June 1, 2023
Whether you’re just getting started with a new property or you’re a weather-worn farmer, we’ve compiled this list of our favorite homesteading books to share. Check back every month to see the new additions to the list.
The Old Farmer’s Almanac: Vegetable Gardener’s Handbook
One of our favorite homesteading books: this is the perfect companion for every vegetable gardener—even those who have never touched a trowel and wouldn’t know mulch from mud! The practical advice presented in the Vegetable Gardener’s Handbook demystifies gardening by providing the best, most proven methods for sowing, growing, and harvesting.
Highlights include …
- Step-by-step advice for success with more than 30 vegetables in any zone
- The dirt on soil: why testing is so important—and how to do it
- Easy techniques for growing in-ground, plus alternatives to traditional raised beds
- Seed-starting and -saving methods simplified
- Gardeners’ friends and foes: which plants help (or hinder) vegetables
- Enlightening (and humorous!) anecdotes from fellow gardeners
- Space for noting observations and experiences
- More than 150 full-color photos
- Essential reference tables and charts
- Much, much more!
Created for new gardeners, green thumbs, and old hands alike, The Old Farmer’s Almanac Vegetable Gardener’s Handbook is loaded with advice and inspiration to help plants—and growers—thrive.
The Backyard Homestead
This comprehensive guide to homesteading provides all the information you need to grow and preserve a sustainable harvest of grains and vegetables; raise animals for meat, eggs, and dairy; and keep honey bees for your sweeter days. With easy-to-follow instructions on canning, drying, and pickling, you’ll enjoy your backyard bounty all winter long.
The book that launched the best-selling series
Brimming with a bounty of information from Storey’s extensive library on growing and preserving, The Backyard Homestead is a trusted reference for fans of independent living everywhere, and the cornerstone of The Backyard Homestead series, which has a combined total of 495,000 copies in print.
Be your own local food source
Whether your backyard ambitions are modest or you’re scaling up for complete food self-sufficiency, this practical guide teaches a range of essential skills, from starting seedlings and carving a turkey to beekeeping basics and sugaring maple syrup, making the process of producing and preserving your own food accessible and satisfying at any scale.
An exciting variety of food at your fingertips
Cultivate a simple strawberry patch or start a flock of chickens; grow wheat for milling your own flour and hops for brewing your own beer. The possibilities for backyard food production are endless, and this homesteading handbook covers it all, with how-to information on growing and harvesting herbs, grains, fruits, nuts, and vegetables, as well as fresh eggs, meat, dairy, honey, and more.
The Encyclopedia of Country Living: The Original Manual for Living off the Land & Doing It Yourself
For more than 50 years, this homesteading classic is the essential book of basic skills and country wisdom for living off the land, being prepared, and doing it yourself. Keep your family healthy, safe, and independent–no matter what’s going on in the world.
From homesteaders to urban farmers, and everyone in between, there is a desire for a simpler way of life: a healthier, greener, more self-sustaining, and holistic approach that allows you to survive and thrive—even in uncertain times.
With its origins in the back-to-the-land movement of the late 1960s, Carla Emery’s landmark book has grown into a comprehensive guide to living a self-sustaining lifestyle. Learn how to live independently in this comprehensive guide, including how to:
* Can, dry, and preserve food
* Plan your garden
* Grow your own food
* Make 20-minute cheese
* Make your own natural skincare products
* Bake bread
* Cook on a wood stove
* Learn beekeeping
* Raise chickens, goats, and pigs
* Create natural skincare products
* Make organic bug spray
* Treat your family with homemade remedies
* Make fruit leather
* Forage for wild food
* Spin wool into yarn
* Mill your own flour
* Tap a maple tree
And more!
Basic, thorough, and reliable, this homesteading book deserves a place in urban and rural homes alike.
40 Projects for Building Your Backyard Homestead: A Hands-on, Step-by-Step Sustainable-Living Guide
Learn all about how to build sheds, feeders, fences, and other backyard structures to enhance your sustainable living with this homesteading book!
- Garden structures: Raised beds, planters and arbors, self-watering beds, grow-light stand, soil blocks
- Fences and pens: Fence post basics, picket fence, solar electric fence, installing and stretching fences, hen pen and hurdle, gates, PVC hen pen
- Housing chickens: Basics for housing chickens, building a coop and run, complete material and cutting lists, exploded views, building an A-frame chicken tractor
- Building sheds: Basics for building, goat shed, saltbox garden shed, backyard-homestead shop, roofing alternatives
- Solar and wind power: Compressor and gearbox windmills, how solar works, erecting a windmill, installing a solar power system
- Aquaponics and hydroponics: Understanding aquaponics, understanding hydroponics, basics of a DIY aquaponic system, how to install a hydroponic system
- Building beehives: Langstroth beehive, Warré beehive, top-bar beehive (aka the Kenyan or Tanzanian beehive), step-by-step building instructions and exploded views
- Plumbing and wiring: Plumbing basics, ground-fault circuit interrupters, freeze-proof watering options, outdoor wiring, supplemental lighting
A companion volume to Backyard Homesteading, 40 Projects for Building Your Backyard Homestead provides details on how to build more than 40 projects to enhance your sustainable living.
The projects in this book are designed with simplicity, convenience, and budget in mind. You will also find help on how to expand or contract the projects to suit your needs.
With step-by-step instructions, tools and materials lists, exploded views, and easy-to-understand techniques, even if you are only moderately handy, you’ll discover how to build your own feeders, fences, and structures. In the process, you’ll save money and have the satisfaction of doing it yourself!
Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills
Over 200,000 copies sold—fully updated! Dye your own wool, raise chickens, make your own cheddar cheese, build a log cabin, and much much more.
Anyone who wants to learn basic living skills—the kind employed by our forefathers—and adapt them for a better life in the twenty-first century need look no further than this eminently useful, full-color guide — another one of our favorite homesteading books.
Countless readers have turned to Back to Basics for inspiration and instruction, escaping to an era before power saws and fast-food restaurants and rediscovering the pleasures and challenges of a healthier, greener, and more self-sufficient lifestyle.
Now newly updated, the hundreds of projects, step-by-step sequences, photographs, charts, and illustrations in Back to Basics will help you dye your own wool with plant pigments, graft trees, raise chickens, craft a hutch table with hand tools, and make treats such as blueberry peach jam and cheddar cheese. The truly ambitious will find instructions on how to build a log cabin or an adobe brick homestead.
More than just practical advice, this is also a book for dreamers—even if you live in a city apartment, you will find your imagination sparked, and there’s no reason why you can’t, for example, make a loom and weave a rag rug. Complete with tips for old-fashioned fun (square dancing calls, homemade toys, and kayaking tips), this may be the most thorough book on voluntary simplicity available.
The Backyard Homestead Seasonal Planner: What to Do & When to Do It in the Garden, Orchard, Barn, Pasture & Equipment Shed
This hardworking addition to the best-selling Backyard Homestead series offers expert advice on what tasks to do around your farm and when to do them — no matter where on the planet you call home. Author Ann Larkin Hansen sets the priorities for each area of the farm, including the barn, garden, orchard, field, pasture, and woodlot. For every critical turn of the year (12 in all), Hansen provides an at-a-glance to-do list along with tips and a more in-depth discussion of key topics for the season. Easy-reference charts, checklists, and record-keeping sections help you keep track of it all.
The essential planning companion from the Backyard Homestead series
Part of the classic series of books that has taught homesteaders everything they need to know, The Backyard Homestead Seasonal Planner provides a framework for what to do around the farm and when to do it.
A seasonal approach applicable for today’s small diversified farms
Combining the most common tasks for small farm enterprises in a single season-by-season planner allows homesteaders to create a custom calendar around their own farm’s needs, from the garden and orchard to the barn and beeyard.
Provides tools and tips to help spread work evenly throughout the year
Along with ample guidance and information, this planner has dedicated space to track your progress, as well checklists and prompts for planning ahead, making tasks manageable and helping you find the path to top productivity. Whether you’re just getting started or have a few years under your belt, this is a great addition to your homesteading books collection.