Nicki Trench has created her own backyard farm from scratch, and now shares with you everything there is to know about growing vegetables, fruit, and herbs, including making your own compost, growing in raised beds, and protecting your crops from pests and disease. Nicki also explains how to rear chickens for eggs and bees for honey, and gives advice on keeping goats and pigs. The benefits of creating your backyard farm are not just economic-the energy once obsessively expended on the exercise bike can now be channeled more productively by digging the vegetable patch, turning the compost, or cleaning out the hen coop. Communities are reappearing over backyard fences as neighbors share their harvest of zucchini, spinach, and eggs. Whatever you choose to grow or rear on your backyard farm, this book offers a taste of the good life that is easy, satisfying, and inexpensive to achieve.