Gene Logsdon has published more than two dozen books, both practical and philosophical. Gene's nonfiction works include Holy Shit, Small-Scale Grain Raising, Living at Nature's Pace, and The Contrary Farmer. He writes a popular blog, The Contrary Farmer, as well as an award-winning column for the Carey (OH) Progressor Times, and is a regular contributor to Farming magazine. He lives and farms in Upper Sandusky, Ohio.
"A Sanctuary of Trees is a beguiling, companionable
read, full of sharp-eyed wonder, genuine humility, and a thousand
nuts of useful wisdom: when and how to build a plank road; how to
not get killed felling an old tree; how to get lost, and found; and
-- if you read his book as Logsdon walks his woods -- how to live a
long, alert, insatiably engaged life. This one's a
keeper."--David Dobbs, author, Reef Madness, and
coauthor, The Northern Forest
"Back in 1929 J. Russell Smith published his classic Tree
Crops: A Permanent Agriculture. At the time, and mostly since,
hardly anyone seemed interested in reading about, let alone doing,
farming that includes trees as part of an appropriate, resilient
agriculture and even suggesting that such agriculture is a love of
country. I didn't expect to ever see a book like Smith's again, yet
now we have Gene Logsdon's A Sanctuary of Trees, a renewal
of all those classic ideas cast in the context of today's, and
hopefully, tomorrow's world."--Frederick Kirschenmann,
author of Cultivating an Ecological Conscience: Essays from a
Farmer Philosopher
"Gene Logsdon does it again! This time he is out past the
gardens, beyond the meadows, and deep into the groves and woodlots
he has known and loved. What he brings back is a lover's report on
a life-long affair of his. He is still contrary, thank goodness,
more respectful of forests than of forestry; but A Sanctuary of
Trees is a wonderfully woodsy book, neatly wrapped around a
personal memoir. Reading it, we watch Logsdon casually learn about
sassafras, chain saws, mistletoe, log houses, cordwood, birdsong,
and a hundred other bits of vital forest lore. In private life he
may be a tree hugger, and this narrative is seductive enough so
that any thoughtful reader will probably develop similar
symptoms."--Ronald Jager, author of Eighty Acres, Last
House on the Road, and The Fate of Family
Farming
"I am more enamored with Gene Logsdon than ever after reading
A Sanctuary of Trees. Without melodrama, angst, or
anything resembling shock value, this lush autobiography details
Mr. Logsdon's relationship with -- of all things -- trees! Trees.
How sane and civilized it is. I learned so much from this grounded
and completely wonderful book."--Janisse Ray, author of
Ecology of a Cracker Childhood and Pinhook: Finding
Wholeness in a Fragmented Land
"Logsdon peels away the storied layers of our forests and
beckons us to rekindle our connections with our most constant
companions -- trees. This book belongs as much in the hands of
educators as it does on every homesteader's handmade bookshelf.
Seldom are reminiscences so forward-looking ... but that is
ultimately Logsdon's hallmark as an author."--Philip
Ackerman-Leist, professor, Green Mountain College, and author of
Up Tunket Road
Booklist-
In more than two dozen works of nonfiction, horticulture expert
Logsdon has doled out invaluable advice on everything from berry
growing and organic orcharding to homesteading and managing manure.
Now, at 79, reflecting back on a life spent in close proximity to
the woodland groves of his native rural Ohio, Logsdon offers both a
fond recollection of his long relationship with trees and a
meditation on the remarkable versatility of harvested timber.
Beginning with his boyhood days on an Ohio family farm where his
love of nature first took root, Logsdon takes the reader through
his adolescence at a seminary where the one bright spot was a
nearby forest, to his first professional job with Farm
Journal in then untamed suburban Philadelphia, and finally
back to Ohio, living with his growing family in a tree shadowed
country home. Yet his own reminiscences are just a staging ground
for a plethora of fascinating tree facts, including a virtual
manual on using wood for total energy self-sufficiency. As always,
Logsdon's superbly measured prose entertains as much as it
educates.
ForeWord Reviews-
Gene Logsdon is a man with a mission: He wants to encourage
Americans to maintain small home woodlots, heat with wood, and
return to what he calls a wood culture and a wood economy. A
Sanctuary of Trees, Logsdon's latest book, discusses in detail
the feasibility of depending on wood for fuel, both for individual
households and for our country as a whole. He makes a strong case.
In A Sanctuary of Trees the reader learns about trees in
American history and culture, how fast different species grow, how
easily their wood splits, how hot it burns, and even which wood
leaves fewest ashes. Techniques the author shares for using a
chainsaw may save some fingers--certainly they should save some
aggravation! The pleasures of gathering nuts and tips for cracking
them come into the picture, too. Memoir, argument, lessons learned,
advice offered--beyond these valuable elements, the book is simply
a delight to read. Every page is rich with the happiness of a life
well lived, a life the author wishes for us all. Like the woodlots
he values so deeply, A Sanctuary of Trees is both resource
and refuge. It is impossible to read this without feeling
enlightened and grateful.
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