Darswords

Homesteading Handbook vol. 1: The Beginner’s Guide to Becoming Self-Sustainable by Michelle Grande

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was free when I picked it up. I expected another light overview of homesteading, like the ones I read before. No. This one was a surprise. It was so full of everything a person might need to get started on your own self-sustainable farm. Does it go into depth of all these topics? No. But it does give you an introduction on every aspect I could think of living out on your own. I would suspect that many of our forefathers and foremothers started with less information than this.

The first half of the book is devoted to gardening and the types of gardening styles there can be. But Michelle Grande (author) doesn’t stop with a light introduction. She includes pictures and charts and lists of tools and plants for each way of producing vegetables, herbs and flowers. The pictures are beautiful, the charts well written, easy to understand. All are clickable to enlarge to a suitable size.

Animals fill the next bit of the book, from chickens to llamas. Again, Ms. Grande was thorough in teaching the greenhorn the types of each animal that work best with what type of land you live on and includes husbandry for each. Of course, there are some that are left out, probably for brevity sake, but this gets one started.

Crafts, compost, solar and wind energy, recipes, canning and other storing of foods, even toilets that compost. This book is so full of so many topics! All with plans and recipes, charts and illustrations to get one started. I know I will need to read this over and over.

I didn’t read every word. Since I am not on the land I hope to buy, there is little I can do until I get there. Then it will be Fall and I won’t be able to do much of it then. But that is when I will pull this book out again and start making lists and reading in detail how to do everything. Then I will know what to read in depth. I may even try to buy this book in tree form so that I can keep it out on the table to refer to often.

This book is still free if you have Kindle Unlimited. I suppose if you need to give it a quick review or preview that would be the way to go. But I find that the $2.99 is well worth it. It is worth much more!

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