Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: self-sufficiency

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  The Backyard Homestead

  Produce All the Food You Need on Just a Quarter Acre!

  by Carleen Madigan

  Home-produced food almost always begins in the vegetable garden. So, too, begins "The Backyard Homestead". Planning charts and a thorough vegetable-by-vegetable growing guide are accompanied by simple techniques for canning, drying, and freezing the garden's bounty. The plant section continues with the hows, whens, and wheres of growing fruits, herbs, and nuts. Hardworking food growers will be delighted to reward... (more)
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  Radical Homemakers

  Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture

  by Shannon Hayes

  Mother Nature has shown her hand. Faced with climate change, dwindling resources, and species extinctions, most Americans understand the fundamental steps necessary to solve our global crises-drive less, consume less, increase self-reliance, buy locally, eat locally, rebuild our local communities. In essence, the great work we face requires rekindling the home fires. Radical Homemakers is about men and women... (more)
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  Root Cellaring

  Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables

  by Mike Bubel, Nancy Bubel

  Anyone can learn to store fruits and vegetables safely and naturally with a cool, dark space (even a closet!) and the step-by-step advice in this book.
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  Mini Farming

  Self Sufficiency on a 1/4 Acre

  by Brett L. Markham

  Start a mini farm on a quarter acre or less and provide 85 percent of the food for a family of four—and earn an income. Mini Farming describes a holistic approach to small-area farming that will show you how to produce 85 percent of an average family’s food on just a quarter acre—and earn $10,000 in cash annually while spending less than half the time that an ordinary job would require. Even if you have... (more)
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  Five Acres and Independence

  A Handbook for Small Farm Management

  by M. G. Kains

  Classic of the back-to-the-land movement is packed with solid, timeless information and will teach new converts how to make their land self-sufficient. Appendices. 95 figures.
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  The Encyclopedia of Country Living

  An Old Fashioned Recipe Book

  by Carla Emery

  Initially self-published 20 years ago, The Encyclopedia of Country Living has become the trusted guidebook to sustainable, self-sufficient living. Filled with memorable anecdotes, crucial advice, and a generous helping of good humor, this compendium provides detailed information about food production — growing, processing, cooking, and preserving — together with hundreds of illustrations and recipes. With... (more)
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  Storey's Basic Country Skills

  A Practical Guide to Self-Reliance

  by Deborah Burns, M. John Storey

  This is the book for anyone who wants to become more self-reliant, from suburbanites with 1/4 of an acre to country homesteaders with several. The information is easily understood and readily applicable. More than 150 of Storey's expert authors in gardening, building, animal raising, and homesteading share their specialized knowledge and experience in this ultimate guide to living a more independent, ... (more)
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  You Can Farm

  The Entrepreneur's Guide to Start & Succeed in a Farming Enterprise

  by Joel Salatin

  Have you ever desired, deep within your soul, to make a comfortable full-time living from a farming enterprise? Too often people dare not even vocalize this desire because it seems absurd. It's like thinking the unthinkable. After all, the farm population is dwindling. It takes too much capital to start. The pay is too low. The working conditions are dusty, smelly and noisy: not the place to raise a family. This... (more)
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  Four-Season Harvest

  Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long

  by Eliot Coleman, Kathy Bary, Barbara Damrosch

  If you love the joys of eating home-garden vegetables but always thought those joys had to stop at the end of summer, this book is for you. Eliot Coleman introduces the surprising fact that most of the United States has more winter sunshine than the south of France. He shows how North American gardeners can successfully use that sun to raise a wide variety of traditional winter vegetables in backyard cold frames... (more)
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  Seed to Seed

  Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners

  by Ernest Ashworth, Suzanne Ashworth, Kent Whealy

  Seed to Seed is a complete seed-saving guide that describes specific techniques for saving the seeds of 160 different vegetables. This book contains detailed information about each vegetable, including its botanical classification, flower structure and means of pollination, required population size, isolation distance, techniques for caging or hand-pollination, and also the proper methods for harvesting, drying,... (more)
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  Just in Case

  by Kathy Harrison

  When the power fails, prepared families settle in, stay warm, and eat well. With careful planning, organization, and a detailed assessment of the needs of each family member, it is possible for every household to survive at least several days with no outside services. A sensible home system will take over the work of providing warmth, shelter, and nutrition. Author Kathy Harrison guides readers through the... (more)
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  Living the Good Life: How One Family Changed Their World from Their Own Backyard

  by Linda Cockburn

  Inspiring and challenging, this chronicle of a unique household experiment takes readers inside one family’s environmental test. Already mindful of the impact human activity has on the environment, the author and her family decided to take a further step towards thoughtful living by aiming for complete domestic sustainability. For six months, the Cockburns grew, bartered for, and made everything they ate; used... (more)
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  Worms Eat My Garbage : How to Set Up & Maintain a Worm Composting System

  by Mary Appelhof

  The definitive guide to vermicomposting-a process using redworms to recycle food waste into nutrient-rich food for plants. Newly revised and updated, this 162 page manual provides complete illustrated instructions on setting up and maintaining small-scale worm composting systems. Topics include different bins, what kind of worms to use, sex life of a worm, preparing worm beddings, how to meet the needs of... (more)
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  Barnyard in Your Backyard: A Beginner's Guide to Raising Chickens, Ducks, Geese, Rabbits, Goats, Sheep, and Cows

  by Gail Damerow

  When is the right time to shear a sheep? Is there a market for manure? What time of day is best to collect eggs? What is the correct way to milk a goat? What does a duck eat? Can a cow and a sheep share the same pasture? Which types of rabbits are easiest to raise? The perfect book for anyone who has ever dreamed of having that little place in the country, Barnyard in Your Backyard offers tried-and-true,... (more)
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  New Complete Self-sufficiency

  by John Seymour

  Make the break, realise the dream and start living 'The Good Life!' Packed with comprehensive information on all the practicals, from ploughing fields to milking cows, as well as new information on how to create an urban organic garden and harness natural energy. This new and revised full-colour edition of the illustrated classic is an engrossing read and a wonderful handbook for realists and dreamers alike.
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  Chicken Tractor: The Permaculture Guide to Happy Hens and Healthy Soil

  by Andy Lee, Pat Foreman

  A chicken tractor is a bottomless, portable pen that fits over your garden beds. Just set it wherever you need help in your garden. The chickens peck and scratch the soil to clean your beds, eat pest bugs and weed seeds. Best of all, they provide eggs and meat with that old-fashioned flavor. Chicken tractors have helped thousands of gardeners have better gardens and taken chickens out of factory farms and put them... (more)
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  The American Boy's Handy Book

  by Daniel Carter Beard

  First published in 1882, this is a wealth of projects and games, with practical directions on how to make them, by one of the founders of the Boy Scouts of America. The ultimate pre-TV, anti-couch potato activity book, it answers the question, "What's there to do?"
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  A Reasonable Life: Toward a Simpler, Secure, More Humane Existence

  by Ferenc Máté

  "If 'in adversity is hidden opportunity' then lurking around the corner must be the Mother of All Great Chances." With our environment on its knees, our great myths and cities crumbling, Ferenc Mate argues in this passionate, darkly funny book that now is the time to begin our lives anew, on a more human scale. With our lust for mechanized "progress" we have damaged and endangered not only our planet but also our... (more)
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  The Self-sufficient Life and How to Live It

  by John Seymour, Will Sutherland

  The Self Sufficient Life and How to Live It is the only book that teaches all the skills needed to live independently in harmony with the land harnessing natural forms of energy, raising crops and keeping livestock, preserving foodstuffs, making beer and wine, basketry, carpentry, weaving, and much more. This new edition includes 150 new full color illustrations and a special section in which John Seymour the... (more)
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  Seed Sowing and Saving

  Step-by-Step Techniques for Collecting and Growing More Than 100 Vegetables, Flowers, and Herbs

  by Carole B. Turner

  Here are step-by-step techniques for getting and growing free plants by saving seeds from more than 100 vegetables, herbs, and flowers. The book familiarizes readers with basic seed collecting and storing. Instruction is given on how to save seeds, sowing techniques, and the care and maintenance of seedlings. Over 300 two-color illustrations.