Photo: Michelle Bruhn
Michelle Bruhn is no stranger to this community and these pages. From her half-acre backyard in White Bear Lake, Bruhn has worked to build connections around regenerative gardening as a local food advocate and educator. And now, the Winter Farmers Market coordinator and blogger at Forks in the Dirt is digging deep into her own practices and sharing the spoils in a new book, Small Scale Homesteading, released February 21.
Co-written with Minnesota food preservation instructor and best-selling author Stephanie Thurow, the book goes into a variety of introductory homesteading practices; chapters include topics on starting a garden, preserving a harvest, raising backyard chickens, tapping maple trees for sap, creating healthy food and cleaning product recipes, and building a community food network.
The book is for everyone, Bruhn says, and features stories from backyard growers across the state and even farther. “We wrote this book to help people do more wherever they’re at, with whatever they have,” Bruhn says. “There’s this whole idea of homesteading [that] you need 40 acres, and you have to homeschool your kids and all this other stuff, and modern homesteading … is a way that anybody can jump in and start being more conscious about … sustainable living. Every little thing that we do really does matter, and making those small changes can really add up in the long run.”
The book will be available for purchase online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble, as well as at Lake Country Booksellers and select Tractor Supply stores across the nation. Learn more at simonandschuster.com.
