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Gene Logsdon wrote Small-Scale Grain Raising in the 1970s, and though it was popular then with back-to-the-land readers, it eventually went out of print. Chelsea Green Publishing brought it back this year, and just in time. This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to explore grain growing. From the first page, Logsdon makes it clear that there is no great mystery to growing these most ancient and important foods. He describes his “pancake patch” of wheat, which he cuts by hand, threshes on a clean cloth with a plastic baseball bat, and grinds into flour with a blender. Then he makes pancakes. What could be simpler?

Actually, Logsdon does not minimize the work or equipment needed to raise grain. He is an accomplished farmer and writer, and he knows how to help people be successful. For example, in the first chapter, he helps you visualize how much grain you need for your own use, and how much space that would require.

At most, figure a year’s supply of wheat at 4 pecks (1 bushel); corn, 2 pecks; popcorn, 2 pecks; soybeans, 4 pecks; grain sorghum, 2 pecks; buckwheat, 1 peck; oats, 1 peck; triticale or rye or barley, 1 peck; navy or other soup beans, 2 pecks; alfalfa for sprouting, 1 or 2 quarts; lentils, field peas, cane sorghum (for flour), about 2 quarts each. But only experience can give you the precise annual amounts needed.

You don’t need much space to raise at least some grains. A normal yield of wheat grown organically would be at least 40 bushels to the acre. So you’d need only 1/40th of an acre to produce a bushel. That would be a plot of ground 10 feet wide by about 109 feet long. A really good wheat grower with a little luck could get a bushel from a plot half that size. Wheat yields have been recorded as high as 80 bushels per acre and even higher.

This book is not a step-by-step guide to growing every kind of grain, but it does provide the novice grain grower with a firm foundation on which to plan a grain crop.

Small-Scale Grain Raising is 7×10, 320 pages, softcover. $29.95 plus $5 shipping from GFM, PO Box 3747, Lawrence KS 66046; 800-307-8949; www.growingformarket.com