Friday, January 31, 2014

Homesteading Author Map

There are a lot of homesteading and gardening books out there in the sustainable living sphere of influence, many of which are very useful, very entertaining, or both.  However, it goes nearly without saying that a lot of the advice from an author in sunny, warm, dry southern California won't be the same as the advice from an author in rainy, cold coastal Maine.  So, we thought it would be interesting to put together a map of some of our favorite sustainable living authors/bloggers and where they hail from.  We also thought it might be helpful to overlay those locations with the USDA growing zones map to make it easier if anyone wanted to seek out authors in their own region or with similar environments.

The map below is just a starting point.  The author list is certainly not complete, and it would be awesome to be able to index authors by other maps as well, such as annual rainfall or soil type. (The map is also decidedly U.S.-centric.)  If you have suggestions for other authors to include, or other useful formats, let us know in the comments section!

Click to zoom in to read the labels, unless you have a magnifying glass handy or superhuman vision.

EDIT: Updated 2/22/15 to include Anna's suggestions.  Thanks Anna!  (And it only took us 13 months to get around to it!)






5 comments:

  1. nicely done! my superhuman vision failed, so i had to click on the image- but even my very slow, very old computer liked it enough to open it quickly!

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  2. I love it! You should probably add Carol Deppe, Eric Toensmeier, Harvey Ussery (I know he writes about chickens, but his book relates to gardening), Michael Phillips, Ben Falk, Jeff Lowenfels, John Jeavons, Steve Solomon (although he's not in the U.S., so it'll mess up your map, but you could put him in the Pacific NW where he used to live), Brett Markham, Lee Reich, Art Ludwig (not completely gardening, but related), Mel Bartholemew, Paul Stamets, and Dave Jacke. That should keep you busy for a while. :-)

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    1. Those are a lot of great ideas! Thanks for all the suggestions! I should probably spend some time in the Walden Effect archives to see what other books you've reviewed, too. :-)

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  3. That's pretty close to a Geographic Information System. Nice concept.

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  4. Nice map and nice idea....interestingly there seems to be a lack of authors from the zone 5a-5b midwest area. Of course if you add in all of Anna's authors, perhaps one will pop up. (But it might become difficult to read the map with all the additional labels :~)
    CK

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