Aug.-Sept. 1982 RAffsI Page 11 The Future is Abundant, edited by Lany Kom, Barbara Snyder and Mark Musick, 1982, 192 pp., $11.95 plus $1.00 p & h (Washington residents add $.70 for sales tax) from: Tilth 13217 Mattson Rd. Arlington, WA 98223 In the midst of the present agricultural crisis, unmatched since the Dust Bowl years, the notion of an abundant farming future may seem nciive. What could our friends at Tilth be thinking of to stride so far into tomorrow? They are thinking of restoration and resiliency on land overworked and out of balance. Of hedgerow habitats and bat, bee and butterfly sheltering. Perennial grains and urban forests and tomorrow's yields entrusted to us today. When we've finally begun to understand this goal of sustainability; of keeping all of the parts working together because they are connected and it matters, where can we turn for the specifics? We need to know which plants, and where, and why. What grains are indeed perennial? How do we interplant to cut down on costly maintenance? The Future is Abundant is the most carefully detailed and timely guide to sustainable agriculture available. While it is designed for the Pacific Northwest bioregion, it is filled with information of equal value to other bioregions. If you're a land lover, you'll love this book. You'll love the lists and the indices, the people described and their reverence for their work. The Future is Abundant is a practical catalogue filled with hope. — Carlotta Collette THE FUTURE IS ABUNDANT The resiliency of any given city to a food/fuel crisis in the 1980s will depend largely upon its capacity to meet at least some of its awn basic food and fuel needs. While this idea may seem novel or even preposterous to some, thefact remains that through thefirst halfof this century, most urban areas around the world produced a significant amount of food and other items required by local residents. Production was not limited to the urban fringe but included substantial yields in home gardens and market gardens within the cities themselves. The best beescapes are composed ofa mixture of farmland, meadows and open woodlands which contain an abundance of legumes, herbs, wildflowers, fruits and berries. People who have studied the economics ofbeescaping say that it is not economically sound to plant farmland to plants whose sole purpose is bee forage. Many of the best bee plants, however, also have value for other purposes. For example, fruit and berry producing plants are excellent sources of nectar and pollen. Black locust trees are heavy nectar producers and are potentially valuable sources of hardwood. Many culinary and medicinal herbs . . . are favored by bees. The use ofdense, semi-permeable hedges ofshrubs and trees in rows surrounding and sometimes interspersed within an orchard has several important bmefits, including diversion ofwinds to reduce evaporation, blossom damage, fruit fall, and winterfreeze damage. Frost control can be facilitated by blocking and diversionary windbreaks. Hedges can provide feeding and refuge sites for beneficial insects and wildlife, create privacy, provide wood products during thinning, and, in time, can become effective fences. They will moderate heating loads around buildings, control drifting snow and erosion, and protect livestock. Or- chardists might well consider interplanting nitrogen producing trees and shrubs in the orchard to provide on-site nitrogen production.
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