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OT: Homesteading Books/ Resources?
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So I am reading, ” The Worst Hard Time” about the dust bowl and the depression, and it has me thinking that we should really depend less on the grocery store and move up our plans to move into the country. We have the land, but I need to know about building, growing food, and caring for lose food producing animals! Anyone have any book or website recommendations or advice?
I’m almost afraid to mention it but I am currently reading Surviving Off Off-Grid for the 4th time. It’s the only book I own (out of over 16,000) that I’ve read more than twice besides my Bible. I bought the Kindle version before the book was released, bought the book on it’s release date and have since bought another one. It’s very much a philosophy/history book with how-to built in. Very profound…but not easy to take…although he’s right. You’ll either love it or hate it…or both.
Other than that there are a ton of those types of books out there from general homesteading to specific topics. Most of,them have similar things in them. Just search “homesteading books” on Amazon. Also there are good magazines out right now. Mother Earth News is a favorite. I don’t like their worldview but I don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Grit is another one. Just doing google searches on a topic will land you on many many sites.
If I could take just one book with me, I would take An Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery. Now, there are others that help to expand more minutely on the topics she covers, but everything absolutely necessary is there, IMO.
Raising and butchering animals, saving seed, growing requirements, storing foods, making anything you need yourself, rendering fats, the list goes on and on. I have so many tabs in that book, it’s ridiculous.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Encyclopedia-Country-Living-Fashioned/dp/0912365951
Try to get it at the library and you’ll see it’s value. I carry the principles of NT in head, so I can adjust any of the changes to preservation and fermentation (i.e. more vinegar and sugar starting in late the 1800’s) that are reflected in some recipes.
I have others I could suggest, but I need to go. After G-D and the Bible, this is my favorite topic, with homeschooling after that!
I’ll come back and give some more later.
Tip I learned this weekend, BTW which kind of a DUh moment: in your broth, add in your egg shells. They are edible for us, too and add a lot of calcium to the broth-no need to buy supplements!
Thank you, ladies! I have to admit that I am trying to avoid sounding like a paranoid….and that is why the term ‘homesteading’ is more appealing to me than things like ‘survivalist’ or ‘prepper’! We just feel that life should be a lot more simple and we want our kids to know where and how to procure what they need to survive. What has happened before could happen again…at least theoretically. And outside of their spiritual education, I can’t imagine any more useful branch of study than the knowledge of the world around them and how to live in it.
We have been feeling this need to get back to basics for a while, though, and now that it is about time for us to build in the country, I realize that we are very citified! I need, “Agriculture for Dummies”! I am two generations (and a lot of missed learning opportunities) out from my rancher and farmer grandparents.
I will definitely check out both books mentioned and keep on searching online. Anyone else have a favorite to mention?
I just joined a group on fb called “little house living” or http://www.littlehouseliving.com and I an really liking the things on there. Maybe check it out.
This is where we are too! I have no desire to be completly off the grid, I like my internet 🙂 but we want to live a “simpler” (ha) life. I’m by no means a prepper, if there is some sort of fall out I’m totally ok with going to be with The Lord, but being able to identify herbs and their medicinal uses would be awesome. My husband has a landscape design/installation business, and works at local garden center. He has all the plant knowledge and identification skills we just need to work on our garden skills.
In addition to Carla Emery’s book, which is fabulous, I totally forgot about another favorite, I guess because when book questions come up, I automatically go to my library shelves. I have a few books that do not leave my possession. Carla Emery’s is one. Readers Digest Back to Basics: How to Learn and Enjoy Traditional American Skills is another. I got mine at a library sale a few years ago for $1. My copyright is 1983. It’s worth checking your library for. The Foxfire books are treasures as well. We have my late fil’s set that I refused to put in the library. Thankfully I found a set at a library sale for 50 cents each.
Other titles I have…
Country Wisdom & Know-How by Storey Books
The Backyard Homestead by Carleen Madigan
There’s a good one by John Seymour but it’s checked out…titled Self-Sufficiency maybe?
Joel Salatin’s books are informative and encouraging
Those are some general titles.
Look at the website Keeping a Family Cow dot com. There are sections on there for every homesteading question you could have. Specific books we have are:
Nourishing Traditions
Root Cellaring
Four-Season Harvest
Beekeeping
Living with Chickens
Born-Again Dirt
Preserving the Harvest
The GNOWFGLINS ebooks – Fundamentals, Fundamentals II, Cultured Dairy, Lacto-Fermentation, Dehydrating
I also just ordered a book on cooking on a wood stove.
I don’t consider myself a “prepper.” God is in control of all things. I do consider myself prudent. I grieve at the loss of basic skills that my children have never experienced. We are seeking to revive those skills and this way of life in our family.
I, too don’t consider myself a “prepper” in the modern sense of the word.
However, it is prudent to due what you can to be prepared. To think something won’t go wrong with either a war, revolution, energy issues, or monetary systems is to ignore history and is kind of arrogant. If you can be prepared, like our ancestors were who had life-skills, then not only can you help your own family, but you’ll be a blessing to others.
The “preppers” who store up allthese cans and such will eventually run out if we have a long-term downturn. Then what will they hve if they never invested in learning skills to live without conveniences?
We are still not where we want to be in terms of skills – every year we try to learn new ones – but we want to pass on these skills so our cihldren can live and maybe even thrive, without being dependant on anyone or anything other G-D (with interdependence existing with close friends and family).
My maternal grandmother was a young girl in the 30’s and she truly doens’t remember being negatively affected the The Depression. Even though her dad had lost his store, they had a family cow, garden, and chickens for laying and meat. I truly believe that is why and they did not live on a huge plot of land, but her dad had not given up on the old ways (and he only had one working arm-as he had lost the other in a farming accident as a child). Same for my paternal grandmother-they were poor before the Depression; they just kept planting, hunting, preserving, and living the way they always had for generations in the north Georgia mtns.
Thank you for the wonderful ideas and book recs, ladies. We are really excited that next year will be a learning time for us on those crucial life skills that we somehow missed in our public school educations! Passing that experiential knowledge to our kids is so important to us right now.
Thankfully we have some great mentors in our church and homeschooling community to help out (my Dallas bred hubby learning to hunt is going to be fun to watch :-). And I am also hoping that this will be motivation to blog about our learning curve so others can learn from our experiences and mishaps! We are starting from a ground zero knowledge base, so it’s going to be an adventure. Any and all wisdom, advice, and prayers welcome.
Oh, and I hope I didn’t offend by using the term prepper. I am still kind of learning the terminology of all this. And I am certainly not against storing some things for a rainy day! I meant what Rachel and Robin said – only they said it better :-). I just don’t want to be so industrialized that we are clueless about how to take care of ourselves! Not prepping out of fear, but using God’s wisdom to supply for our needs and hopefully to have the abundance to share with others.
SOme other books:
Foraging and Feasting: A Field Guide and Wild Food Cookbook by Dina Falconi. (a beautiful book as well as a useful one. Pricey, but worth it). BotanicalArtsPress.com
Stocking Up III
Keeping a Family Cow – Joann Grohman
The Small-Scale Poultry Flock by Harvey Ussery
also his site: http://www.themodernhomestead.us/
The HOlistic Orchard – Micheal Phillips
Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning
Rosemary Gladstar Herbal remedy books
The Organic Gardener’s Handbook of NAtural Insect and Disease COntrol
Worms Eat My Garbage – MAry Appelhof
Let it Rot!
Small Scale Grain Raising – Gene Logsdon
Eliot COleman books
NAtural Goat Care – Pat Coleby
Gail Damerow chicken books
Some interesting ones I saw for future perusal:
Natural Beekeeping – Ross Conrad
Permaculture – Sepp Holzer
The Organic Grain Grower: Small-Scale, Holistic Grain Production for the Home and Market Producer – Jack Lazor
ONe area I have been particularly interested in is native plants: growing those that are uniquely native to my area and growing them instead of other, maybe more common, non-native crops. There’s less disease and upkeep. They are successful when weather gets weird. This past year, when we had a very strange summer, the best ones that performed were our Cherokee tomatoes, candy roaster squash, and muscadines and other native plants, including flowers.
For ex: sorghum. My grandma grew it on their farm for syrup production, but it can also be used as a chicken feed.
Just some thoughts…
Ok…you ladies know I love research and I am going to do my homework on all these great resources – BUT…
We are looking at building a ‘barndominium’ on 10 acres that adjoins 50 acres of family land. We decided that this is the best route to get out there living mortgage free fairly soon, and if we want to build more later, we can. We have access to city water, but are thinking of having a water well dug and using some rainwater collection for gardening. Do any of you use geothermal power or solar power?
Do you use well water and, if so, was it a huge expense to have the well done?
And if you had to tell someone what to concentrate on in the first year, what would it be? What I mean is, is there a priority level as far as growing food, having chickens or livestock, etc? After we actually get our housing completed and moved into, what is the most important thing to learn first?
I think gardening and perserving would be the first skill I would want – maybe some chickens. If I can feed my family, then I wouldn’t mind taking on another thing until I had the hang of it, then another, then another. Too much, too soon and it can overwhelm you to the point of being counter-productive.
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