Touching the Earth

TopicEcology

TopicGarden & Nature

AuthorDominic Lamontagne

PublisherÉditions Écosociété

A Guide to Responsible Omniculture

The book for everyone who has always dreamed of moving to the countryside and setting up a small ecological farm to live from subsistence agriculture.

Is it still possible today to choose to produce part of the food we need to live? To stop relying on others, to learn to depend less on money? Yes, says Dominic Lamontagne in this guide to responsible omniculture: there is a subsistence agriculture that is neither crushing nor backward, a versatile, mostly manual agriculture practised with respect for Nature.

With his partner Amélie Dion, the author of La ferme impossible settled in the Laurentians, in Quebec, on mountainous land that was at first essentially forest. Without investing much money and without any farming experience, they slowly but surely built a small ecological farm able to give them an enviable level of food self-sufficiency. Drawing on that experience, they now produce more than two tonnes of food a year on about 4,000 m² (1 acre), for 550 hours of work between the two of them. Each year they harvest:

• 565 kg of assorted vegetables (potatoes, corn, tomatoes, carrots, garlic, asparagus, cucumbers, peppers, aubergines, etc.), on only 200 m² of vegetable garden and in a small 90 m² greenhouse-henhouse;
• the meat of 72 chickens and their giblets (livers, hearts, gizzards);
• 4,000 eggs;
• more than 1,100 litres of goat’s milk;
• at least 50 kg of kid meat;

… not to mention the resources of the surrounding forest. Beyond farm production, their way of life also feeds a search for meaning, know-how and a wholesome way of being.

Does the adventure intrigue you? In this manual, Dominic Lamontagne shares everything you need to know to plan a small farm project in the countryside properly, while keeping time for yourself, your family, your career and your leisure.

Foreword by Lila Hervé-Gruyer.