Book list:
Recipes, gardening, and harvest
- The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery (has everything from basic recipes to how to make soap or how to process food for home use, livestock care or how to profit from what skills you acquire from living in a basic way but this book is mostly a recipe and helpful hints/tips)
- Smoking Salmon & Trout plus Canning, Freezing, Pickling & More by Jack Whelan. I like the spiral binding far more than standard. This book it the most thorough on the subject I've found.
- Backyard Homestead produce all the food you need on a quarter acre! by Carleen Madigan If you don't own land but you rent or own a little bit, this book can help you organize to maximize what you yield from it. (This book is best for the ambitious home gardener and even includes some recipes this is highly recommended to someone who wants their home to reflect the way homes once were but without necessarily having to give up city life)
Inspiration for the person wanting more than the rat race
- On the Farm by Jimmy Doherty. It is his journey through getting a defunct farm, restoring it and making it into a farm of Heritage livestock and an organic organism again. This is mostly an inspiring story and not a step by step of how best to deal with all lays of the land in any specific way. More of a one man's journey kind of story.
Living off the land from what it gives freely
- Native American Ethnobotany by Daniel Moerman This book is really intensive study.
- Natural Dyes and Home Dyeing by Rita Adrosko This contains recipes to yield natural dyes, very plain speaking.
- Basic Butchering of Livestock & Game by John J. Mettler JR. DVM , If you're disgusted by the meat industry and don't want factory animals and wish them to have quality lives with quality food then a book on how you plan on getting them to the table could also be in order. The closer you are to your food, the better it is. If it is organic produce shipped from China chances are it is doing a lot more harm than good.
- Edible Wild Plants by Thomas Elias & Peter Dykeman This is organized by season which makes the search a bit simpler.
- Peterson Field Guides Edible Wild Plants Eastern and Central North America by Lee Allen Peterson
- Food Plants of Coastal First Peoples (for folks on the Western side) by Nancy J. Turner
- Tom Brown's Field Guide to living with the Earth This is written in a way that at times feels heavy handed although I believe he is genuine. I think it is my bitterness that I may be imposing on his writing rather than him. The information is accurate and thoughtful. This is the most philosophical of the books mentioned in this entire list.
Building shelter
- Cordwood Building the State of the Art by Rob Roy - If you have a chunk of land a tree equals a house. How to make a home out of what most people use for firewood.
Lost skills, tools, and arts
- A Museum of Early American Tools by Eric Sloane The most thorough and especially for its small size of early American tools and more importantly how they were used, crafted and replaced - other books on the subject leave all that out. The illustrations are lovely.
- Back To Basics a Complete Guide To Traditional Skills by Abigail Gehring This book goes into good detail of the how to for a project, skill or an art. From felling trees, making water pump itself, spinning wool or hooking a rug. The book by the same people about Homesteading however is a let down. With only a very brief overview of what this book seems to be able to cover in a more concise way and with further breadth of topics.
- Gene Logsdon's Practical Skills This is a favorite, the illustrations are beautiful;simple and quite easy to understand. The projects even the more complex ones seem really obtainable through his gracefulness.
No comments:
Post a Comment