Readers will learn the fundamentals of gardening--from what, when and how to plant--presented with options for container gardening, raised-bed gardening, traditional gardening and even covert gardening where they blend edible plants into their flowerbeds. The authors will draw from their real-life experiences as they teach readers how to keep bees, chickens and even goats in their backyards while still keeping the peace with their neighbors and their municipalities. Seventy-five recipes will show readers how to turn the eggs, honey, beeswax, goat milk and plants they harvest in to natural skin care products and non-toxic cleaning products. Readers will also find plenty of ideas for cute handmade gifts for family and friends. Finally, in true homesteading fashion, readers will find advice on how to build community in their neighborhood with babysitting co-ops, meal co-ops and barter systems.

    We are in the midst of a massive cultural shift away from consumerism and toward a vibrant and very active counter-movement that has been thriving on the outskirts for quite some time — do-it-yourself-ers who make frugal, homemade living hip are challenging the notion that true wealth has anything to do with money. In Making It, Coyne and Knutzen, who are at the forefront of this movement, provide readers with all the tools they need for this radical shift in home economics.The projects range from simple to ambitious and include activities done in the home, in the garden, and out in the streets. With step-by-step instructions for a wide range of projects—from growing food in an apartment and building a ninety-nine-cent solar oven to creating safe, effective laundry soap for pennies a gallon and fishing in urban waterways Making It will be the go-to source for post-consumer living activities that are fun, inexpensive, and eminently doable. Within hours of buying this book, readers will be able to start transitioning into a creative, sustainable mode of living that is not just a temporary fad but a cultural revolution.

    With easy-to-follow instructions on canning, drying, and pickling, you’ll enjoy your backyard bounty all winter long. Also available in this series: The Backyard Homestead Seasonal Planner, The Backyard Homestead Book of Building Projects, The Backyard Homestead Guide to Raising Farm Animals, and The Backyard Homestead Book of Kitchen Know-How.

    Created to both inspire and instruct, it returns readers to an era before power saws and fast food restaurants so they can rediscover the pleasures and challenges of a more self-sufficient, economical, and healthy lifestyle. Packed with hundreds of projects, step-by-step sequences, charts, tables, diagrams, and illustrations, it explains how to dye your own wool with plant pigments, graft trees for propagation, raise chickens, create a hutch table with hand tools, and make treats such as blueberry peach jam and cheddar cheese. The truly ambitious will learn how to build a log cabin or an adobe brick homestead.

    You regularly handle the filthiest object in your home -- the kitchen sponge -- and put the same chemicals on your face that are used in brake fluid and antifreeze. The cleaning agents and personal care products commonly marketed to and used in American homes contain not only some very dangerous, toxic chemicals, but they also create an "overly clean," chemically bombed-out house that compromises immune systems. And with more than fifty million Americans suffering from allergies and other autoimmune diseases -- not to mention the developing and fragile immune systems of children and seniors -- large numbers of people are actually being made sicker and sicker by their homes.Learn to live a clean, healthy, more economical way with Ellen Sandbeck, the nontoxic avenger. In this must-have book for the twenty-first- century home, this passionate, witty advocate of all things organic will teach you how to maintain every part of the home -- from living room to septic tank, kitchen floor to bathroom sink -- using safe, simple cleansers and quick preventative measures as well as the most effective organic products on the market to get the job done.Learn time-saving, preventative housekeeping, such as taking thirty seconds to clean the shower while you shower. Take care of bathroom stains with baking soda and vinegar rather than commercial, toxic bathroom "bombs" peddled to you with such force by manufacturers. Need whiter whites? There is no bleaching power on earth stronger than the sun. Snow clean your fine rugs. Choose fruits and vegetables from the relatively pesticide residue-free list. Clean felt-tipped pen stains with vodka. Make furniture shine with olive oil and lemon. Your house will also smell as great as it looks.

    It is the most complete source of step-by-step information about growing, processing, cooking, and preserving homegrown foods from garden, orchard, field, or barnyard. This book is so basic, so thorough, so reliable, that it deserves a place in every home whether country, city, or in between. Carla Emery started writing The Encyclopedia of Country Living in 1969 during the back-to-the-land movement of that time. She continued to add content and refine the information over the years ad the book went from a self-published mimeographed document to a book published by Bantam and then Sasquatch. The 10th Edition reflects the most up-to-date and the most personal version of the book that became Carla Emery’s life work. It is the original manual of basic country skills that have proved essential and necessary for people living in the country and the city, and everywhere in between. The practical advice in this exhaustive reference tool includes how to cultivate a garden, buy land, bake bread, raise farm animals, make sausage, can peaches, milk a goat, grow herbs, churn butter, build a chicken coop, catch a pig, cook on a wood stove, and much, much more.

    Faced with climate change, dwindling resources, and species extinctions, most Americans understand the fundamental steps necessary to solve our global crises-drive less, consume less, increase self-reliance, buy locally, eat locally, rebuild our local communities. In essence, the great work we face requires rekindling the home fires.Radical Homemakers is about men and women across the U.S. who focus on home and hearth as a political and ecological act, and who have centered their lives around family and community for personal fulfillment and cultural change. It explores what domesticity looks like in an era that has benefited from feminism, where domination and oppression are cast aside and where the choice to stay home is no longer equated with mind-numbing drudgery, economic insecurity, or relentless servitude.Radical Homemakers nationwide speak about empowerment, transformation, happiness, and casting aside the pressures of a consumer culture to live in a world where money loses its power to relationships, independent thought, and creativity. If you ever considered quitting a job to plant tomatoes, read to a child, pursue creative work, can green beans and heal the planet, this is your book.

    And it's not as hard as we may think! This hand written and drawn book of charming tutorials is both fun and accessible. It's full of simple skills that anyone can and should learn. From creating tinctures and salves to concocting all-natural cleaners and body products to gardening basics, this book is great for anyone looking to live more simply, create a comfortable nest, and truly do it yourself.

    Author John Seymour, the father of the back-to-basics movement, shares his singular vision to transform lives and create communities. More relevant than ever in our hi-tech world, The Self Sufficient Life and How to Live It is the ultimate practical guide for realists and dreamers alike.

    Learn a few basic country skills, she reasoned, and she would be able to produce at least some of the food and resources she used every day.Goodbye, fast food and Wonder Bread; hello, homesteading. With enthusiasm and joy for the tasks at hand, Woginrich embarked on a journey that has been sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking and always soul satisfying.From the fulfilling work of planting a garden and installing honeybees, to the bliss of gathering fresh eggs for an omelet or playing an old-time ballad on the fiddle, Made from Scratch shares the honest satisfaction of doing for oneself, and brings the reader to a deep appreciation for the value of simple skills performed well.

    "Urban Homesteading" is the perfect back-to-the-land guide for urbanites who want to reduce their impact on the environment. Full of practical information, as well as inspiring stories from people already living the urban homesteading life, this colorful guide is an approachable guide to learning to live more ecologically in the city. The book embraces the core concepts of localization (providing our basic needs close to where we live), self-reliance (re-learning that food comes from the ground, not the grocery store; learning to do things ourselves), and sustainability (giving back at least as much as we take). Readers will find concise how-to information that they can immediately set into practice, from making solar cookers to growing tomatoes in a barrel to raising chickens in small spaces to maintaining mental serenity in the fast-paced city environment. Full of beautiful full-color photographs and illustrations, and plenty of step-by-step instructions, this is a must-have handbook for city folk with a passion for the simple life.a"

    A fresh take on modern homemaking, this is a practical (and sometimes sassy) guide to maximizing your time, effort, and energy in the kitchen and beyond. With a focus on less consumerism, it will teach you how to organize your kitchen and home to make the best use of your time. For those yearning to live a more ecologically minded, grounded lifestyle, this book is full of practical, no-nonsense advice, fabulous recipes, and time- and money-saving techniques.

    Even if you have never been a farmer or a gardener, this book covers everything you need to know to get started: buying and saving seeds, starting seedlings, establishing raised beds, soil fertility practices, composting, dealing with pest and disease problems, crop rotation, farm planning, and much more. Because self-suf?ciency is the objective, subjects such as raising backyard chickens and home canning are also covered along with numerous methods for keeping costs down and production high. Materials, tools, and techniques are detailed with photographs, tables, diagrams, and illustrations.

    White. “But that’s not how my brain works. I’m lost on page three.” Dana blogs at A Slob Comes Clean, chronicling her successes and failures with her self-described “deslobification process.” In the beginning she used the name “Nony” (short for aNONYmous), because she was sharing her deep, dark, slob secret. Now she has truly come clean—with not only her real name but the strategies she has developed, tested, and proved in her own home. She has learned what it takes to bring a home out of Disaster Status, which habits make the biggest and most lasting impact, and how to keep clutter under control.In How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind, Dana explains that cleaning your house is not a onetime project but a series of ongoing premade decisions. Her reality-based cleaning and organizing techniques debunk the biggest housekeeping fantasies and help readers learn what really works. Chapter titles includeMy First Step: Giving Up on the FantasyThe Worst Thing About the Best WayJust Tell Me What to DoConquering LaundryGet Dinner on the TablePutting an End to the Never-Ending Weekly Cleaning TasksDon’t Get OrganizedHow to Declutter Without Making a Bigger MessFighting the Perceived Value BattleBut Will It Last?With a huge helping of empathy and humor, Dana provides a step-by-step process with strategies for getting rid of enormous amounts of stuff in as little time (and with as little emotional drama) as possible.

    The Home Edit mentality is all about embracing your life--whether you're a busy mom, a roommate living with three, or someone who's always traveling for work. You just need to know how to set up a system that works for you.In the next phase of the home organizing craze, Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin go beyond the pantry and bookshelf to show you how to contain the chaos in all aspects of your life from office space to traveling bags to pet supplies and holiday storage. Take quizzes and get to know your organizing style, tailor it to your family's lifestyle, and lead the low-guilt life as you apply more genius ideas to every aspect of your life.Clea and Joanna are here to remind you that "it's okay to own things" (we all do!) in the quest for pretty and smart spaces. With The Home Edit Life, you'll be corralling phone cords, archiving old photos, packing your suitcase like a pro, and arranging your phone apps by color in no time.