Free Downloads The Homesteading Handbook: A Back To Basics Guide To Growing Your Own Food, Canning, Keeping Chickens, Generating Your Own Energy, Crafting, Herbal Medicine, And More (The Handbook Series)
With the rapid depletion of our planet’s natural resources, we would all like to live a more self-sufficient lifestyle. But in the midst of an economic crisis, it’s just as important to save money as it is to go green. As Gehring shows in this thorough but concise guide, being kind to Mother Earth can also mean being kind to your bank account! It doesn’t matter where your homestead is located—farm, suburb, or even city. Wherever you live, The Homesteading Handbook can help you: • Plan, plant, and harvest your own organic home garden. • Enjoy fruits and vegetables year-round by canning, drying, and freezing. • Build alternate energy devices by hand, such as solar panels or geothermal heat pumps. • Differentiate between an edible puffball mushroom and a poisonous amanita. • Prepare butternut squash soup using ingredients from your own garden. • Conserve water by making a rain barrel or installing an irrigation system. • Have fun and save cash by handcrafting items such as soap, potpourri, and paper. Experience the satisfaction that comes with self-sufficiency, as well as the assurance that you have done your part to help keep our planet green. The Homesteading Handbook is your roadmap to living in harmony with the land.
Series: The Handbook Series
Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing; Fourth edition (May 25, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1616082658
ISBN-13: 978-1616082659
Product Dimensions: 7 x 7.1 x 10 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (111 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #39,913 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #52 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Home Improvement & Design > How-to & Home Improvements > Do-It-Yourself #2382 in Books > Parenting & Relationships
I received this book as a gift, after having heard great things about it. After owning it for a few months, I've come to the conclusion that this is an excellent example of when not to buy a book based on online reviews alone. (ironic that I should be writing that in just such a review, isn't it?)The summary is right there in my title, "Lots of information, TERRIBLE editing". there are typos on nearly half the pages, several captions are switched, the insets refer to pictures as being below when they're above and vice versa, and some images were clearly simply cut from websites and scaled out of proportion without any regard to their quality. (the entire alternative energy section springs to mind)If you have any experience with canning whatsoever, then before you buy this book you should know that a disproportionate percentage of the book is devoted to canning your food. While some topics get a single page worth of text, canning alone apparently warrants forty seven.If for some reason you already own this book and are reading this, please pay attention when reading the edible poisonous mushroom section. Although its caption is accurate, the VERY POISONOUS wild amanita mushroom is featured in a picture without its own heading.And finally, a note to Ms. Gehring:My apologies if the above comes off as harsh. It is readily apparent that a lot of work went into gathering the information contained in your book, but it's just as apparent that little to no work went into the editing process. I realize that things like typefaces are important. But text that relates accurately to the illustration, and illustrations that are legible are just as important, if not more so.As this is the first printing, I hope my criticism can be considered constructive, and your next edition will be greatly improved.Sincerely,A Homesteader
I just purchased this book and haven't had time to go through it all...but being a small dairy goat/poultry farmer, I decided to check out the 'Backyard Farm' section first. It became shockingly apparent that this person has little to NO first hand knkwledge in this area. Facts were not facts at all!! The picture of the lamancha goat described as having no external ears (which isn't actually true anyways) VERY clearly has long white ears in the included picture. Not even close to a lamancha. Also...please educate me on what mathre goat weighs 20 lbs!? I used to raise pygmies and know MANY breeders of nigerian dwarvs and have never heard of one. Pygmies are not a dairy breed either...fyi. As for the poultry section....that's aovely goose in the duck section...and I had never even heard of the Aylesbury duck....with gkod reason! It is NOT a common breed at all! There is 1 pure flock in the UK and it is a critcally endangered species in the US. I could truly go on and on but I believe you get the picture. Please do not buy this with great expectation or hopes it will guide you on your homesteading journey.
This book is chock full of information about several subjects. Most are what people want to learn and do more of now to help the Earth and keep our families healthy. Very well written and detailed. The softcover version is easy to handle and I think it has even more pictures than the hardcover. I'm reading the book for the third time now and am starting to incorporate what I've learned into our new garden and can't wait to do the same with livestock soon.
I wouldn't consider this a homesteaders bible but it is informative, lots of different topics only a couple pages each and fun to read. Not sure why all of these books need to waste space in the fist third of the book talking about moving back to the land. That is covered in other books just on that topic.
This book was kind of a waste. It really does not have as much info as one would like. It isnt even that great of an all around book. It has very minimal info about a very large number of topics... it leaves out a lot of information on a lot of good topics too. Save your money, buy a book on the specific topic you want to learn about.
This book has some good information, however, it's presented in a poorly thought out manner. As a "handbook", I expected to flop the book down on the counter and follow along while performing some of the tasks. The font used in the book is extremely small (guessing an 8 point) and can barely be read while sitting. There's lot's of white space, it almost appears that the publisher shrank everything down and plopped in on a smaller page. I have 20/20 vision and read books/magazines daily, the font size is nowhere close to a normal book/magazine and way to small.The content of the book has some good information, although key items are missing, and other more technical items found there way in to a chapter. For example there is a section on preserving food and they do a nice job of teaching canning and drying food, however there is no mention of smoking food for preservation, yet later in the book they have plans for building a smokehouse??? They dedicate 4 pages to knitting with only 3 small pictures of the actual technique. they talk about making your own soap and if you want to add color, just run down to the local arts and crafts store and pick some up. Isn't the point of homesteading to be self sufficient?5 pages are dedicated to geothermal energy, yet no information is provided on something simple and necessary like an outhouse. You can't learn how to install a geothermal system in 5 pages, this requires multiple books read by a mechanically inclined person and likely several consultations with an HVAC engineer. Detailed plans for a simple windmill, or sand point well is where I would draw the line for this book...
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