Martin Crawford – författare

A study of 19th-century Appalachia and the South, recreating the lives of Ashe County's citizens. The author contends that the experiences of Ashe County's men and women during the Civil War era were shaped as much by their membership in the wider American society as by uniquely local factors.

Having won renown in the 1850s for his vivid warfront dispatches from the Crimea, William Howard Russell was the most celebrated foreign journalist in America during the first year of the Civil War. As a special correspondent for The Times of London, Russell was charged with explaining the American crisis to a British audience, but his reports also had great impact in America. They so alienated both sides, North and South, that Russell was forced to return to England prematurely in April 1862.My Diary North and South (1863), Russell's published account of his visit, remains a classic of Civil War literature. It was not in fact a diary but a narrative reconstruction of the author's journeys and observations based on his private notebooks and published dispatches. Despite his severe criticisms of American society and conduct, Russell offered in that work generally sympathetic characterizations of the Northern and Southern leadership during the war. In this new volume, Martin Crawford brings together the journalist's original diary and a selection of his private correspondence to resurrect the fully uninhibited Russell and to provide, accordingly, a true documentary record of this important visitor's first impressions of America during the early months of its greatest crisis.Over the course of his American visit, Russell traveled widely throughout the Union and the new Confederacy, meeting political and social leaders on both sides. Included here are spontaneous—and often unflattering—comments on such prominent figures as William H. Seward, Jefferson Davis, Mary Todd Lincoln, and George B. McClellan, as well as quick sketches of New York, Washington, New Orleans, and other cities. Also revealed for the first time are the anxiety and despair that Russell experienced during his American visit—a state induced by his own self-doubt, by concern over the health and situation of his wife in England, and, finally, by the bitter criticism he received in the United States over his reports.A sometimes vain and pompous figure, Russell also emerges here as an individual of exceptionally tough spirit—a man who abhorred slavery and remained convinced of the essential rectitude of the Northern cause even as he criticized Northern leaders, their lack of preparedness for war, and the apparent disunity of the Northern population.

How do you cook heartnuts, hawthorn fruits or hostas? What’s the best way to preserve autumn olives or to dry chestnuts? Forest gardening – a novel way of growing edible crops in different vertical layers – is attracting increasing interest, for gardens large or small. But when it comes to harvest time, how do you make the most of the produce?From bamboo shoots and beech leaves to medlars and mashua, Food from your Forest Garden offers creative and imaginative ways to enjoy the crops from your forest garden. It provides cooking advice and recipe suggestions, with notes on every species in the bestselling Creating a Forest Garden by Martin Crawford. The book includes more than 100 recipes for over 50 different species, presented by season, plus raw food options. It also provides information on the plants’ nutritional value, with advice on harvesting and processing, as well as detailed instructions on preserving methods, from traditional preserves such as jams to ferments and fruit leathers. With beautiful colour photographs of plants and recipes, this book is an invaluable resource for making the most of your forest garden – and an inspiration for anyone thinking of growing and using forest garden crops.

A comprehensive guide to growing, harvesting and processing nuts, written by forest gardening expert Martin Crawford.Nut trees are perennials, requiring little maintenance or soil cultivation, so it is no surprise that nuts are such a popular forest garden crop. A crucial source of protein and a delicious snack, nuts also have a number of surprising health benefits. They lower blood pressure, are full of antioxidants, and decrease the risk of heart and neurodegenerative diseases. Filled with gorgeous illustrations of trees and nuts, How to Grow Your Own Nuts contains old favourites like hazelnuts and walnuts alongside less common varieties such as hickories and butternuts and the exotically named chinkapin. It considers how nuts can be planted in a variety of ways: singly in a small area, in an orchard or nuttery, as silvopasture around grazing animals, in alley cropping between cereal crops or intercropping between fruit bushes. This beautiful guide also features a handy A-Z, which details nut trees’ many secondary uses from timber, oil, dyes, fodder and cosmetics to medicines and honey. Martin also discusses how the beautiful spring blossom is attractive to bees, particularly from almond and sweet chestnut trees, making them excellent for supporting pollinators. Whether you are planning to grow nuts at home or commercially, this book is essential reading.

Filled with helpful tips and beautiful photographs, this guide contains everything you need to create your own forest garden.Forest Gardening, or agroforestry, is a way of growing edible crops while allowing nature to do most of the work. Species are chosen for their beneficial effects on each other, creating a healthy system that maintains its own fertility, with little need for digging, weeding or pest control. The result of this largely perennial planting is a tranquil, beautiful and productive space, where you can cultivate your own fruits, nuts, vegetables, herbs, mushrooms and even forage firewood and honey. Whether in a small back garden or in a larger plot, forest gardens really benefit the environment and are also a viable solution to the challenge of a changing climate. The soil thrives from being covered with plants all year round and is also able to store more water after heavy rains, minimising flooding and erosion and helping plants to survive through drought. Forest gardens also store carbon dioxide in the soil and in the woody biomass of the trees and shrubs. The mixed variety of plants further boosts the health of the ecosystem by ensuring a balance of predators and beneficial insects.Creating a Forest Garden is a bible for permaculture and forest gardening, with practical advice on how to create a forest garden, from planning and design to planting and maintenance. It includes a detailed directory of over 500 trees, shrubs, herbaceous perennials, annuals, root crops and climbers. As well as more familiar plants such as fig and apple trees, blackcurrants and rosemary shrubs, you can grow your own chokeberries, goji berries, yams, heartnuts, bamboo shoots and buffalo currants.Grow a forest garden with this handy guide and become more self-sufficient while also enjoying the natural beauty and environmental benefits of these wonderful green spaces.

Land and labour provides the first full-length history of the Potters’ Emigration Society, the controversial trade union scheme designed to solve the problems of surplus labour by changing workers into farmers on land acquired in frontier Wisconsin. The book is based on intensive research into British and American newspapers, passenger lists, census, manuscript, and genealogical sources. After tracing the scheme’s industrial origins and founding in the Potteries, it examines the migration and settlement process, expansion to other trades and areas, and finally the circumstances that led to its demise in 1851. Despite the Society’s failure, the history offers unique insight into working-class dreams of landed independence in the American West and into the complex and contingent character of nineteenth-century emigration.

Land and labour provides the first full-length history of the Potters’ Emigration Society, the controversial trade union scheme designed to solve the problems of surplus labour by changing workers into farmers on land acquired in frontier Wisconsin. The book is based on intensive research into British and American newspapers, passenger lists, census, manuscript, and genealogical sources. After tracing the scheme’s industrial origins and founding in the Potteries, it examines the migration and settlement process, expansion to other trades and areas, and finally the circumstances that led to its demise in 1851. Despite the Society’s failure, the history offers unique insight into working-class dreams of landed independence in the American West and into the complex and contingent character of nineteenth-century emigration.

The author has researched and experimented with tree crops for 25 years. In this title, he has selected over 100 of the best trees producing fruits, nuts, edible leaves and other useful products that can be grown in Europe and North America.

Learn about the incredible range of useful shrubs for many different situations, large and small. World renown expert, Martin Crawford, includes common fruit bushes like currants and gooseberries, and many other less-known shrubs with edible fruits, nuts, leaves, or other parts. He takes us on a journey into the world of exotic spice trees, shrubs with medicinal parts, and plants that fix nitrogen to help fertilise other plants. All these can be grown in temperate climates, diversifying our diets, enabling us to design beautiful, productive gardens, as well as showing us how we can integrate agroforestry into our smallholdings and farms to create new income streams.Despite increasingly urgent calls from scientists, the not-fit-for-purpose economic and political systems we live in cannot be relied upon to implement the carbon emission reductions needed. This where we come into it: Whether we are farmer, gardener or plant dabbler, by planting shrubby plants that sequester carbon, we can minimise our carbon footprint and ideally live a carbon-negative life. On a broadscale, perennial and woody species are the way forward to reduce carbon emissions in agriculture. Woody crops sequester carbon in their biomass, but can also be grown in systems which allow for sequestration of large amounts of carbon into the soil.

Forest Gardening or Agroforestry is a way of growing edible crops with nature doing most of the work. Modelled on young woodland, a wide range of crops is grown in vertical layers. Species are chosen for their beneficial effects on each other, creating a healthy system that maintains its own fertility, with little need for digging, weeding or pest control. Whether a small area in your back garden or a larger plot, here is advice on how to create a beautiful space with great environmental benefits from planning and design (using permaculture principles) to planting and maintenance. With a changing climate, we must grow food sustainably, without compromising soil health, food quality or biodiversity and Forest Gardening offers an exciting solution to the challenge.Creating a Forest Garden also includes a detailed directory of over 500 trees, shrubs, herbaceous perennials, annuals, root crops and climbers – almost all of them edible and many very unusual.As well as more familiar plants you can grow your own chokeberries, goji berries, yams, heartnuts, bamboo shoots and buffalo currants.

How to Grow Perennial Vegetables gives comprehensive advice on all types of perennial vegetables, from ground-cover plants and coppiced trees to plants for bog gardens and edible woodland plants.Perennial vegetables are a joy to grow. Whereas traditional vegetable plots are largely made up of short-lived, annual vegetable plants, perennials are edible plants that live longer than three years. Grown as permaculture plants, they take up less of your time and effort than annual vegetables, and extend the harvesting season - avoiding the hungry gap between the end of the winter harvest and the start of the summer harvest of annual vegetables. Unlike annual vegetables, perennials cover and protect the soil all year round, which maintains the structure of the soil and helps everything growing in it. Humous levels build up, nutrients don’t wash out of the soil, and mycorrhizal fungi, critical for storing carbon within the soil, are preserved. Perennial plants also contain higher levels of mineral nutrients than annuals because they have larger, permanent root systems, capable of using space more efficientlyWritten by gardening expert Martin Crawford, this book gives comprehensive advice on how to grow and care for both common perennial vegetables like rhubarb, Jerusalem artichokes, horseradish and asparagus and unusual edible plants such as skirret, red chicory, nodding onions, Babington's leek, scorzonera, sea kale, wild rocket, coppiced trees and aquatic plants.With plenty of cooking tips, colour photographs and illustrations throughout and an A-Z of over 100 perennial edibles, it is an inspiration for all gardeners.