When I was a kid, we had a summer cabin near Louis Bromfield's Malibar Farm. This farm was established in the late 1930s and Bromfield, a famous novelist, used mostly organic and sustainable practices.  We would buy produce from his farm stand. 

The book is a series of essays spanning the time from his friends strongly urging him to leave France, to finding the land through the establishment and fulfillment of his dream. 

He has a chapter where he talks about using cover crops to build 10" of soil in a year. It takes nature 1000 years to build one inch!

He got the neighboring farmers to adopt contour farming instead of straight rows and eliminated soil erosion. 

My favorite 2 chapters are, "The World's Smartest Pig and the one where he hunts morel mushrooms.