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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Gehring's books on country living have sold more than 500,000 copies. In this book, Gehring offers a guide to country living 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: Raise chickens Make candles Churn butter Grow vegetables Make jams and jellies Dry herbs Ferment vegetables Make cheese And more! Good Living Guide to Country Skills combines the know-how of Back to Basics with the charm of The Farmer's Almanac. Packaged in an attractive hardcover format and with a price that's hard to beat, this is the perfect gift for anyone interested in a more self-sufficient, greener, country lifestyle.

With the rapid depletion of our planet's natural resources, we would all like to live a more self-sufficient lifestyle. But in the midst of an economic crisis, it's just as important to save money as it is to go green. As Gehring shows in this thorough but concise guide, being kind to Mother Earth can also mean being kind to your bank account It doesn't matter where your homestead is located--farm, suburb, or even city. Wherever you live, "The Homesteading Handbook" can help you:
- Plan, plant, and harvest your own organic home garden.
- Enjoy fruits and vegetables year-round by canning, drying, and freezing.
- Build alternate energy devices by hand, such as solar panels or geothermal heat pumps.
- Differentiate between an edible puffball mushroom and a poisonous amanita.
- Prepare butternut squash soup using ingredients from your own garden.
- Conserve water by making a rain barrel or installing an irrigation system.
- Have fun and save cash by handcrafting items such as soap, potpourri, and paper.
Experience the satisfaction that comes with self-sufficiency, as well as the assurance that you have done your part to help keep our planet green. "The Homesteading Handbook" is your roadmap to living in harmony with the land.

Packed with step-by-step instructions, useful tips, time-honored wisdom, and both illustrations and photographs, this might just be the most comprehensive guide to back to basics living ever published. Fans of "Back to Basics," "Homesteading," and "Self-Sufficiency" have been asking for a one-stop resource for all the subjects covered in that successful series. In response, Gehring has compiled a massive, beautifully presented, single volume that covers canning and preserving, keeping chickens, fermenting, soap-making, how to generate your own energy, how to build a log cabin, natural medicine, cheese-making, maple sugaring, farm mechanics, and much, much more.

Whether you own one hundred acres or rent a studio apartment in the city, this book has plenty of ideas to inspire you. Learn how to build a log cabin or how to craft handmade paper; find out how to install a solar panel on your roof or brew your own tea from dried herbs; Cure a ham, bake a loaf of bread, or brew your own beer. This book has something for everyone.