Favorite Books about Homesteading??

[Junebugaboo]

Anybody have any good books they've read recently about homesteading/farming/self-reliance? Any favorites?

I've been leafing through John Seymour's The Self-Sufficient Life; one of my favorites about small-farm agriculture is Wendell Berry's The Unsettling of America. I just recently read Gaining Ground by Forrest Pritchard and really enjoyed it.

 

[sumi]

I haven't read many books on SS, but I did read and really enjoyed John Seymour's book. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life Barbara Kingsolver www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/ was also a very interesting and inspiring read. Highly recommended!

 

[Beekissed]

I like the old Foxfire series but have lost the set over the years...only have one seriously worn out book left.

 

[Britesea]

I love the Foxfire series too. I only have the first 7 of them. Someday I'll buy more.

 

[FarmerJamie]

Third plug for Foxfire

 

[Beekissed]

I also love the Little House book series. Some think of it as children's books but they have amazing detail of how things were done, how food was produced, animals trained to pull, how clothing and shoes were made, and how one makes do on very little. Especially "Farmer Boy"...the meals she describes there are HUGE, varied and rich...but the work described tells how they worked off all that rich food.

They were working all year round, before daylight until after dark, and the details and amount of work described is just fascinating. We modern folk couldn't carry their tools for them all day, even the children.

 

[Britesea]

I read that the average midwest farmer's diet ran around 7000 calories a day; but take a look at "American Gothic" if you don't think they could work that off

 

[Lazy Gardener]

First time I've taken the time to really study that pic. How much younger do you suppose she was? What do you think their ages???

 

[wyoDreamer]

They traced my Dad's geneology back to Jacques Pierre - who stepped off a boat from France way up in the Hudson Bay somewhere. He built a couple of lumber mills, had over 19 children in his lifetime. He had 5 wives in total - only one at a time. His wives must have had a hard life to all die young.

I have only read 3 of the Foxfire Books, but I loved each of them.

 

[Britesea]

There's a small family plot somewhere in the Midwest I've read about- the farmer is buried there... along with all seven of his wives (also one at a time). A lot of them died from childbirth complications- I would have been dead at least twice if it weren't for modern medicine.