Whether biking to work or school, a run to the grocery store or just a fun ride on a local trail, biking not only saves time and money but also your health and the environment too. There are many benefits to leaving your gas guzzling car behind every once in awhile and exploring your community from a bicycle.

As part of Bike to Work week, I’m giving away two different books on bicycling to two different winners!

Bicycling A ReIntroduction is an awesome visual reference to help you choose, repair, maintain and operate a bicycle. The big visual reference book packs more than 125 pages of information on everything from why you should get on a bicycle, choosing the right bike and even how to fix a bicycle. This guide seems perfect for a person just looking at getting into bicycling and is a well-rounded guide that will lead you through all the do’s and don’ts with plenty of pictures too!

Complete Bike Maintenance: New and Expanded Edition is another fantastic, full-color reference guide focused on bicycle repair. Packed with giant photos, this book contains nearly 200 pages of detailed instructions on how to maintain and fix road, mountain and commuter bikes. From braking systems to gears and hubs, this reference guide seems better aimed at more advanced bicyclists who are interested in taking the time to fix and repair any issues with their bicycle themselves.

If you’d like to win one of these full color books on bicycling, post a comment below and tell me which book you’d like to win. Also let me know how often you bike and where you go!

Unfortunately in the Tri-State region there are no Bike to Work Week events listed or planned. The Evansville community doesn’t sport much in the way of bike lanes or even bike friendly streets which is a shame. I hope city leaders will one day decide to overhaul some of the city’s major thoroughfares and make them more accommodating to people on bikes. Out of 244 ranked communities, Evansville ranks 184th. Are you curious to know which communities are the most bike friendly? Check out the breakdown here.

The Evansville Trails Coalition is continuously fighting an uphill battle to construct and introduce more trails for outdoor recreation in the Evansville area. The group has already helped to spearhead a trail across the downtown riverfront which is super but more needs to be done. View local trails and efforts at the Evansville Trails Coalition website. In the meantime, check out the Bike to Work Commuter’s Booklet or Smart Cycling Brochure.

Heirlooms are open-pollinated varieties of plants that are often 60 or more years old. Most date back 100 years or more. Heirlooms are the truest plants, often showcasing eyestopping individuality and some of the finest flavors you can get in a fruit or vegetable. Aside from sticking it to large agri-business based seed companies who deal in hybrid or Genitically Modified seeds, heirloom seed can be saved and replanted year after year. You can read more about it here.

If you’d like to learn more about heirloom gardening, you should pick up a copy of a brand new book on the subject. The Beginner’s Guide to Growing Heirloom Vegetables: The 100 Easiest-to-Grow, Tastiest Vegetables for Your Garden by Marie Iannotti.

If the 250 pages of scintillating photographs of heirlooms don’t have your taste buds watering and your green thumb twitching, I’m not sure what will. Iannotti gracefully shares her 100 favorite heirlooms, treasures that should be kept under lock and key. She also shares the wonderful stories that round out the unique history of each featured heirloom.

Don’t let the title fool you either. This book should also be a prize for any gardener with more advanced skills. I give it two green thumbs up!

Now you can win a copy of the book along with a spectacular heirloom garden prize pack including 35 packets of heirloom seeds and a bareroot tree! Click the link to head to Timber Press and enter The Heirloom Garden Giveaway

What’s your favorite heirloom fruit or vegetable to grow?

Along with providing you with fresh eggs, chickens can provide your garden with some nutrient-rich manure to help your garden really grow! You can also make plant selections for your garden that will benefit your feathered friends too. Bloom, a landscape architect by trade, covers several topics including chicken-keeping basics, simple garden plans to get you started, tips on attractive fencing options, the best plants and plants to avoid, and step-by-step instructions for getting your chicken garden up and running.

The photography throughout the book is wonderful, profiling several different gardens that also happen to house a flock of backyard birds. For anyone who wants a fabulous garden where colorful chickens happily roam, Free-Range Chicken Gardens is the guide that will bring the dream home to roost.

Get your chicken garden started off on the right foot by entering the publisher’s contest. Just head to their contest entry page but hurry, the deadline to enter is tomorrow, February 17th, 2012. Timber Press is giving away the following:

• $50 gift card for chicken feed or supplies from McMurray Hatchery
• One chicken coop plan from The Garden Coop (a $20 value)
• 1 lb. of organic chicken forage blend and seeds for chicken-friendly plants from Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supply (a $20 value)
• A copy of Free-Range Chicken Gardens

First up is The Meat Goat Handbook – Raising Goats for Food, Profit, and Fun by Yvonne Zweede-Tucker. While popular in many other countries around the globe, goat meat hasn’t really caught on with American consumers until just recently. Often called Chevron or Mutton, goat meat can sometimes be found roasted or barbecued. This is where I first tried it: a local barbecue joint with a lore about a mile long. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised when I tasted it and even went back for seconds.

Goat is the most consumed meat in the world behind pork, beef and chicken. With few people raising meat goats these days, many can find it a rewarding and profitable farm business. Who better to turn to for advice than Tucker who boasts more than 20-years in business as a profitable goat rancher. Tucker has learned the ins and outs at her Smoke Ridge Ranch in Choteau, Montana and shares those lessons in her book.

The 200+ glossy pages are packed with full color photos, many taken by Tucker herself. The Meat Goat Handbook is very easy to read and includes clear cut information ranging from breeding and housing your goats, proper birthing methods and even how to successfully run your meat goat business. The end of Tucker’s book is punctuated with a few handy recipes to cook up all that healthy meat too.

By the way, did you know goat is leaner and contains less cholesterol and fat than lamb or beef?

The Boer goat is a widely kept breed for meat production

I’ve always been entertained watching the antics of goats at the petting zoo or other farm operations. Now I think I might just be swayed to try raising a couple myself. We’ll first have to upsize from the Half-Acre Homestead though!

Now is your chance to win a prize pack of goat-related reads. Thanks to our friends at Voyageur Press we have two more books to give away: The Field Guide to Goats by Cheryl Kimball and How to Raise Goats by Carol Amundson. Post a comment below on why you’d like to raise goats and what breed you’re most interested in. Get a second entry by tweeting a link to this contest and posting the permalink and your email address. Good luck!

I consider us lucky though here at the Half-Acre Homestead.  While this plunge into winter-like temperatures can all but take the wind out of your puffed-up sails, many people are still in the deep freeze.  I have friends all over the country still shoveling snow and for them, spring gardening is anything but close.  Many zones still have another 6 weeks before they can start setting plants out and some are probably still deciding what to do with their garden this year.

If you’re still on the fence about how to dive into gardening this year, check out Jennifer Bartley’s new book The Kitchen Gardener’s Handbook from Timber Press.  More than 200 glossy pages of this paperback are chock full of design plans, seasonal checklists, fresh recipes, plant profiles and growing tips.  In her book, Bartley shows how easy and beautiful growing edibles can be when mixed into your ornamental landscape.  You can create a palette not only for your eyes but also for your belly.

I’ve pawed through several gardening books before but The Kitchen Gardener’s Handbook stands out from the rest.  Clearly written, Bartley organizes her book into four seasonal chapters.  She explains what you should plant during a particular season, how you should maintain it and finally what you can create with the resulting harvest.  Too often I think gardening books leave the reader seeking another source for recipes when trying to figure out how best to utilize their bumper crop of fresh backyard produce.  This book is a one-stop shop though, leaving little to be questioned for both novice and expert kitchen gardeners alike.

If you’ve never gardened before or have been considering taking your gardening chops to a whole new level, I would highly recommend this book.  The season by season kitchen garden plans and to-do lists is a gold mine of information for anyone wondering where to get started.

There’s been a lot of talk about how harsh our everyday, household cleaners really are.  Not only to ourselves but also to our environment.  We’re beginning to see some, commercially produced cleaners that are more natural and biodegradable.  It’s a small niche market right now but as the green movement picks up, more and more companies are turning to more sustainable options.  Not only will it be better for our environment in the long run, it will also protect our children from allergic reactions, poisonings and illnesses in kids associated with chemical-laden cleaning products.

Smaller companies like Seventh Generation are working to produce more natural cleaners and more sustainable lifestyles.  The Burlington, Vermont company lends its employees up to $5,000 to buy a hybrid car or make energy-efficient upgrades to their homes.  They also reimburse employees up to $500 for alternative commuting costs and gives them another $500 to buy energy efficient appliances.  The company also participates in a reforestation program in New Orleans.   Another company making environmentally friendly cleaning products is Method.

Even cleaning giants like Clorox are entering the green age.  This month they’re releasing their new line of cleaners called Greenworks.  The eco-friendly products will be sold right alongside their normal line and will apparently cost about 20% to 25% more.  As part of their move to get on the green movement, the Clorox company also purchased Burt’s Bees for $950 million back in November.

I’ve been interested in making some environmentally friendly cleaners at home.  I recently bought two different books that have different formulas and recipes for homemade cleaners.  I picked up Homemade: How to Make Hundreds of Everyday Products Fast, Fresh and More Naturally and 1,001 Secret Household Hints and Formulas.  I’ll of course post my thoughts on these books when they finally arrive.  I’m hoping they turn out to be helpful in our pursuit to continue living in a more sustainable way in 2008.

Do you have a homemade or store-bought cleaner that’s environmentally friendly and works great?  Post a comment and let us know about it!

Tater Tot was exclusively breast fed because booby is best!  Once Tater started on solid foods though, we’ve been feeding her Earth’s Best organic baby foods.  We feed her little in the way of processed or unnatural foods and avoid most things that retain pesticides and other harsh chemicals used in factory farming growing practices.  Tater doesn’t get much in the way of refined sugar either because both T and I have seen the outcomes of children who get way too much at an early age.

With that said, T and I have been trying to find recipes for a more natural first birthday cake.  We don’t necessarily want to go entirely vegan on this because little Tater Tot hasn’t made the decision to go that direction yet.  Tater’s Mommy and Daddy love their meat very much but we’ll support her if she eventually decides meat products aren’t for her.  Since we’ve been on the hunt, T pulled the Green Princess Cookbook from my book review stack and we began pawing through it.

Based on the title, you’d think there would be a lot of natural or in some way environmentally friendly recipes in this cookbook.  I wish I could say that was the case but instead, we found ourselves looking at a cookbook that had merely a sprinkling of the “green” idea laid out in its recipes.

The forward does recommend you try to use organic or locally grown ingredients whenever possible but this is a suggestion that virtually any cookbook author could slap in front of their recipe collection too.  The book is geared toward children and Beery did a good job including easy to make items like Organic Orchard Salsa and Solar-Power Strawberry Lemonade (which actually does have to warm up in the sun as part of the recipe).  They’re novel ideas and take a good step in teaching younger kids about organic foods and greener living practices.

You might be disappointed though when you come across recipes like No-Bake Brownie Cupcakes.  The idea is to use less resources by not using your oven to bake them but unfortunately the recipe calls for a package of brownie mix as its base.  We all know that’s not only resource intensive but surely there is a way to make your own no-bake brownie mix instead of trying to rely on another box of processed food.  The recipe for Off-the-Vine Zany Zucchini Muffins goes the same route, using a box of spice cake mix for its base.

I have to give Beery some credit for trying to spread the teachings of greener living to her childhood cooks.  There’s a greener living tip on each page and some recipes leaning toward learning about how to be sustainable like making your own butter.  Parents could expand discussions on each topic while helping their budding chef whip up their recipe and maybe teach them even more about living life a little greener.

I’m giving away a copy of the Green Princess Cookbook so if you’re interested in entering, here’s how you do it:

1)  First leave a comment on this post

2)  Secondly, send me an email to easygreen@greenpreferred.com with a favorite organic or green recipe you like to make with your kids or for them and a short story explaining why it’s your favorite.

3)  Finally, follow me on Twitter and re-tweet the following message:

“I just entered the Green Princess Cookbook for kids giveaway put on by @GreenPreferred.  Learn how to enter and win http://bit.ly/c1Phcu”

The contest will close on Friday, May 7th, 2010 and the person with the most creative recipe and story will win the cookbook for their budding chef.  Keep checking back for a free recipe or two while the contest is running. Good luck!