Devotees bought and talked about his excellent books, including Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades, and Gardening When It Counts, and got their hands dirty mixing up Solomon’s Gold.  The success of others’ gardens and that of his own brought him joy.

There was just one problem: Steve’s health was declining, and so was his wife’s.  His teeth were falling out, he had no energy, and his wife suffered from brittle nails and hair loss.  What could be lacking in their diet, he wondered?  Adding more meat and other proteins helped, but not enough.  Steve was certain of one thing: his vegetables were the best that could be found.  After all, he adhered to the Gardening Patriarchy’s Dogma, which assured him that he was doing everything right and that his produce was far superior to any that could be bought from a grocery store.

Talking with many others who had relied primarily on their own produce revealed that he was not alone: few liked to admit it at first, but when pressed, they shared the same ailments: loose teeth, low energy, and brittle hair and nails.

Do Organic Gardeners Have it Wrong?

Steve began to wonder if some of the knowledge he and other organic gardeners had clung to might have some missing pieces.

The sacred teachings went something like this: No chemicals allowed, ever.  Avoid external inputs.  Add lots and lots of compost.  Repeat.  The result was supposed to be—must be!—the most nutritious tomatoes and bumper crops of zucchini.  And to be sure, Steve stuck to the rules with devotion.  A rebel at heart, he liked to raise eyebrows a little with some slightly unorthodox suggestions. But he didn’t think to question the fundamentals.

Then Steve went to Fiji for a well-deserved vacation.

The “Eureka” Moment

A curious thing happened while in Fiji: his health improved.  His wife’s health improved.  Steve began to seriously investigate what could be contributing to this quite sudden and dramatic turn-around, and he naturally looked to his food first.  They were eating a diet very similar to the one they enjoyed at home, with a few exotic additions of fish and fruit.  He drove an hour to the hub of agricultural production in that area and questioned the workers.  Expecting to hear something that would enforce the doctrine of organic gardening to which he was devoted, he was surprised to learn that they sprayed pesticides liberally, added no fertilizers of any kind (organic or chemical), and used no compost or manure at all.  Yet, during the best growing season, the produce was the most delicious they’d ever eaten and had given their health an undeniable boost.

Harkening back to his university days, Steve recalled some inspiring geological classes, and a light bulb went off in his head: it was minerals.  Specifically, the minerals derived from ultrabasic igneous rock.  The volcanoes of the past had blessed the area with soils rich in minerals that could be described as “magical.”

Steve, being a successful author already, knew that most gardeners don’t want to read about magic.  Instead, he wrote about science.  (The same thing, really, but I digress). He researched, abandoned some tightly-held organic gardening beliefs, and began to write.  His work was greatly enhanced by the contributions of his co-author, Erica Reinheimer.

And that is how the gardening world came to have The Intelligent Gardener, a book rich in chemistry, math, and many other things that I avoid as much as mosquitoes.

Somehow, Steve manages to present chemistry and math in a digestible manner, even to a person like me. I picked up on a lot more than I expected, and assumed some of the rebellious tone of the book, which I guess accounts for my careless abandonment of grammar rules in the following bullet points:

Key Takeaways From The Intelligent Gardener

• Soil nutrition matters and even our very own precious gardens are probably not yielding nutrient-dense food.
• The entire food chain suffers from infertility of soil.
• Compost doesn’t fix everything if it is poor compost made from mineral-deficient material.
• Y’all need a REAL soil sample.
• Y’all need to balance your soil nutrients, like, super precise.
• There is a garden patriarchy and they don’t like to be challenged.
• Steve had some loose teeth, went on vacation, and had a revelation.
• The revelation was this: soil fertility begins with proper soil mineralization.

Start Here

You need a soil sample.  A good one.  I’m not talking about your standard pH sample or even one that might show you the N-P-K of your soil, but a sample examined by extremely smart people in extremely white lab coats in a land far away.  If you are like me, and you either slept through high school chemistry or spent that hour reading The Lord of the Rings, you may also want to hire a professional analyst to help you interpret the results.  Both the sample and the analyst are very affordable, I promise.

“Can’t I just buy a bag of minerals and toss it in the soil and save myself the trouble of reading the book?”, you may be asking.  Well, sure.  But you’ll miss out on Steve’s dry humor, and more importantly, you will run the risk of throwing the mineral balance of your soil so far off that it takes several gardening seasons to correct it.

Soil Health Begins with Minerals

You see, Steve asserts that properly mineralizing your soil is the most important step you can take toward growing bumper crops of nutrient-dense food.  It is more important than adding compost, mulching, or even working in horrifically stinky loads of biochar.  Bring the soil minerals into proper balance, he says, and everything else will follow suit.

“If first you bring the minerals into balance, then the whole soil ecology, all the microlife—the worms, nematodes, algae, amoeba, fungi, bacteria, both helpful and harmful—all those living things come into a healthy balance too.”

That’s a strong statement to make, but he backs it up admirably, comparing soil health to that of the human body.

If you build it, they will come.

Why Do the Books Ignore Minerals?

Solomon explains how the organic gardening movement began to gain steam in the 40s and 50s.  The world was recovering from war, which had drastically changed the way that farmers and gardeners grew food.  Victory gardens sprang up everywhere, doused in chemical fertilizers and tended by people with little to no previous gardening experience.  Farmers were advised (and in some cases, bullied) by governments to adopt practices that seemed miraculous, but which destroyed the soil.

Those who recognized the damage began to write books encouraging us all to return to the “old ways.” Unfortunately, the entire food chain and ecosystem had suffered in ways that were not immediately obvious, and it wasn’t really possible to return to the old ways.  For one thing, we no longer had the abundance of animals we’d used previous to the World Wars.  Those animals we did have were not fed the same quality of feed, thus their manure lacked vital minerals and nutrients.

Solomon pays homage to William Albrecht and his book Soil Fertility and Animal Health, a thorough and dense treatise calling for a more scientific approach to organic gardening.  He was ignored at best and silenced at worst.  Money, you know.  Fortunately for us, this book can be found in free PDF format online.

Maybe it’s Time to Break Some Rules

One idea that I was surprised to see in The Intelligent Gardener is that we need not vilify those who seek out soil amendments from distant places.  Yes, it takes some fossil fuels to get them to you.  But the benefits far outweigh the risks.  What if we view the planet as one large organism?  The people on it as one community, with some striving to improve a broken food system? This helped me to become comfortable with the idea of ordering seaweed from a far-off ocean, or rock dust from a volcano bed hundreds of miles away.

Another hill Solomon is willing to die on is that some chemicals are misunderstood and ought to be considered reasonable additions to the organic garden.

We are encouraged to be more thoughtful about our compost—garbage in, garbage out.  You cannot add nutrition to a garden with compost that came from deficient materials.  Perhaps bringing some external inputs is the boost your beloved pile needs.

Above all, be willing to examine some long-held beliefs about organic gardening that might not serve you as well as you would like.

Will you be adding The Intelligent Gardener to your homestead reading list?  I hope so.  Here’s to good health!

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Joel Salatin has fourteen books under his belt and all of them are worth reading.  Joel owns and operates Polyface Farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. His farm provides food for 6,000 families and 50 restaurants in their region.  Joel is adamant about humanely raised livestock and holistic farm practices in which each aspect works synergistically with every other aspect.  I have included two of his books on this list. The first, You Can Farm: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Start and Succeed in a Farming Enterprise is an excellent book for those in the beginning stages of their homesteading journey, as it shows you how to “assess its assets and liabilities; its fantasies and realities.”  While recommended to those starting out, it is also an excellent resource for those who have been homesteading for a while but find themselves stumped on a project or who want to incorporate a more holistic farming practice.

The second Joel Salatin book on this list is Polyface Micro: Success With Livestock on a Homestead Scale.  Many homesteaders find themselves waiting to incorporate livestock until they can afford a large tract of land.  This book explains why that is not necessary.  Salatin adapts many of his Polyface practices for the small-scale homesteader, showing how to increase production and keep your animals healthy.  A bonus – this book walks you through how to keep your small-scale livestock system odor-free.

Ben Haitman is the author of the third book on our list: The Lean Micro Farm: How to Get Small, Embrace Local, Live Better, and Work Less.  In a time where everyone seems to be clamoring for more, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking bigger is better.  Haitman explains not only the reasons for scaling down your farm but also provides detailed, step-by-step instructions on how you can turn a tiny piece of land into a prolific producer and turn a healthy profit.

Fourth on our list of books every homesteader should read is The Organic Medicinal Herb Farmer: How to Produce High-Quality Herbs on a Market Scale by Jeff and Melanie Carpenter.  This is one of the more niche books on this list and I included it because herbs can be grown on some scale by anyone, anywhere.  The advice in this book – and there is a lot of it! – can be scaled down to fit your particular needs.  The Carpenters provide information on how to grow and maintain medicinal herbs, including how to deal with weeds, pests, and diseases in ways that do not contaminate the plant.  They offer growing profiles for 50 herbs and show how to harvest, process, and create value-added products from them.  This book is also a business book, offering advice for profit maximization.  Chapter Five, “Thinking Like a Business Manager” offers solid advice for how to run your herb farm as a legitimate business.  It is my favorite chapter because any homestead venture could benefit from this practical business advice.

Ben Falk, author of The Resilient Farm & Homestead, Revised and Expanded Edition: 20 Years of Permaculture & Whole Systems Designs is packed with information on greenhouses, creating microclimates, homesteading with children, permaculture beekeeping, and designing resilient energy systems.  Some books that focus on whole system designs are overly technical for the average person to get much benefit from, but Falk’s writing is concise and easy to understand. Falk adds even more value to this book with appendixes such as “ A Resilient Home Curriculum Outline,” “Crucial Skill List for Emergencies,” and “Homestead Vulnerability Checklist and Strategy Summary to Reduce Vulnerability in Acute Events.”

Another niche book, Raising Resilient Bees: Heritage Techniques to Mitigate Mites, Preserve Locally Adapted Genetics, and Grow Your Apiary by Eric and Joy McEwen, is sixth on our list of learn to earn homesteading books.  The McEwens walk readers through topics like how we can naturally rear queens and select for resilient genetic lines, how to establish a profitable apicentric beekeeping business, and how to rear bees with characteristics suitable to their specific locale.  Chapter Two, “The Tenets of Natural Nest Beekeeping” provides a lot of inspiration backed by information on the importance of changing the way we approach beekeeping.

Seventh on our list is John Jeavons’ How to Grow More Vegetables, Ninth Edition (and Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops) Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land With Less Water Than You Ever Could Imagine is another book that proves you don’t need a lot of land to produce more than enough food to feed your family and make a living.  Jeavons offers practical advice on how to work with nature’s cycles, increase the productivity of your soil, increase plant productivity, and minimize water usage.  With careful planning and attention to detail, it is amazing how much food a small piece of land will support.

The Bio-Integrated Farm: A Revolutionary Permaculture-Based System Using Greenhouses, Ponds, Compost Piles, Aquaponics, Chickens, and More by Shawn and Stephanie Jadricek is the eighth book on our list.  This book is fascinating and will save you a ton of time and energy in the long run by sticking to the permaculture rule that every aspect of the homestead must perform at least three functions and each of the functions must support the others.  The Jadriceks outline projects such as water storage ponds, greenhouses, compost heat extraction, pastured chicken systems, and innovative rainwater-harvesting systems.  An example of permaculture at its best, their greenhouse not only extends the growing season but also collects rainwater and is used as an aquaponic system and a heat generator.

If you are interested in both the meaning of self-sufficiency and brass tacks self-sufficiency skills, John Seymour and Alice Water’s book, The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It: The Classic Back-to-Basics Guide to Going Off the Grid is a classic that has been the best friend to hundreds of thousands of people wanting a more self-sufficient lifestyle. There is not a lot this book doesn’t cover and I am sure you will find something in this book you have not yet tried on your homestead.  In addition to full-size homesteads, they also cater to small homesteaders with sections on community gardens, self-sufficiency in city settings, and the one-acre farm.

Finally, number ten on the list is a book you are probably familiar with. Carla Emery in The Encyclopedia of Country Living offers us over 1000 pages of traditional skills that typify country living at its best.  And you don’t even need to live in the country to do most of them.  This book provides readers with an excellent idea of the things every homesteader should know.  You don’t have to do every project in the book, but you will want to!

Ten books are a lot to read on a busy homestead, but each of these will help you become more efficient, more confident, and more profitable.

The post Learn to Earn: Ten Books Every Homesteader Should Read appeared first on Homestead.org.

In this book, Making Your Small Farm Profitable, Ron takes us through 25 guiding principles for evaluating not only your land, but also your personality traits and those of your family, your local market, and being your own public relations advocate… something he feels is vital to the success of your farm.

When so much of small farming is left to the whims of nature and other seemingly random acts of divine intervention, having something in print and in front of you that is solid and orderly is comforting, soothing and panic-quenching.

Each step building on the last, Ron Macher presents each principle and fills out each one with facts and figures, then has the reader honestly apply them to their own situation. There are a lot of helpful tables and comparisons to help determine just how much (if any) heavy equipment and machinery your farm will need,  what kind of livestock will be the most cost-effective to get from birth (or purchase) to market, and different marketing techniques according to your proximity to urban centers.

Although sometimes he comes across as being too serious, it’s apparent that Ron takes survival of each and every family farm very seriously, and important enough to pay attention to every little detail. As he states at the end of the book:

“Small farms hold the key to reconnect people with the land and the food they must have to sustain life. Small farms are an ongoing process of discovery about life and people. Small farms are the wave of the future, leading to a better world.”

As homesteaders, it’s something we believe as well.

Mortgage Free! Radical Strategies for Home Ownership By Rob Roy

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For a while now, I’ve been leery of the way we “civilized folk” take care of our body waste.  While no person in their right mind would purposely and willfully defecate into drinking water, that’s just what we do, collectively about a gabazillion times a day.

Joseph Jenkins takes us through the history, mishaps, and misinformation surrounding this basic function of the human animal, and gives us a truly sensible and personally studied alternative to flushing it away downstream.

Eminently understandable, highly illustrated, at times almost TOO technical, and even touting little mascot “Tommy Turd” giving little helpful hints, this is a fun read in OR out of the bathroom.

But at the core of the matter is a tenet that is near and dear to homesteaders – care of and for the planet and the tiny speck of it we each call “home”.

An excerpt:

“The people who care enough about the earth to recycle their personal by-products do so as an exercise in humility, not because they’re going to get rich and famous for it.  That makes them better people.  Some people go to church on Sunday, others make compost.  Still others do both.  Others go to church on Sunday, then throw all their garbage out into the environment.  The exercising of the human spirit can take many forms, and the simple act of cleaning up after oneself is one of them.  The careless dumping of waste out into the world is a self-centered act of arrogance – or ignorance.”

This book provides the nuts and bolts knowledge to carry out the most basic and important recycling project any of us could take on.

Buy The Humanure Handbook on Amazon.

Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front by Sharon Astyk Review

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And then comes winter. Even though there’s plenty left to do, there’s no denying the long, still pause that falls over the land as the sky darkens around 4:30 pm, trees stand stark and bare, and the animals just hunker down in their warm barn, waiting for the cold to pass.

With the long, dark night, the cozy warmth of the woodstove, and the comfort of breads and pies baking in the oven, it’s time to pull up a chair, pour a cup of tea, and finally take some time to read a book. After all the hard work we’ve done all year, I’d say we’ve earned it!

Here are some recommended books, then, to accompany you by the fireside. Whether you’re looking for a good story, a new hobby, some encouragement to keep at your homestead dreams, or just want to learn from the past, I bet anyone can find something here to enjoy. You may be able to find these books at your local library. If yours is an endearingly small, rural establishment that can’t possibly hold all the books you’d hope it could, however, check out the link given at the end of each recommendation; if it’s available on the immensely useful site, Archive.org, it’ll take you to an online copy of the book that is free to borrow and read. Otherwise, we’ve linked to where you can purchase the book.

Farmer Takes A Wife, by John Gould

The basic premise of this autobiographical story is simple: a farmer marries his city-born love, then brings her back to the family farm where she joyfully sets to “naturalizing” herself into the rural setting of 1940s Maine. Reading this book is like swiping the whipped cream off of a fresh-baked, pumpkin pie: sweet, slightly fluffy, and very easy to like. The author uses some clever turns of phrase that carry a subtle humor that is completely absent in today’s often dull, one-dimensional writing. The bulk of the story is also is full of unforgettable anecdotes about his local yokels, the lore of the Maine countryside, and surprisingly insightful observations about humans in general.

Furthermore, as a book published in 1946, it is unsurprisingly (and somewhat refreshingly) absent of modern identity politics and our new fascination of mining for things to cancel. The eponymous farmer’s wife is very, truly happy to be a farmer’s wife and to learn all the feminine skills of her new, vitally important role in the kitchen of her farmhouse (I particularly enjoy the farmer’s tribute to his wife’s elegant pie-crusts and their willfully wasteful “economy” of heating up the whole wood-fired oven for a single apple pie). If this book offends you, perhaps a break from the hamster wheel of the 24-hour news cycle to bake a scratch apple pie of your own would change your point of view.

Find Farmer Takes A Wife on Archive.org here.

American Yesterday, by Eric Sloane

Choosing just one of the many excellent books in Eric Sloane’s repertoire is next to impossible, but I covered my eyes, pointed, and picked one. I hope it whets your appetite to seek out more of the endearingly and meticulously illustrated books by this historical and artistic curmudgeon. Sloan is the grumpy grandpa we all want to hear stories from, propping his feet up by the woodstove, cracking nuts, and telling stories of the days like they “use’ta be.”

And reading American Yesterday is a great place to start—this is no dry historical tome. It’s an illustrated, deeply insightful look into what this country once was without deviating into bland, nostalgic adoration or sensationalized depictions of the “hardships of the past.” I found, personally, that walking the streets and cobblestone alleys of 1700s America and learning about the occupations that time has forgotten, the buildings with fascinating uses that we now don’t understand, and the slower cadence to life conjures a sense of loss in our progress.Diary of an Early American Boy, Our Vanishing Landscape, A Reverence for Wood, and Spirits of ‘76 get just as many recommendations as this book. If you can find any of these, read them!

Find American Yesterday on Archive.org here.

Second-Person Rural, by Noel Perrin

I’ve not been able to track down a free copy of Noel Perrin’s first book, First-Person Rural, but I have heartily enjoyed his unintended second installment in an unintended series. His first book largely focused on the how-tos of homesteading. This second one, however, focuses more on the intangible whys. In a set of delightful essays, from cider-making with children (not a straightforward task) to the psychoanalysis of whether you’re the sort of person to entice your cows with a bucket or chase them from behind, his comforting prose skillfully captures the otherwise indescribable moments of farm life that the friends we left in the city just don’t get.

Perrin is a back-to-the-lander himself, new enough to the homesteading scene that he can sometimes see the things that those who grew up in the backwoods may take for granted. His appetizer-sized chapters are easy and enjoyable to read and they absolutely demand an afghan and a quiet evening to enjoy them.

Find Second-Person Rural on Archive.org here.

Restoration Agriculture, by Mark Shepard

Mark Shepard takes on our inherited way of industrialized agriculture and not only casts a vision of what a better way of life it could be, but he also lives it daily. His living-what-he-preaches experiments at his New Forest Farm have turned a used-up field on the verge of desertification into a thriving permaculture savannah full of life, food, and self-replenishing fertility. If you’re unfamiliar with permaculture, this book is a thrilling introduction. And if you’re familiar with the concept, this book is an encouraging road map for What Could Be at your own property.

Through scientific analysis, dirt-under-the-fingernails practicality, insightfully written prose, and a keen eye for the way that the natural world functions, Shepard gives real instruction and advice on how to take any area of land and work with, not against, its natural features to grow food on a sustainable, profitable, and self-sufficient scale. If you have a homestead, this book could be revolutionary in how you see and use your property.

This one’s not on Archive.org yet, but you can buy Restoration Agriculture on Amazon here.

Herbal Handbook For Farm and Stable, by Juliette de Bairacli Levy

If you’ve ever gotten fed up with chemical-based, artificial means of trying to care for your livestock, this is a fantastic book to add to the shelf. Juliette de Bairacli Levy was a true healer and adventurer, traveling through much of Europe and the United States treating animals with her natural methods and deep understanding of plants.

Utilizing her methods of animal management changes the relationship between homesteader and livestock. Rather than forcing these animals to bend to our increasingly warped and artificial will, it seeks to restore balance to their health by letting them follow their natural design. Juliette clearly understood how animals functioned on animal terms, rather than human terms, and her gentle therapies and treatments are natural and effective.

This book covers many animals on the homestead, including the often-overlooked chicken. Not just a series of treatments, it also covers the all-important—yet frequently neglected—role of prevention through maintaining a healthy environment for the animals described. I use this book often, and wouldn’t be without it!

Even if you’re on the fence with herbal remedies, I challenge you to give her book a thumb-through. Her experience-based advice and recommendations will certainly give you something to think about.

This one’s not on Archive.org yet. You can buy Herbal Handbook For Farm and Stable on Amazon here.

The Last Whole Earth Catalogue

I don’t know how to define this document. It’s 400 pages too long to be a magazine, but it’s certainly not a book… though there is a strange little novel hidden in the margins. It’s not an anthology of 1972 homesteading magazine articles, though there are useful articles throughout the whole thing on self-sufficient, DIY endeavors. Parts of it are certainly NSFW. There are listings for off-grid supplies, gardening tools, and books alongside poetry, and interviews suffused with the countercultural, anti-war sentiment characteristic of the times in which it was created. And all of it is crammed-to-the-edges in a claustrophobic layout that would give a modern graphic designer heart palpitations.

The Last Whole Earth Catalogue feels like the distilled essence of an entire generation of disaffected hippies, commune-founders, back-to-the-landers, beatniks, and builders. It’s weird. Like, really weird. But it’s weirdly fascinating. It was originally conceived to give folks alternatives to their inherited consumptive lifestyles and connect them to the land and each other in authentic ways. You’re bound to find something you disagree with, something you feel passionate about, and learn something you didn’t know before. It’s an adventure to leaf through its many, many pages.

Find Last Whole Earth Catalogue on Archive.org here. You can get a hard copy on Amazon here.

Propaganda, by Edward Bernays

This may seem an odd inclusion in this list of homesteading and farming-themed books, but I think it’s a required read for anyone looking to be more self-sufficient. Certainly not the most comforting of next-to-the-fire reads, it is nonetheless a fascinating document to understand how so many of the things that are now commonplace in our cultural world came to be. The title may make you think that it is some fringey “conspiracy theory” book, but I would contest that it is merely a documentation of conspiracy facts. This book was originally written to exhibit Edward Bernays’ methods of mass manipulation and the “engineering of consent” (his words, not mine) to his clients. Clients like the President of the United States, CBS, the American Tobacco Company, General Electric, and Procter & Gamble, just to name a few.

Though homesteaders can be as varied as they come, I think it’s a safe assumption to believe that they are alike in that they largely want to make their own decisions on how to live their own lives. If you want to understand how you have been actively manipulated to believe that you need to live the way that They have told you to live and think the way They have told you to think, this book is an excellent way to pull back the veil and declare some mental and psychological freedom.

Find Propaganda on Archive.org here, or get your own copy on Amazon here.

Art Of Fermentation, by Sandor Katz

Once upon a time, most humans ate fermented food daily. Our breads, cheeses, meats, drinks, and vegetables were all teeming with vigorous bacterial life that made them taste interesting and be easy to digest in our balanced guts. Now, in modern times, we have banished bacteria from our plates, and in many cases, our good health along with it. But you don’t have to take my word for it—take Sandor Katz’.

In this award-winning, deliciously-thick, brick of a book, he explores how to ferment pretty much anything you can think of (and several things you may not have thought of). As you leaf through the chapters of recipes, scientific explanations, personal anecdotes, and historical practices, you won’t get the sense that fermentation is some difficult-to-understand, esoteric practice. It will seem accessible, important… even fun and exciting!

When I first tried my hand at fermenting, I was intimidated, convinced that I would do something wrong and then Botulism would creep out of the wallpaper like a boogeyman and attack my family. Many experiments, accompanied by the encouraging, you-can-do-this tone in Katz’s book, have completely changed my mind, and the state of my kitchen. Thumb through it and I imagine you might feel the same.

This one’s not on Archive.org yet, but you can buy Art Of Fermentation from the Amazon here.

Handmade, by Drew and Louise Langsner

This book is hard to find, but if you can, it’s well worth the read. From October 1971 to October 1972, Drew and Louise Langsner lived off-grid and traveled a tangled path from Turkey to Finland. But rather than taking a touristy pleasure-tour, they set out to find and learn from the fading reserves of the self-sufficient, pre-industrial peasantry that remained. They followed shepherds in Greece, walked the terraced garden hillsides of Yugoslavia, and wove baskets in Bulgaria. They adopted local customs to try to learn how to live with—not on—the land, to produce very little waste, and to understand the extent and limits of natural resources. True to the title of their book, they argue that the highest quality craft is handmade, and that the most successful farming ever done—in terms of sustained yield, soil, maintenance, and food quality—is done by hand and animal labor.

As I wrote in my earlier article, “Seeking the Old Ways“, a book like this touches on something that most of us no longer have: firsthand experience with traditional, self-sufficient ways of life. To those of us trying to rediscover this lifestyle, it’s a heart-wrenching document of loss and a deeply encouraging record of what could yet be. Travel with Drew and Louise, try cooking the recipes they’ve recorded, and dream about what your own two hands can still be capable of.

This one’s not on Archive.org yet. You’ll have to find Handmade from your library or try to track down a copy on eBay.

Stalking The Wild Asparagus, by Euell Gibbons

If you want to begin foraging this spring, it’s almost a rite of passage to read Euell Gibbons’ books on the subject. None of his works are more well known than Stalking the Wild Asparagus, and the praise is well-deserved. Strolling through his chapters of edible wild plants is like strolling down a country lane with an elder, meeting his good friends along the way. Not only does he write about collecting these edible delights with the familiarity only gained by a lifetime of wilderness wandering, but he also gives plentiful recipes on how to enjoy your wild haul. Spring will come sooner than you think, and with it comes dozens of opportunities to reap where you did not sow.

And once you’re done with that one, you’ll have to pick up copies of Samuel Thayer’s three foraging books—The Forager’s Harvest, Nature’s Garden, and Incredible Wild Edibles. Sometimes called the “Modern-day Euell Gibbons,” Thayer has carried on the legacy of loving, gathering, eating, and teaching about the abundance that grows right outside our backdoors. Thayer’s books cover plant identification with far greater detail than Gibbon’s, too, giving photographic and botanical clarity to foragers both new and old.

Find it on Archive.org here, or get a hard copy on Amazon here.

About the Author: Wren was once a teacher living in the city.  But she and her husband decided to make their escape from the confines of modernity and its dependence and move their family to 12 acres of land in the Ozarks. They are currently in the middle of establishing an off-grid homestead, and now happily spend their days as modern peasants, seeking out, learning, and trying to preserve the old skills that their urban backgrounds never gave them.

The post A Cozy Winter Reader: Great Homesteading Books to Curl Up With appeared first on Homestead.org.

I was given this book as a birthday gift.  Actually, it was a sort of a re-gifting, as the friend who gave it to me admitted she’d received it from someone else and “just couldn’t get into it.”  She was gracious (?) enough to relay though, that she thought it was EXACTLY the sort of thing that I WOULD “get into”, the implication being, of course, that her version of fascinating and mine are miles apart.  And even though that’s true, I’d never be ungracious enough to publicly “out” her poor taste in books.

So, thanks for the book, Gayle.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingslover is a year-long journal that takes us through one growing season—one season of a family that makes a promise to themselves to eat as locally as possible for one year—the ideal being to feed themselves from their own yard.

Eating fresh in season, or preserving for later, means giving up the ease of supermarket bananas—they don’t grow in their neck of the woods.  Simultaneously, it means glutting without guilt precious tidbits like strawberries and wild mushrooms, eaten with carefree abandon when they’re literally Free for the Picking, as well as postponing a trip because the cherries came ripe before anticipated.

Animal husbandry in the form of poultry is covered well and honestly, and proving that Chicken Herding is something that a child can not only be trusted to help with, but given into the lap of the right young entrepreneur, can be a thriving lesson in economics and small business administration.

The solemn passage from “something with feathers that’s alive” to “something on our dinner plate and is…not” is also addressed respectfully.

If a journal of this type were all that was in the book, it would be well worth the reading.

But wait… There’s more! (and your Ginsu knives will come in handy for this part)

Using only things that are in season can be a challenge not only to grow and shop for, but in cooking as well.  Most recipes call for ingredients that are wildly disparate and that would never ever live as seasonal or geographical neighbors in the natural world.  Therefore, there are recipes at the end of every section for the wonderful dishes that are described in the text—compiled, explained and brought about by Barbara’s daughter Camille.

Her husband, Steven, supplies the book with handy and technical “asides” throughout as well, making this book a Family Affair, along with the story it contains.

And as if this all isn’t enough, the recipes can be downloaded in actual cookbook form by visiting AnimalVegetableMiracle.com.

This is much more than a how-to-garden book or a how-to-can book, or a cookbook, or even merely a journal of the growing season.  Given Ms. Kingsolver’s gift of storytelling, this is the antithesis of Seinfeld, which was, proudly, a “show about nothing.”

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is a book about everything, from the tiniest garden miracles to the most Earth-shattering difficulties we currently face.  And it’s all wrapped up in a lovely package for those of us who “still have some element of farm nostalgia in our family past, real or imagined: a secret longing for some connection to a life where a rooster crows in the yard”.

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In Mortgage Free! Radical Strategies for Home Ownership, Rob Roy gives hope to the un-lendable and challenges everyone else to do the unusual.

He takes us step by step from finding and purchasing land, to constructing a temporary shelter, to the actual building of a home that will not only be a reflection of the family who inhabits it, but will be totally or mostly unencumbered by something most people take for granted as unavoidable as death and taxes… a conventional mortgage.

In 344 pages of clear, sensible writing, Rob Roy not only takes the dream of an owner-built home from the realm of impossible fantasy to stunning reality, but by the time you close the book at the last page, the idea of going the “conventional” route seems positively ludicrous.

An excerpt shows how tunnel-visioned we have become, yet holds out hope:

“On a world scale, only a small percentage of people live in mortgaged homes, but in North America, particularly middle-class North America, the problem is endemic.  Still, there are millions of mainstream people in the United States and Canada who have managed to avoid the death pledge.”

For all budding homesteaders daunted and depressed by the cost of doing things the ‘normal’ way- this book is guaranteed to transform you into ‘the Little Homesteader Who Could’.  All together now – “I think I can, I think I can, I KNOW I can……”

Buy Mortgage Free! Radical Strategies for Home Ownership By Rob Roy on Amazon.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver

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“Here” said my husband; “I think this will be interesting.”

Keep in mind that what my husband reads and comprehends and what I read and comprehend are generally not even in the same bookstore, much less on the same shelf.

The first chapter of Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front by Sharon Astyk had me hiding under my chair in tears and with a tummy ache.  Really.

Luckily, I’m also one of those people who must finish a started book, no matter how dismal, how incomprehensible, or how stupid it is.  Normally this has me setting the book ablaze after the last word, and cursing whoever gave me it/told me to read it.

I say luckily, because after the initial assault on my sanity and meager hold on a sense of security for my family, this one is a keeper.

Sharon talks about where our lives are headed, in our current economy.  And though we, and most of our friends, are striving for rural living, Sharon talks us through the Way Things Could Be from an urban/suburban perspective.

No matter… issues like health care, family relationships, community, small-scale gardening and food production, energy conservation (or elimination for the need of excess energy usage), are going to be pressing concerns for us all.

And to make up for the first frightening pages, Sharon is positive enough to not only end on a good note (that a changed world will not necessarily be a bad world), but she gives us 23 pages of Appendices: “Things you can do to get ready for peak oil, climate change and difficult times”, and “The best books about nearly everything”.

Because I don’t want to just HEAR about my world changing, I want to DO something, to know I’m providing for my family the best I can.

But the best thing about this book is that it’s not written by some professor, or some economist, or some career environmentalist (although they all have their place, and have valuable knowledge to share).

Sharon Astyk is a mom.  She’s a wife.  And she’s admittedly human.  When asked how she Does It All—wife, mother, writer, small farmer—she gives an answer that’s so familiar to me personally, “If I look at what I didn’t do, at the mess, the chaos, the exhaustion, the failures, it doesn’t look so hot.  So I try not to look, and hope to do better tomorrow.  So if I have one bit of advice for parents of young children—and everyone who is facing hard times, a big learning curve and not enough time—it is this: do the best you can, trust yourself, and be pleased with what you do.  Embrace the chaos.”

This is a woman I could easily call ”friend”. You can buy a copy of Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front by Sharon Astyk on Amazon.

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As someone who can remember what it was like to make phone calls with four numbers, before prefixes and area codes, I could be one of those grumpy oldsters. But, like many an oldster, I have had the curiosity to see what life was like way before my time. A lot of homesteaders also have this curiosity. They live in cabins, grow their own food, raise chickens for eggs, and keep a cow for milk, and…have a cellphone hidden away….purely for emergencies, of course.

But looking at life from the point of view of devices is to miss the big picture, like looking for a certain brush stroke in a painting by Rembrandt or Wyeth. The real question—what did we used to do?—is not answered by a negative like “we didn’t have phones” or “we didn’t watch TV.” It’s answered by positives, important positives.

Recently I came across a book that seems to hold a lot of positive, accessible, doable answers to what we did, and what we can still do, when we leave our devices in the drawer for a while. The book—How to Do Things—is a reprint of a book first published in 1919—yes, 100 years ago—a time when about 50 percent of Americans lived in rural areas, when “the grid” was unavailable, and even telephones, though invented and in use, were a rarity in private homes, with small communities perhaps having one or two to share. The “candlestick” telephone often portrayed in vintage movies was invented in 1919.

How to Do Things was a collection of short articles gathered by the national magazine, Farm Journal, which began publication in 1877 and is still in business today. The Journal was doubtless an exciting addition to life on a remote farm, bringing its readers in touch with other people, ideas and even moneymaking prospects. HTDT was the brainchild of a Pennsylvania Quaker farmer and journalist, Wilmer Atkinson; the newly minted edition, subtitled “A Timeless Guide to a Simpler Life,” was edited by William Campbell. This description is offered on the book’s back cover:

“Written by farmers and craftsmen, with original text and illustrations from the 1919 first edition, this 100th-anniversary volume presents a new generation with expert guidance on every facet of homesteading.”

HTDT jumps right in with what might have been thought of as a rather more modern activity, “Mailing Lists That Make Money.” For instance, we are told of a farmer who, “using a typewriter”, contacted seed sellers with an offer on his seed corn. Another such agro-entrepreneur made a catalog of his hickory nut crop, thus creating a “parcel-post trade.” Parallels to internet enterprise will not be missed, I am sure, by some of our more ambitious readers, and may remind us that “things to do” can become “ways to make money” as you have often noted in the articles on Homestead.org.

There are innumerable tips in HTDT regarding animal husbandry (funny word, hmm?): these include making a mask for your hog to keep him from eating your chicks. There is a guide for figuring what creatures are killing your chickens and how to deal with them, whether it be skunk, weasel or fox: dig your chicken house foundations underground, surround it with a stone wall, and keep a good guard dog on patrol. Another way to keep avian pests away: tie your cat (gently) to a run near your berry patch to ward off the birds that thrive on berries. (I like this idea after two years of helplessly watching our succulent blackberries disappear in bird beaks. Now I just need to find a cat that my good guard dog will tolerate!)

If you’re looking for some indoor activities, HTDT has plenty. There are instructions for canning and cheesemaking, and recipes for holiday sweetmeats, steamed bread, corn chowder, cream soups, Louisiana cornbread, a rather exotic sounding fish flake soufflé, and a specialty called Red Bunny, that simply combines butter, American cheese and tomatoes melted together and poured on toast (gonna try that one!).

Another pleasant, indoor autumn- or rainy-day thing to do is to make a window garden. Full instructions included. Interesting that farmers 100 years ago packed indoor plants in sphagnum moss, which was deemed both useful in retaining water around the plants but also attractive—nowadays we may use colored mulch but the principle is the same.

Our forebears of the last century, lacking insulation, used their “spare” time to fill the space between inner and outer walls with—newspaper. Newspaper was also used for shading plants.

HTDT, some of its contributions written as it was by amateurs in the writing field but doers in the real fields, can be both conversational and amusing, as in one segment about “Planning the Porch” in which a husband and wife “discuss” how to build that important add-on, covering everything from dimensions to breeze-catching (the man wins this one).

Of course, farm children are rarely idle, and our forebears learned from an early age how to cook, sew, clean, “whip rugs” and even “tinker up things now and then.”

But when all the work was done, there were other things to do in 1919. Parties were encouraged and indoor games were popular. HTDT includes many such parlor favorites. One was very simply a smiling contest—the one who can smile the longest is the winner. The opposite was “The Continuous Glum” in which the audience dares the participants not to laugh while making funny faces and telling jokes to force someone to lose. The intellect is tickled with the “Game of Telegrams” in which ten letters chosen at random and players are challenged to make a (preferably silly) sentence in which each letter is the start of a word. The example given is A L P O C R G D E H with the possible answer: “All ladies passing our car receive good dinners eaten hot.”

A game that showed up in carnivals was apparently “invented” at home: throwing a ball into a basket. In the carnival, the basket was rigged to bounce the ball back out, but our grandparents undoubtedly played this simply to reward the prowess of those with a good pitching arm. I like the “standing high jump” in which contestants jump for a donut hanging in a doorway. A similar challenge involves eating buns hanging on a gently swaying clothesline—with your hands behind your back. Potato peeling and carving contests were popular, along with a race accomplished while holding a large potato in one hand with a sewing pin (I recall a version of this from my 1950s childhood, holding potatoes in a spoon). There are games, pantomime, and mind-reading. All of these games and party plans would have given your parents, grandparents or greats some things to do, and all would probably be fun to try—if you can put down that device for a while!

Since autos were in use, though, like phones, a relative rarity in 1919, there are a few automotive tips for Farm Journal/HTDT readers. The difference in today’s auto emergencies can be readily grasped in the section on how to make a small fire, with sand and gasoline, to illuminate the work of changing a tire (or repairing a punctured one) at night—nope, no headlights. Another fire-lit farm invention is a barrel for boiling water. It features an iron pipe stuck in the barrel’s bottom, with a plug on the outside end. The pipe is heated with a kindling fire and “you’ll have scalding water in about 30 minutes.”

Electricity is mentioned once in HTDT, its virtues extolled as “The New Farm Helper.” Electricity can save on the cost of labor, and save energy on household chores like churning, chopping, watering, pumping, and running machines like an automatic milker. HTDT offers the notion that “we are going to witness—are witnessing—the introduction of this modern force at a rate that foretells great and helpful changes…..” Can—will—the same be said of our internet-driven devices? Well, yes, of course.  We cherish our microwaves, our egg sorters, and our tractors operated by remote control. Like electricity, like the auto, these marvelous new inventions give us more time to…..

…fill in the blank!

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Like most homesteaders, gardeners, or folks who are still in the dreaming and planning stage for their first homestead, I devour all the garden and farm books I can get my hands on.

I’m a sucker for any shiny new book with bright photographs of vegetables on the cover, even though I can usually tell at a glance if it won’t be very helpful to me.  After so many years as a desert gardener, I learned to sift through the information in books more geared to “Normal Places,” and to seek out more detailed books once I had gained enough from the “Beginners.”

This is not to say that I still don’t thoroughly enjoy the beginners’ books, too.  They’re often bursting with enthusiasm and encouragement, which every gardener needs from time to time.  And it never fails that I will pick up at least one brilliant tip in an otherwise unenlightening book. (Like planting peas thickly in a gutter, then sliding them into a trench when they’re mature enough.  I gleaned this gem from a book written by Huw Richards in Wales—an environment so different from mine in Las Vegas that there was little else that applied to me).

Last year brought me a handful of particularly good “homesteady” books, some new on the market and some just new to me.  I was feverishly preparing for the Big Move to our new homestead in Southwest Colorado, so this stack was never far from me.

Here are my five favorite homesteading books.

The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs by Joel Salatin.  Not at all the guide to raising pigs that I thought I was buying, this older work of Joel Salatin, the “Lunatic Farmer,” is an absolute must-read for any person with even a fleeting interest in our relationship to food.  Written in Joel’s journalist-turned-farmer whimsical, humorous, and deadly serious tone, Pigness will make you ponder the subject of food deeper than you ever have before.  He shares openly the struggle of living in the divide between two worlds that seem to oppose each other at every turn: that of the “left-leaning tree huggers” and the “scoffing Christian evangelicals” who have historically been too quick to vilify anyone who questions the mainstream modern factory food complex.  With love, gentleness, and piercing insights, Joel invites the two sides to consider (deeply and honestly) the truth and goodness to be found in the other’s camp.  If this doesn’t shake your worldview—no matter your starting point—I don’t know what will.  I recommend the audio version on Audible, as Joel’s voice is now quite familiar to us and it’s possible to sift your compost while listening.

Polyface Micro: Success With Livestock on a Homestead Scale is another highly enjoyable book by Joel Salatin.  I needed a thorough guide on all aspects of starting a homestead, and Polyface Micro did not disappoint!  Deliberately avoiding details that have been shared in multiple other well-known sources, Joel seeks to bring to the sustainability table fresh ideas and eminently practical solutions.  This is one of his newer books, released in 2021. It’s a prime example of how a balance of reverence for the “old ways,” coupled with a healthy use of modern technology can result in a highly productive, disease-free homestead that respects God’s design.  Want to know the best practices for raising pigs? In the book. Chickens? Yep. Rabbits…wait, CAN you put rabbits in a rabbit tractor? Of course.  This will be my go-to reference for all things sanitation, fencing, grazing development, milking cows, and how best to harvest rainwater.  Paired with the gigantic Polyface Designs, which I turned over to my carpenter-Dad to pick out his favorite projects, owning this book makes me feel invincible as a new homesteader.

The Intelligent Gardener by Steve Solomon (with Erica Reinheimer).  When I first heard that Steve Solomon had recanted on some of the concepts of his earlier works, namely Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times, I was instantly curious.  Growing Food has been a favorite reference for serious food producers for decades—just not me.  Why?  Because of the despair I felt upon reaching the last page, only to read that his methods would work for anyone, anywhere—except the desert. If Steve was saying, “I was wrong,” I wanted to know why.  When I cracked open The Intelligent Gardener, I began to think I wasn’t actually going to know why, because folks, this stuff is waaaayyyy over my head.  Charts, chemistry… MATH?! Shudder.  I forged ahead anyway after Steve assured the reader that he’d break everything down into simple terms.  The premise of the book is a little surprising to the organic gardening world: he challenges the notion that growing organically, with little external inputs, will automatically result in food that is better for you. If his own organically-grown food (which was the bulk of his diet) was so healthy, why were his teeth loose and his energy levels so low?  His quest to discover what practices can truly result in nutrient-dense food led to a deep-dive into mineralization, complex chemical processes, and the simple discovery that if you don’t want to be part of the “Shit Method of Agriculture (SaMOA)”, you’ll pay 30 bucks for a real soil test.  Well, I don’t want to be a “SaMOA” grower, so of course I got the test as soon as I could sneak onto the property that was not yet ours on paper.  I would hand this book to any serious gardener, along with a few plastic bags and a clean trowel to dig up a sample.

The First-Time Homesteader: A Complete Beginner’s Guide to Starting and Loving Your New Homestead by Jessica Sowards. Who doesn’t want to spend more time with Jess?! Delivering the same gentle, encouraging spirit that thousands have come to know and love from her wildly popular YouTube channel, Roots and Refuge, Jess makes us all believe that we CAN grow food (and “something lovely”). With gorgeous photos on every page, Jess first defines what a homesteader is (hint: you don’t have to have any land), then takes you by the hand to rekindle a desire you might not have known you had.  If you once were drawn to the beauty and peace and simplicity of a sustainable life, but somehow lost your way, just grab this book. “Turn your waiting room into a classroom,” “Do it afraid,” “Fear pushes, but wisdom leads,” and “Store-bought tomatoes taste like disappointment” will soon be regular phrases in your vernacular, and you’ll be on your way.

The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible by Edward C. Smith.  Confession: I am only halfway through this one.  Published by Storey, a well-respected name in the animal husbandry and gardening world, this fits in the “indexed, glossaried, and cumbersome” category on my shelves.  You can’t enjoy this book with a cat in your lap, because you’ll want to take notes.  By teaching the WORD system (Wide rows, Organic methods, Raised beds, Deep soil), Ed lays out a plan for gardening that takes a novice all the way to advanced techniques for a productive harvest. I can’t look at a shovel today without “judging its merits,” or read a label on a pesticide without recalling that there “isn’t such a thing as a pesticide.”

If your spring is anything like mine, with many false starts and “afterthought” snow flurries, you’ll find this a good time to finish up your winter reading list. Because if you can’t actually be growing stuff, the next best thing is to read about growing stuff.

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