The Back to Basics Handbook : : a Guide to Buying and Working Land, Raising Livestock, Enjoying Your Harvest, Household Skills and Crafts, and More

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	640 Ge	4-week checkout	Due 05-09-2024

Part 1: Land: Buying It-Building On It -- Buying country property -- Planning your home -- Preparing the site -- Converting trees into lumber -- Building a log cabin -- Building a stone house -- Raising a barn -- Developing a water supply -- Sanitation -- Stone walls -- Fences -- Part 2: Energy From Wood, Water, Wind, And Sun -- Making your house energy efficient -- Wood as a fuel -- Waterpower -- Wind power -- Solar energy -- Part 3: Raising Your Own Vegetables, Fruit, And Livestock -- Kitchen garden -- Gardening in limited space -- Fruits and nuts -- Pest control -- Grains and grasses -- Beekeeping -- Fish farming -- Raising livestock -- Part 4: Enjoying Your Harvest The Year Round -- Preserving produce -- Preserving meat and fish -- Making your own dairy products -- Maple sugaring -- Baking bread -- Part 5: Skills And Crafts For House And Homestead -- Natural dyes -- Spinning -- Tanning and leatherwork -- Ancient science of herbal medicine -- Soap making -- Candle making -- Basketry.
Product Description: Rediscover the pleasures and challenges of a healthier, greener, and more self-sufficient lifestyle. 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. With hundreds of projects, step-by-step sequences, photographs, charts, and illustrations, The Back to Basics Handbook 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 is the ultimate concise guide to voluntary simplicity. 500 color illustrations.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

organic submitted by Jada Lee on July 22, 2015, 4:05am Tons of ideas on basic living. Interesting

Back To The Land submitted by BookNerd on June 26, 2017, 10:20pm Things people used to learn just by hanging out at a relative's farm are laid out in this book in a way that you can follow easily. Bootstrap your way to homesteading skills that are useful whether or not you actually farm your own land.

Much of the information is useful in urban areas if you want to manage your own food supply and make good use of local farm products even when they're not in season.