I met Jenni Blackmore in late summer 2015 at the Musquodoboit Farmer’s Market in Musquodoboit Harbour, NS. She had a vendor’s table next to mine. I was selling my homemade goat milk soap and my novels, and she was selling, amongst other things, copies of her book, Permaculture – for the rest of us – Abundant Living on Less Than an Acre.
As a long-time gardener who began learning about building a food forest and permaculture only a few years ago, Blackmore’s book intrigued me.
The reasons I bought the book after talking with Blackmore were:
- I wanted to learn more about permaculture in general.
- I wanted to learn what Blackmore experienced from growing food in similar weather conditions and climate zone as I grew in.
- Although a long-time gardener, I wanted to see if she had general garden knowledge to share that I had yet to learn.
- Speaking with the author provided an insight not available when buying the book online or in a store, and I got the sense that Blackmore not only had a passion for gardening, she knew what she was talking about. She not only wrote the book, I believed she had valuable hands-on experiences to share.
- I wanted to support a local author.
I’ve been gardening since I was a child, playing beside my mother, watching her plant potatoes, beets and carrots, and listening to her explain the different methods of planting each vegetable. She learned her gardening skills from her parents in the 1920s in a small community on the shoreline of Newfoundland where if your crops failed, you went hungry.
In my mid-20s, I began working at a large garden centre. By this time, I had grown many things. My knowledge continued to increase as I listened to the experts (though not all advice was good advice for the organic gardener), read magazines and bought books to increase the size of my library.
Many years later, I have a large collection of printed material to keep me busy reading through long winter nights. Unfortunately, not all of it is garden friendly. Some of the material discusses herbicides, pesticides and other nasty things to introduce into the growing environment. The preferred method of gardening in some of these books is not what I practise now. I prefer to walk with nature, not stomp over it and conquer it.
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Diane McGyver 