This compact guide provides advice, tips, and step-by-step instructions for hundreds of projects, offering the entire family the tools they need to make the shift toward self-sufficient living. Readers will learn to dip candles, bake bread, make maple syrup, start a vineyard, and much more. With special features for young homesteaders, this is an essential family guide to self-sufficient living.

- Bake Pies, Cakes, and Bread

- Grow Vegetables yy Raise Chickens

- Keep Bees

- Preserve Your Harvest

- Cure Meats

- Build a Treehouse

- Spin Wool

- Make a Toboggan

- And Much More

From Well-Being Rituals for the Mind, Body, and Spirit to Cooking with Herbs and Spices—Everything You Need to Know About Natural Remedies Packed with step-by-step instructions to make your own herbal remedies, simple recipes for cooking with herbs and spices, and both illustrations and photographs, this might be the most comprehensive guide to natural remedies ever published. Here readers can learn about alternative medicine and homeopathic approaches, aromatherapy and essential oils, acupuncture and massage, and much, much more.  Healing Foods & Beverages Cooking with Herbs & Spices  Medicinal Plants  Daily Teas & Edible Greens  Creating an Herbal Apothecary  Natural Healing for Common Ailments  Breathing Techniques  Yoga & Exercise  Meditation & Mindfulness  Cosmetic Remedies  Everyday Treatments for Women & Children

Grow your own vegetables and herbs, indoors in containers or outside in a garden. Raise chickens or goats. Build a beehive. Make your own nontoxic cleaning sprays. And more! Gehring's books on country living have sold more than 500,000 copies. In this book, she offers a guide to homesteading skills that is as charming as it is practical. Full of sweet illustrations and gorgeous photographs, step-by-step instructions for essential skills such as building a chicken coop are interspersed with country lore and old-fashioned tips and tricks. Readers will learn how to: Container garden Raise chickens Churn butter Grow vegetables Can tomatoes Brew kombucha Make shampoo Repel garden pests Milk a goat Improve garden soil Make strawberry-rhubarb jelly Ferment vegetables Make yogurt Sprout grains And more! The Essential Guide to Self-Sufficient Living combines the know-how of Back to Basics with the charm of The Farmer's Almanac. This is the perfect gift for anyone interested in a more self-sufficient, greener, country lifestyle.

Whether you want to live off the grid as part of the modern back to nature movement, or simply learn new skills that will make your home more comfortable and your garden grow, this companion to the bestseller Back to Basics, is for you! Who doesn't want to shrink their carbon footprint, save money, and eat homegrown food whenever possible? Even readers who are very much on the grid will embrace this large, fully illustrated guide on the basics of living the good, clean life. It's written with country lovers in mind-even those who currently live in the city. Whether you live in the city, the suburbs, or in the wide-open spaces, there is plenty you can do to improve your life from a green perspective: Start container gardening. With a few plants, fresh tomato sauce is a real option with your own homegrown fresh tomatoes Reduce electricity use by eating dinner by candlelight (using homemade candles, of course) Learn to use rainwater to augment water supplies Make your own soap and hand lotion Consider keeping chickens for the eggs From what to eat, to supporting sustainable restaurants, to avoiding dry cleaning, this book offers information on anything a homesteader needs-and more.

Anyone who wants to learn basic living skills--the kind employed by our forefathers--and adapt them for a better life in the twenty-first century need look no further than this eminently useful, full-color guide. Countless readers have turned to "Back to Basics" for inspiration and instruction, escaping to an era before power saws and fast food restaurants and rediscovering the pleasures and challenges of a healthier, greener, and more self-sufficient lifestyle.
Now newly updated, the hundreds of projects, step-by-step sequences, photographs, charts, and illustrations in "Back to Basics" will help you dye your own wool with plant pigments, graft trees, raise chickens, craft a hutch table with hand tools, and make treats such as blueberry peach jam and cheddar cheese. The truly ambitious will find instructions on how to build a log cabin or an adobe brick homestead. More than just practical advice, this is also a book for dreamers--even if you live in a city apartment you will find your imagination sparked, and there's no reason why you can't, for example, make a loom and weave a rag rug. Complete with tips for old-fashioned fun (square dancing calls, homemade toys, and kayaking tips), this may be the most thorough book on voluntary simplicity available.

Who doesn't want to shrink their carbon footprint, save money, and eat homegrown food whenever possible? Even readers who are very much "on" the grid will embrace this large, fully-illustrated guide on the basics of living the good, clean life. It's written with country lovers in mind--even those who currently live in the city.
Whether you live in the city, the suburbs, or even the wilderness, there is plenty you can do to improve your life from a green perspective. Got sunlight? Start container gardening. With a few plants, fresh tomatoes, which then become canned tomato sauce, are a real option. Reduce electricity use by eating dinner by candlelight (using homemade candles, of course). Learn to use rainwater to augment water supplies. Make your own soap and hand lotion. Consider keeping chickens for the eggs. From what to eat to supporting sustainable restaurants to avoiding dry cleaning, this book offers information on anything a homesteader needs--and more.

Over 200,000 copies sold-fully updated! Dye your own wool, raise chickens, make your own cheddar cheese, build a log cabin, and much much more. Anyone who wants to learn basic living skills-the kind employed by our forefathers-and adapt them for a better life in the twenty-first century need look no further than this eminently useful, full-color guide. Countless readers have turned to Back to Basics for inspiration and instruction, escaping to an era before power saws and fast-food restaurants and rediscovering the pleasures and challenges of a healthier, greener, and more self-sufficient lifestyle. Now newly updated, the hundreds of projects, step-by-step sequences, photographs, charts, and illustrations in Back to Basics will help you dye your own wool with plant pigments, graft trees, raise chickens, craft a hutch table with hand tools, and make treats such as blueberry peach jam and cheddar cheese. The truly ambitious will find instructions on how to build a log cabin or an adobe brick homestead. More than just practical advice, this is also a book for dreamers-even if you live in a city apartment, you will find your imagination sparked, and there's no reason why you can't, for example, make a loom and weave a rag rug. Complete with tips for old-fashioned fun (square dancing calls, homemade toys, and kayaking tips), this may be the most thorough book on voluntary simplicity available.