Reviews

Find your own slice of the ‘The Good Life’ Bake bread. Start a wormery. Shop locally. Plant a tree. Find out how to get closer to the soil, without going the whole hog. Discover 80 simple, eco projects you can dip in and out of, from growing salad on your window-sill, to collecting rainwater.

Pick up what you need using the directory of useful organic stockists and websites, then choose a project to suit your pocket and lifestyle. You don’t need a garden, special equipment, or even much time. Edited by Sheherazade Goldsmith, wife of organic spokesman and Ecologist editor, Zac Goldsmith.
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Previously published in hardback as Cooking Outside the Box. This stunning new paperback offers delicious, beautiful, seasonal recipes from Britain’s organic food hero! A stunning paperback version of the highly successful original Cooking Outside the Box. (more…)

Simple steps to gardening success, from the experts at the RHS Follow RHS show-how and know-how for a garden that looks great all year round (whatever size it is). From root veg to herbs and salads, inspirational tips and techniques on choosing the right seeds, growing organic, finding the best site, fertilisers, pest protection and more guarantee success.

Vegetables in a Small Garden: Simple Steps to Success (RHS Simple Steps to Success)

Get perfect results: whether you’re a green-fingered guru or a gardening novice. For more step-by-step gardening advice, pick up other titles from this series.

Here are 20 of Wales’ best and most interesting gardens, some unknown to the gardening world, some familiar, and all specially photographed by award-winning photographer Charles Hawes. (more…)

The New Self-Sufficient Gardener: The Complete Illustrated Guide to Planning, Growing, Storing and Preserving Your Own Garden Produce by John Seymour

The complete illustrated guide to planning, growing, storing and preserving your own garden produce from ‘the grand master of self-sufficiency’ (Kitchen Garden), John Seymour John Seymour’s classic guide gives you the knowledge and expertise to create your own self-sufficient garden and produce what you need. Whatever the size of your space, discover how to garden organically and maximise your harvest, without the need for radical changes to your lifestyle. From cultivating vegetables to making cider, keeping chickens to training vines, you’ll garden in tune with the seasons, growing for the year, eating for today and storing for tomorrow. No specialist knowledge required: just clearly explained principles and practicalities ideal for any gardener.

The New Self-Sufficient Gardener: The Complete Illustrated Guide to Planning, Growing, Storing and Preserving Your Own Garden Produce – click here to buy this wonderful book from Amazon UK

John Seymour, the acknowledged founding father of the self-sufficiency movement, was an active campaigner for the countryside and the environment. Students come from around the world to learn about his lifestyle & philosophies at the centre he established in southern Ireland.

* Brightly coloured baby blanket
* Good quality 100% soft organic cotton
* Approximately 27″ x 27″
* Elephant design on one side with colour co-ordinated stripes on the reverse
* Combine with the matching sleepsuit and hat for a great gift set

Click here to buy the Toby Tiger Red/Pink Elephants Organic Baby Blanket

Putting food on the table for the family quickly and economically doesn’t mean you have to compromise on quality. This book shows how Hugh’s approach to food can be adapted to suit any growing, working family, or busy young singles and couples for that matter. Breakfast, baking, lunchboxes, quick suppers, healthy snacks, eating on the move and weekend cooking for the week ahead – all these, and more, will be covered in River Cottage Every Day.

As Hugh says: “I have honed the River Cottage approach to food over a decade now, and I believe passionately that it is relevant to everybody, every day. You only have to decide that food, and its provenance, matters to you and your family, and the River Cottage way of doing things can offer a whole raft of solutions: food sourcing and shopping strategies, thrifty kitchen tricks and, above all, approachable, delicious, easy recipes.”

“This book makes no prior assumptions about where you shop, what you may or may not know about growing vegetables or keeping livestock, or whether you can tell the difference between a cep and a chanterelle. But once you own the book, these things may well begin to matter to you. All you will need to reap the benefit is a commitment to spend at least some time in the kitchen, with fresh ingredients, a few times a week. And if you don’t have that at the outset, I believe that a little time spent with this book – perhaps in bed, before you go to sleep – will soon put that right! Above all, I intend to tempt and charm you towards a better life with food – with a set of simply irresistible recipes that just happen to be seasonal and ethical.”

Hardcover: 416 pages

Buy now from Amazon UK: River Cottage Everyday

About the Author
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is a writer, broadcaster and campaigner. His series for Channel 4 have earned him a huge popular following, while his River Cottage books have collected multiple awards including the Glenfiddich Trophy (twice), the Andre Simon Food Book of the Year (three times), the Michael Smith Award for Work on British Food award at the Guild of Food Writers and, in the US, the James Beard Cookbook of the Year. Hugh lives in Dorset with his family.

Everyone dreams at some point in their lives of living the good life, albeit not in terms of the BBC comedy series. In this revised and fully updated edition of John Seymour’s classic guide to self-sufficiency, the dream becomes more attainable. Now running a School of Self-Sufficiency in Ireland, John Seymour is as committed as ever to living a better life, more simply, by living off the land rather than out of shops.

His magnum opus covers every conceivable topic from animal husbandry and butchering, seed sowing and cropping, dairy production and food storage, rubbish and recycling. All delivered in Seymour’s inimitable, occasionally brusque style, it is a mine of information artfully illustrated with the original illustrations redrawn in full colour. New material includes GM crops, urban gardens and alternative forms of energy with craft skills rounding the picture of natural wholesomeness off nicely. A classic of its time and a new classic in the making, this revised edition will encourage and assist all those aspiring to a live a healthier, more environmentally friendly life. – Lucy Watson

Make the break, realise the dream and start living “The Good Life!” Packed with comprehensive information on all the practicals, from ploughing fields to milking cows, as well as new information on how to create an urban organic garden and harness natural energy. This new and revised full-colour edition of the illustrated classic is an engrossing read and a wonderful handbook for realists and dreamers alike.

Buy now from Amazon UK: The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency: The Classic Guide for Realists and Dreamers