Review on A Magical Life:

"A somewhat nerdy looking new book was quietly published this year that has the potential to not just greatly improve your life, but greatly improve the world. I admit that sounds like a bit of hyperbole, but Trees of Power offers a really inspirational look at how the trees that are all around us can provide us with untapped income, food and more.

Akiva Silver is a man who knows trees. Trees of Power is a deep dive into the world of a guy who lives for trees, raising and selling thousands a year and foraging from many more.

Silver shows how the ten trees featured are phenomenally good for homesteaders and for the world at large. For example, he writes that hickory nuts produce a delicious oil that we could easily be using for cooking, and the nuts are just rotting at our feet by the billions. An expensive nut press is needed to make the oil but he points out that every town used to have a mill and a press and people would just bring their crops to use it. That really makes sense. Everyone doesn't need a press, just communities or cooperatives.

He says, "Everyone I have offered a taste of the oil to looks up at me in surprise and says something like: 'Wow' or 'Oh my God.'"

"Here is a hickory tree that we don't have to shell to enjoy. Here is a vegetable oil raining down from the sky in enormous quantities. A 5-gallon bucket of nuts in the shell will yield 1/4 gallon of oil. I have filled 5-gallon buckets of bitternuts in as little as 30 minutes. This tree is offering a tremendous gift, if we can only see it. When a million gallons of high-quality vegetable oil fall on the ground and we ignore it and plow up the earth to grow rapeseed (for canola oil), there is a disconnect. The soil suffers, wildlife suffers, and we do, too. The time is here for us to use hickory oil."

This is how I feel about acorns and why I wrote a book about foraging and cooking with acorns. They are literally going to waste under our feet by the billions while we grow crops for flour and food that's not even as nutritious or tasty as what acorns produce (after the bitter tannins are leached out). He doesn't write about acorns/oaks but he does include elderberries in his 10 favorite trees -- another of my favorites obviously, as I've written about foraging and using elderberries as well. And while I am very familiar with some of the other trees he writes about, such as apples, I really want to look for more information on some of the others he profiles, both as a forager and as an urban homesteader.

The ten trees featured in Trees of Power are:

Chestnut: The Bread Tree
Apples: The Magnetic Center
Poplar: The Homemaker
Ash: Maker of Wood
Mulberry: The Giving Tree
Elderberry: The Caretaker
Hickory: Pillars of Life
Hazelnut: The Provider
Black Locust: The Restoration Tree
Beech: The Root Runner

We really need to start teaching about all of the wonderful food (and other gifts) that surround us and are so much better for the earth than our current practices. This book is a fantastic introduction to how we can do this with just these ten species of trees that are already all around us.

Silver is a passionate environmentalist and he raises some wonderful points. One statement that he makes early in the book resonated with me especially -- that as environmentalists we need to abandon the goal of trying to "wreck the world slower." He points out that most of our changes only cause harm more slowly than the current systems and are less awful for the environment. He says he doesn't want to wreck the world at all but wants to actually improve the world. Now that's a goal we all need to switch to.

Trees of Power is a phenomenal book and it's one I highly recommend for anyone interested in permaculture, homesteading, climate change or (obviously) trees.

This book has the potential to do exactly what Silver says he wants to do -- not wreck the world slower but make the world a whole lot better. And along the way, it shows how trees can make our own lives a whole lot better, too."

Review on GoodReads:

I was really torn on how many stars to give this book. On the one hand, there were ways that I felt it could have been improved. There are no ID pictures of the trees, the author does seem to "brain dump" as another reviewer put it (but what a brain full of information he has on trees!) and it's a bit of a long and wandering read in places. It lacks the quick sound-byte character of many books these days, full of charts and summaries and short sections with cliff notes written right on the pages. It's a deep dive into the world of a guy who lives for trees, raising and selling thousands a year and foraging from many more.

All that said, it's a phenomenal book and it's one I highly recommend for anyone interested in permaculture, homesteading, climate change or (obviously) trees. Silver is a passionate environmentalist and he raises some wonderful points. One statement that he makes early in the book resonated with me especially -- that as environmentalists we need to abandon the goal of trying to "wreck the world slower." He points out that most of our changes only cause harm more slowly than the current systems and are less awful for the environment. He says he doesn't want to wreck the world at all but wants to actually improve the world. Now that's a goal we all need to switch to.

Silver shows how the ten trees featured are phenomenally good for homesteaders and for the world at large. He writes that hickory nuts produce a delicious oil that we could easily be using for cooking, and the nuts are just rotting at our feet by the billions. An expensive nut press is needed to make the oil but he points out that every town used to have a mill and a press and people would just bring their crops to use it. That really makes sense. Everyone doesn't need a press, just communities or cooperatives.

He says, "Everyone I have offered a taste of the oil to looks up at me in surprise and says something like: 'Wow' or 'Oh my God.'"

"Here is a hickory tree that we don't have to shell to enjoy. Here is a vegetable oil raining down from the sky in enormous quantities. A 5-gallon bucket of nuts in the shell will yield 1/4 gallon of oil. I have filled 5-gallon buckets of bitternuts in as little as 30 minutes. This tree is offering a tremendous gift, if we can only see it. When a million gallons of high-quality vegetable oil fall on the ground and we ignore it and plow up the earth to grow rapeseed (for canola oil), there is a disconnect. The soil suffers, wildlife suffers, and we do, too. The time is here for us to use hickory oil."

This is how I feel about acorns and why I wrote a book about foraging and cooking with them. They are literally going to waste under our feet by the billions while we grow crops for flour and food that's not even as nutritious or tasty as what acorns produce (after the bitter tannins are leached out). He doesn't write about acorns/oaks but he does include elderberries in his 10 favorite trees -- another of my favorites obviously, as I've written about foraging and using those as well. And while I am very familiar with some of the other trees he writes about, such as apples, I really want to look for more information on some of the others he profiles, both as a forager and as an urban homesteader.

We really need to start teaching about all of the wonderful food (and other gifts) that surround us and are so much better for the earth than our current practices. This book is a phenomenal introduction to how we can do this with just these ten species of trees that are already all around us.

I got this book as a temporary digital ARC last winter but was unable to finish it before it was deleted. I read enough of it to know that I wanted to read it all, so I ordered it through inter-library loan and finished the paperback copy.

This book has the potential to do exactly what Silver says he wants to do -- not wreck the world slower but make the world a whole lot better. Highly recommended.

(Third review posted on Permies.com, linked below)

This excellent book from a tree propagator should be read by anyone concerned about climate change, feeding the people of today and the future, biodiversity loss, atmospheric carbon.
Maybe you have seen the YouTube video of a TED talk about restoring desertifying land using mobs of cattle, bunched and moved regularly. What the cattle do is eat up dead grasses and put organic compost, including seeds, on the ground. Traditional mixed farmers and organic farmers know this already. In just the same way, this book explains how plants naturally put carbon, humus and moisture in the ground for microscopic life to break down. By flattening fields and tilling them humans destroy the structure and biology of the soil, until there is nothing left but bare clay that needs chemical fertiliser, watering, then weedkiller and pesticide because there are no predators for the pests.

The author gives us the benefit of all the lessons he has learned. The trees he plants grow fast, healthy young stocks for planting out elsewhere. While the author doesn't like selling potted trees, preferring bare roots, I would point out that his wish not to sell his soil with a tree, means the tree has none of the microbes with it in its new home.

I like the section on how old forests are full of pits where a tree uprooted and mounds where a tree trunk lay and rotted. Amphibians will live in the pits but a good point is that fish can't because they dry up, so the life that fish would eat can thrive. In redwood forests, not mentioned, the seedlings grow on the length of a nurse tree like this, roots reaching down for water and nutrients provided by fungi. Mixed stands of trees are also favoured by any sensible forester, because of the possibility of disease and squirrel strike; deciduous trees with their annually shed, fast rotting leaves are mixed through conifers to fertilise and improve the soil. In Ireland, UCD studies proved that biodiversity shoots up from five bird species to twenty-three when a soft edging of shrubs and smaller native trees are planted around a block of spruces.

The author takes us through budding, grafting, rooting and growing from seed, with many recommendations including a list of what is good to add to soil, from wood chips to comfrey tea and cardboard. Biochar is presented as the best long term way to add fertiliser and sequester carbon.

Then the author presents his 'allies' the major types of tree which can feed us and replace ground crops to a great extent. Sweet chestnuts (we are more familiar with horse chestnuts here) produce vast quantities of rich nuts and the author suggests hybridising Asian varieties with the American varieties to impart resistance to Asian fungal strains. This is being carried out on European trees. He tells the story of the American chestnut, a keystone species and supporter of many farm families, wiped out by disease. We learn of the attempts to save it by outcrossing, still under way. And as the young pure trees die after 15 years but have produced seed and sprout from the root, they can be kept going, which is what happened with elm trees here after Dutch Elm disease. I am hoping the coppiced trees will develop resistance which they pass on to seeds.

Apples; poplar, which is only good for paper and matches but helps with biodiversity and draining water; ash; mulberry; elderberry (perfect edge of forest shrub); hickory; hazelnut; black locust; beech; these are the core trees the author advises us to plant, for wildlife and ourselves. We don't have all of them here (I'd put in walnut, oak and rowan) but I'd take any of them over a sterile stand of Sitka. We are given information about each species and its benefits, how to grow it.

The author tells us some exercises to help us relax, open to the natural world and see better. He mentions one called 'owl eyes' or seeing with peripheral vision (he calls it wide vision) and he says this can help you find things at night. The reason would be that the focal vision is handled mostly by cone cells in the eye, which see colour, but the peripheral vision sees with a good mix of rod cells which see black and white, so they have an advantage in low light and spot movement.

Last we get a list of books on trees, farms and pre-Columbian culture which the author recommends. I would add the excellent The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben about the apex beech forests in central Europe and how they and other trees communicate and support life.

I enjoyed this read very much, as a tree surgeon and ecologist, and it is packed with colour photos and some old b/w ones, so we get a good understanding of the subject matter. Gardeners, tree lovers, ecologists, farmers and those mentioned at the start who want to reverse climate change, need to read this book.
Notes P273 - 276. I counted three names which I could be sure were female.
I downloaded an e-ARC from Net Galley (but will be getting my own copy). This is an unbiased review.

Akiva Silver is a tree crops evangelist. I don’t think there is a tree he hasn’t thought about to make meals, and money out of. That’s the main difference between Trees of Power and other nature, gardening or farming books. Everywhere he looks, Silver sees the potential for new markets. Throughout, he looks at everything as a cash crop. From perennial spring medicinal flowers to fall chestnuts, the forests provide sellable crops, often in ways we have yet to master.

The book is a brain dump from someone who lives for his trees. Silver moves 20,000 bareroot cuttings and seedlings every year. He knows how much and what kind of mulch is best, how to apply nitrogen fertilizers, and when to water. He knows where threes prefer to be, and depending on where they are, how much they grow in a year. Mostly, he knows what he can make of them in terms of food, shelter, income, and also peace of mind.

There are two sections. The first deals with propagating trees by seed, grafting, layering and cuttings. These apply to different degrees with different trees. Silver prefers selling bareroot trees that he grows, storing them in and on the ground and in his unheated basement. He dislikes selling potted trees because they are unnaturally rootbound, which can girdle and kill the tree, and because he is basically exporting the rich soil he needs to grow the trees with every pot that leaves the farm. They also take up too much floor space, compared to the piles of bareroot specimens he accumulates. He can produce those 20,000 trees a year in less than one of his 20 acres.

The second section is profiles of his top ten trees. Unlike most such books, there are no portraits of mature trees or detailed paintings of leaves, seeds and flowers. There are plenty of totally nonprofessional color photos, mostly of clumps of plants he identifies, but are hard to appreciate on the page. Lots of shots of his three kids too. The trees are appreciated for their fruit, their lumber, their unique approach to survival, their contribution to the ecosystem, and their ease of propagation.

The ten trees are chestnut, apples, poplar, ash, mulberry, elderberry, hickory, hazelnut, black locust and beech. All are native to his upstate New York farm.

Along the way, there are some interesting insights:
-In his forest walks, Silver noticed it was never flat. There were pits and mounds everywhere. Step in a pit, and it was wet and squishy. And there were always trees growing on the mounds. The mounds were the stumps of dead trees, and the pits were the holes left by older trees falling over. Trees thrive on the high ground of the mound, with the ability to tap the moisture of the pits as needed.
-When Europeans came to farm, the first thing they did was flatten the land, filling in the pits and clearing the mounds. Nature required the variety, while farmers needed the convenience and symmetry of flatlands. Convenience won.
-Glyphosate is not simply a herbicide, but actually registered antibiotic. This means it kills the naturally needed bacteria in the soil, not just the weeds. It can leave fields totally sterile. And help create new antibiotic resistance.
-Today it is common for agricultural fields to contain around one percent organic matter.

David Wineberg

At first,I thought there would be more trees of different varieties and thought it would not be as interesting as expected. But in fact, I liked how the first part about technical information is really well-written and gives step by step how to.