DIG IN
The latest articles from Chelsea Green and our authors: offering tips and techniques about how you can bring our books to life in your kitchen, backyard, or community.
African Farming Traditions: Learning the Power of Tradition
Far before the release of her book Farming While Black, Leah Penniman had been helping countless Black and Brown farmers reclaim their right to the land. For years, Leah has been educating, inspiring, and working alongside so many individuals to make sure they truly understand the customs and traditions of their African farming ancestors and help…
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Gulls, Humans, and the Environment
Nowadays gulls are trash birds, the subnatural inhabitants of drosscapes. Their coming among us has lowered their sea-bird status. Today they are seen as déclassé and mongrelizing in their habits. Some have also been demoted from whatever former taxonomic security they had. All have become in-between birds in an in-between world. By moving towards us,…
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Sugar, Fructose, and Fructophobia
We’ve always known that if you sit around all day eating candy, you will get fat. Conversely, cutting down on sugar, which is a carbohydrate, will contribute to weight loss and other benefits of a low-carbohydrate diet. However, the extent to which sugar, that is, sucrose, or its component fructose, contributes to obesity and other…
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How to Approach the GAPS Diet
Most of us are not mindful of the importance of gut health, or just how far we in the modern world have been distanced from it. Many of us were not breastfed; we received countless simultaneous vaccinations as children and were overprescribed antibiotics and medications from the start. Any one of these phenomena could contribute…
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Breakfast: Keto-Style and Kid-Approved
If you’ve been following a ketogenic diet for a while now you probably have a few hacks of your own when it comes to cooking up delicious low-carb breakfast options. If you’re new to the program, you’re probably wondering how many different ways you can cook an egg because that’s the only thing allowed. (You’re…
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An Edible Urban Oasis
More than 80 percent of the US population now resides in urban areas. This number is projected to rise in the next few decades. Finding ways to maximize use of existing open space is imperative, and increasing access to food through sustainable management of edible landscaping is one important approach among many that are underway.…
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Bacteria: Our Ancestors and Coevolutionary Partners
Fermentation is the transformation of food by various bacteria, fungi, and the enzymes they produce. People harness this transformative power in order to produce alcohol, to preserve food, and to make it more digestible, less toxic, and/or more delicious. It’s played an instrumental role in human cultural evolution and has become a cultural phenomenon of…
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The Ketogenic Diet, Cancer, Nutrition, and the Mind-Body Link
For decades, the ketogenic diet—which shifts the body’s metabolism from burning glucose to burning fat, lowering blood sugar and insulin and resulting in a metabolic state known as ketosis—has been used to successfully manage pediatric epilepsy. And now, emerging research suggests that a ketogenic diet, in conjunction with conventional treatments, offers new hope for those…
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Food Pyramids and Medical Literature: Flawed Studies
We’ve all seen multiple iterations of food pyramids highlighting key food groups; read hundreds of articles about the next big thing to avoid if we want to follow a healthy diet; tried to practice better eating habits and yet, we’re still feeling lost. All of the information is conflicting. It changes all the time. And…
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How Beavers Can Save the World from Environmental Ruin
If you’re a loyal Chelsea Green customer, and haven’t been living in a dam for the last year, the likelihood that you’ve heard about Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb is high. But if you’re still not sure what all the hype is about, let us enlighten you.…
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Gulls: A Checklist for The Beginning of an Affair
Over the past hundred years, gulls have been brought ashore by modernity. They live not only on the coasts but in our slipstream following trawlers, barges, and garbage trucks. They are more our contemporaries than most birds, living their wild lives among us in towns and cities. In many ways they live as we do,…
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Be Good to Your Gut: Nourishing Food for Better Health
What do illnesses like autism, ADHD, asthma, celiac disease, allergies, and depression have in common? Simple: They can all be linked to the microorganisms present in the gut. That’s according to the pioneering British MD, Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride who has found that these afflictions, as well as a long list of others, are linked—a concept…
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Starting Farming: How to Find Success as a New Farmer
As the average age of America’s farmers continues to rise, we face serious questions about what farming will look like in the near future, and who will be growing our food. Many younger people are interested in going into agriculture, especially organic farming, but cannot find affordable land, or lack the conceptual framework and practical…
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Eager Beavers! And the winner is…
Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter has won the 2019 PEN America E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing! A first book by journalist Ben Goldfarb, Eager has received several accolades since its release last year, including being named an Outside Magazine’s “Best Book of 2018” and a “Notable Work of Nonfiction”…
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CARBON CASCADES: How to Restore Earth’s Natural Balance
In order to rescue ourselves from climate catastrophe, we need to radically alter how humans live on Earth. We have to go from spending carbon to banking it. A secret unlocked by the ancients of the Amazon for its ability to transform impoverished tropical soils into terra preta—fertile black earths—points the way. The indigenous custom of…
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Sustain Your Land: Subsistence Strategies for the Long Haul
Peasants, indigenous agriculturalists, and old-time American farming families farmed first and foremost to feed their own families and those in need in their communities—only secondarily, if at all, for a market. They may have practiced shifting agriculture or were settled permanently in villages; they may have been members of free, “primitive” or “tribal” societies, or…
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New Age Farm Partnerships: Finding and Keeping One
Anything involving farming almost always requires the help of another person, whether you’re feeding the animals or trying to decide if you want to expand the barn. Partnerships not only help with your personal life but the success of your business in the long run as well. Having someone to share the work and ease the…
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Composting with Animals: Common Applications
When you think of a typical farm, you probably think of going out to feed the animals with a bucket of scraps. This has been one of the most common ways to recycle food for many years and helps reduce your waste footprint. However, composting with the help of animals is another technique used on…
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Young Farmers: Back to the Land and Down to Business
If you haven’t been working on a farm since childhood or weren’t lucky enough to inherit one from your family, it can be difficult to build one from the ground up. Farming takes more planning and thinking than meets the eye, but it’s not impossible. We’ve got aspiring young farmers covered with how to proceed…
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Permaculture Advice For Beginners
Trying something for the first time can be intimidating, especially when it’s something as big as learning how to live off your land. But like with any new adventure you shouldn’t bite off too much at once. Instead, it’s better to take the time to properly plan and educate yourself on what it will take…
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Why Farm Infrastructure is Important: A Farm is More Than Land
The basis for a good farm isn’t just about finding a piece of land with great soil. No, to truly succeed on the farm you need a well-planned and implemented infrastructure coupled with hard work, dedication, and will-power. As farming practices continue to change, it’s important for the next generation to remember that insight and…
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Farmers Aren’t Created Equal: The “American Farmer” Fallacy
For those who aren’t in the know, it may seem like all farmers are created equal, but that’s simply not the case. In fact, there is such a wide variety of farmers that it’s nearly impossible to put a label on them. But that doesn’t stop organizations from trying. The following is an excerpt from…
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Black Rural Land: Black Land Matters
As a young black girl, Leah Penniman struggled to understand who she was and where she fit in with the world. There was one thing she did know— when she was connected to the land and earth she felt at home. But what did that mean? Was the land trying to tell her something about…
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The Evolution of Earth, Humans, and Our Natural Resources
We have long been taught that evolution is a process that occurs gradually over millions of years, that change happens slowly without much attention. We’ve come to learn that in reality, evolution happens in fits and starts — very slowly for long periods, then in sudden spurts of rapid change. It may be triggered by…
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The Grains Glossary and a Recipe for the Perfect Pancake
Grains are a ubiquitous part of the American diet and a staple in many of our favorite recipes. Bread? Yep, grains. Pasta? Grains there, too. Pancakes? Most definitely! With such a strong presence in our daily eating habits, shouldn’t we know more about what grains actually are and why they make our favorite foods taste…
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