing and harvesting of grain, the need for pesticides to protect monocultural grain crops, the environmental costs required to haul grain to livestock farmers, storage costs, the need to dispose of manure from livestock feedlots, and the steep labor costs to manage all of this. His arguments for pasturing: "The animals do the harvesting, apply their manure for fertilizer, and eat most of the weeds." As it has for years, Logsdon's conversational style makes his material immediately appealing, but there is also solid advice on how to pasture various kinds of livestock (cattle, sheep, goats, hogs, horses, mules, donkeys, chickens, ducks, geese, and turkeys), how to rotate grass crops, which grasses work best, how to water livestock, how to incorporate some grains into the animals' diets, and which fences make for the best neighbors. A deceptively important book for the working, the would-be, and the armchair farmer alike. Alan Moores
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Edition details

• Publisher: Swallow Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0804010692
• ISBN 13: 9780804010696
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 280