Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This book reads like an extended eHow or About.com article. The basics of farming and raising poultry are presented, but the author rarely goes into detail about any given topic. Those topics that are dealt with at length are often tangential at best. (Cinder blocks are good garden liners, yes. I don't need a paragraph explaining that they are heavy and just how many linear feet can be fit into a pickup truck bed. And there is an ENTIRE CHAPTER devoted to the design of a chicken plucker.) More alarmingly is the author's tendency to revert into a late-night infomercial tone, throwing out facts and figures while relying on questionable leaps of logic to justify his economic arguments. He extrapolates figures, such as a garden bed growing $5 per square foot of produce, to demonstrate that, gosh darn it, your backyard is worth over $10,000 a year and you might as well quit your day job. How these figures translate into actually selling the produce is left to the reader's imagination; there is vague talk of selling to restaurants, and "value-added products like pickles and salsas." I would appreciate a book detailing the economic realities of raising and selling produce. This isn't it. Finally, the overall quality of the layout is cheap and bloated. Large text, large margins, small amateurish pictures, and the same full-page photo of seeds facing every chapter. All in all, a disappointment. Returned to Amazon.