Citizen Farmers by Daron Joffe

This is a reread. Citizen Farmers is by a local celebrity, Farmer D, who is an advocate for home and small scale organic farming. I've always liked the idea of growing food and this is a good and encouraging text.

Each chapter focuses on a different phase of the gardening cycle, from planning all the way to harvest. Every chapter is replete with photos, illustrations and charts. While there are a lot of ideas, there's isn't much depth to each topic and at this phase I'm beginning to notice what I don't know, which is quite a bit really. For example, Farmer D talks quite a bit about testing the soil and getting the balance write, but doesn't spend any time talking about what that means.


Farmer D takes a spiritual approach to land stewardship and plays up the meditative aspects to gardening. While I find some of the ideas like planting to the phases of the moon a little esoteric, it's not the kind of thing I would necessarily rule out.

I tend to read this when I'm trying to gear up for a new growing season and I refer to several of the charts, but I think it might be time for me to move on and find more and deeper texts. I wish Farmer D had more books that dealt with these topics in depth as I find his writing approachable and friendly.

Oh well, I'll keep looking.