The Resilient Farm and Homestead, Revised and Expanded Edition: 20 Years of Permaculture and Whole Systems Design

The revised and expanded edition of the classic, comprehensive how-to guide on successful land management and how to build durable and productive land-based systems

Complete with full-color photography and detailed design drawings

Author Ben Falk describes how he has transformed a degraded hillside in the frigid Vermont climate into a thriving, biodiverse Eden that now provides year-round abundance for his family and community.

The book covers every strategy Falk and his team have tested on the Whole Systems Research Farms over the past several decades and includes detailed information on earthworks, gravity-fed water systems, soil fertility management, growing nutrient-dense food and medicine, fuelwood production, agroforestry, managed grazing, and much more.

This is a systems thinking manual for a regenerative future. Includes new information on:

• Designing greenhouses and microclimates
• Reinvigorating human health and embodying a vigorous lifestyle
• Raising children on a homestead
• Creating failure-proof and resilient energy systems
• Focusing on permaculture beekeeping
•Cultivating proven cold climate plants
• Overcoming analysis paralysis and mastering the art of knowing where to start and when to take strategic risks

In an age that feels defined by disconnection, disease, and decline, The Resilient Farm and Homestead, Revised and Expanded Edition offers a roadmap to conquering uncertainty, maximizing efficiency, and creating a bountiful, manageable landscape that will endure.

Ben Falk, M.A.L.D, developed Whole Systems Design, LLC, as a land-based response to biological and cultural extinction and the increasing separation between people and elemental things. Life as a designer, builder, ecologist, tree-tender, and backcountry traveler continually informs Ben's integrative approach to developing landscapes and buildings. His home landscape and the WSD studio site in Vermont's Mad River Valley serve as a proving ground for the innovative land developments featured in the projects of Whole Systems Design. Ben has studied architecture and landscape architecture at the graduate level and holds master of arts in landscape design degree. He has taught design courses at the University of Vermont and Harvard's Arnold Arboretum as well as on permaculture design, microclimate design, and design for climate change. He recently served on the board of directors at the Yestermorrow Design-Build School, where he also teaches from time to time. He is the author of The Resilient Homestead: Innovative Permaculture Systems for the Home and Farm.