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.

    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.

    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.

    Rejecting both end-times hand wringing and dewy-eyed faith that technology will save us from ourselves, urban homesteaders choose instead to act. By growing their own food and harnessing natural energy, they are planting seeds for the future of our cities.If you would like to harvest your own vegetables, raise city chickens, or convert to solar energy, this practical, hands-on book is full of step-by-step projects that will get you started homesteading immediately, whether you live in an apartment or a house. It is also a guidebook to the larger movement and will point you to the best books and Internet resources on self-sufficiency topics.Projects include: How to grow food on a patio or balcony How to clean your house without toxins How to preserve food How to cook with solar energy How to divert your greywater to your garden How to choose the best homestead for you Written by city dwellers for city dwellers, this illustrated, smartly designed, two-color instruction book proposes a paradigm shift that will improve our lives, our community, and our planet. Authors Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen happily farm in Los Angeles and run the urban homestead blog www.homegrownrevolution.org.

    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.

    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.

    Stretch the resources of your small backyard garden further than ever before, without devoting hundreds of hours to canning! This informative and inspiring guide shows you not only how to construct your own root cellar, but how to best use the earth’s naturally cool, stable temperature as an energy-saving way to store nearly 100 varieties of perishable fruits and vegetables.

    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.

    Sure, it's even simpler than it was before. Of course, you don't have to worry about fertilizer or poor soil ever again because you'll be growing above the ground. However, the best feature is that anyone, anywhere can enjoy a square foot garden - children, adults with limited mobility, and even complete novices can achieve spectacular results. But, let's get back to the ten improvements. You're going to love them: 1. New Location - Move your garden closer to your house by eliminating single-row gardening. Square foot gardens need just 20% of the space of a traditional garden.2. New Direction - Locate your garden on top of existing soil. Forget about pH soil tests, double-digging (who enjoys that?), or those never-ending soil improvements.3. New Soil - The new "Mel's Mix" is the perfect growing mix. We give you the recipe, and best of all, you can even buy the different types of compost needed.4. New Depth - You only need to prepare a SFG box to a depth of 6 inches! It's true - the majority of plants develop just fine when grown at this depth.5. No Fertilizer - The all new SFG does not need any fertilizer - ever! If you start with the perfect soil mix, then you don't need to add fertilizer.6. New Boxes - The new method uses bottomless boxes placed above ground. We show you how to build your own (with step-by-step photos).7. New Aisles - The ideal gardening aisle width is about three to four feet. That makes it even easier to kneel, work, and harvest.8. New Grids - Prominent and permanent grids added to your SFG box help you visualize your planting squares and properly space them for maximum harvest.9. New Seed-Saving Idea - The old-fashioned way advocates planting many seeds and then thinning the extras (that means pulling them up). The new method means planting a pinch - literally two or three seeds - per planting hole.10. Tabletop Gardens - The new boxes are so much smaller and lighter (only 6 inches of soil, remember?), you can add a plywood bottom to make them portable. Of course, that's not all. We've also included simple, easy-to-follow instructions using lots of photos and illustrations. You're going to love it!

    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.

    This book contains detailed information about each vegetable, including its botanical classification, flower structure and means of pollination, required population size, isolation distance, techniques for caging or hand-pollination, and also the proper methods for harvesting, drying, cleaning, and storing the seeds.Seed to Seed is widely acknowledged as the best guide available for home gardeners to learn effective ways to produce and store seeds on a small scale. The author has grown seed crops of every vegetable featured in the book, and has thoroughly researched and tested all of the techniques she recommends for the home garden.This newly updated and greatly expanded Second Edition includes additional information about how to start each vegetable from seed, which has turned the book into a complete growing guide. Local knowledge about seed starting techniques for each vegetable has been shared by expert gardeners from seven regions of the United States-Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast/Gulf Coast, Midwest, Southwest, Central West Coast, and Northwest.

    Compiled from the information in Storey Publishing's landmark series of "Country Wisdom Bulletins," this book is the most thorough and reliable volume of its kind. Organized by general topic including animals, cooking, crafts, gardening, health and well-being, and home, it is further broken down to cover dozens of specifics from "Building Chicken Coops" to "Making Cheese, Butter, and Yogurt" to "Improving Your Soil" to "Restoring Hardwood Floors." Nearly 1,000 black-and-white illustrations and photographs run throughout and fascinating projects and trusted advice crowd every page.

    If you want to know whether it is kosher to plant onions between cabbage plants, this is the place to look.-- Oklahoma TodayFirst published in 1975, this classic companion planting guide has taught a generation of gardeners how to use plants' natural partnerships to produce bigger and better harvests.Over 500,000 in Print!

    Key features include:- use of compatible perennials;- non-invasive planting techniques;- emphasis on biodiversity;- specifically adaptable to local climate, landscape, and soil conditions;- highly productive output of edibles.Now, picture your backyard as one incredibly lush garden, filled with edible flowers, bursting with fruit and berries, and carpeted with scented herbs and tangy salad greens. The visual impact is of Monet's palette, a wash of color, texture, and hue. But this is no still life. The flowers nurture endangered pollinators. Bright-featured songbirds feed on abundant berries and gather twigs for their nests.The plants themselves are grouped in natural communities, where each species plays a role in building soil, deterring pests, storing nutrients, and luring beneficial insects. And finally, you—good ol' homo sapiens—are an integral part of the scene. Your garden tools are resting against a nearby tree, and have a slight patina of rust, because this garden requires so little maintenance. You recline into a hammock to admire your work. You have created a garden paradise.This is no dream, but rather an ecological garden, which takes the principles of permaculture and applies them on a home-scale. There is nothing technical, intrusive, secretive, or expensive about this form of gardening. All that is required is some botanical knowledge (which is in this book) and a mindset that defines a backyard paradise as something other than a carpet of grass fed by MiracleGro.

    This is the original book compilation of Foxfire material which introduces Aunt Arie and her contemporaries and includes log cabin building, hog dressing, snake lore, mountain crafts and food, and "other affairs of plain living."