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The Back to Basics Handbook: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills (Back to Basics Guides)
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. With hundreds of projects, step-by-step sequences, photographs, charts, and illustrations, The Back to Basics Handbook will help you dye your own wool with plant pi...more
Paperback, 272 pages
Published
May 25th 2011
by Skyhorse Publishing
(first published November 1st 2007)
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I loved this book. I wish I could convince my husband to move to the country so I can use more of it. But until then, I'll just dream of a big garden where I can grow all of our wheat and vegetables, some fruit trees...well, that's pretty much it. I can't really get on board with the cow thing because in order to keep a cow lactating it has to have a baby every year and guess what happens to that baby? Sold for veal. So sad. I can't do it. I would want to keep all the babies and then we'd be run...more
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Hats off to the editors and publisher of this awesome collection of more traditional skills, some of which are fast fading into memory. The book begins with locating and fashioning the home itself, detailing how to dig footers and a well, raise a log home, build a fireplace and moves on to gardening and pruning.
The reader is also instructed in obtaining and maintaining food sources, such as geese, ducks and rabbits, as well as canning, pickling, salting and smoking foods for the coming winter ah...more
The reader is also instructed in obtaining and maintaining food sources, such as geese, ducks and rabbits, as well as canning, pickling, salting and smoking foods for the coming winter ah...more
I forget how I came across this volume -- probably by browsing various subject headings in my library catalog -- but it doesn't matter. I'm just happy I did and I hope soon to add it permanently to my own bookshelves.
While this book is intended to be for those desiring to go out and survive in a less urban and technologically minded manner I found it quite useful to assist me in building realistic scenes while writing. For example, on page 21 is a nice chart that describes various soil conditio...more
While this book is intended to be for those desiring to go out and survive in a less urban and technologically minded manner I found it quite useful to assist me in building realistic scenes while writing. For example, on page 21 is a nice chart that describes various soil conditio...more
Excellent book
I found this at Cosco and it has taught me so much. So excited to put it to work.
Wish it had more information about chickens.
Wish it had more information about chickens.
I'm taking this book and moving to a farm. It's that awesome.
Useful for the back-to-the-lander in all of us.
Wow! This book is bizzarly facinating. I keep coming back to it and despite the fact that it is something like a manual I am reading it cover to cover. Even the projects that I am not all that interested in, like how to build a foundation for your log cabin, manage to keep my attention. I have actually wondered how a lot of these projects were done and now I know. If you have ever fantasized about going off the grid, put down The Traveler and pick up this book.
I've never sat down and read this book cover-to-cover, but over the years, I imagine I have read it in it's entirety several times. This is an excellent resource if you want to learn traditional skills - from selecting land to building a house on it, from planting a garden to preserving your fruits and vegetables, raising livestock, tanning hides, basket-weaving, looming your own cloth. If it's a traditional skill that a person possessed of pioneering spirit may need - it's probably explained in...more
An outstanding resource and read for anyone who is interested in farm and home crafts, touching upon everything from vegetable gardening, canning, recipes, raising and butchering livestock, making your own stove and other power sources, blacksmithing, stenciling, and many other topics for the person who really wants to know about going back to basics. Everytime I pick this book up, I learn something new and valuable.
A wonderful book, with loads of information, photos and diagrams about making a self-sufficient life for yourself even down to building your own house, raising a barn, choosing horses to work a field, cooking and preserving. It's not a book out of the 17th century and does include all the modern niceties you might want including power generation, combustion toilets and dealing with sewerage, solar hot water, home heating and more. I don't plan on going this hardcore with urban homesteading but i...more
Excellent and informative how-to "starter" book suggested by a friend who went from little experience to owning and running an small, commercial organic farm. He considers it his favorite book and gave it to us as a Christmas gift.
Touches on various topics and is part of a larger collection of books which delve deeper into the topics.
Touches on various topics and is part of a larger collection of books which delve deeper into the topics.
Completely packed with information. Most of it concerning things I don't need to ever know (building your own log cabin) but eternally fascinating. I'm always amazed at the wide range of skills people used to have, but have been lost along the wayside as we move to a more specialized society.
One of those great "geeks who love to learn and have great resource information on a wide variety of topics" books. These days that's typically called "the internet," but this book is certainly what could be used in place of Google. Or for those days the power is out/internet is down.
This book magically combines encyclopedic breadth of content (from how to buy a plot of land, to making soap and cheese, to using basic water and wind power, to tinsmithery, to laying a foundation, to quilting) with perfect clarity and simplicity of instructions.
This is the book I want for armageddon. There's a little bit of everything in here, and the instructions are detailed enough that I think I could actually use them to perform the given task.
Great book if you want to learn about living a sustainable lifestyle. It teaches a wide range of different skills from gardening to canning, and even how to raise farm animals.
Good book, but I felt like it was a little advanced for most folks. I don't plan to make my own furniture or build a log cabin. Otherwise, I liked it.
Good book that teaches forgotten skills. Building things, keeping a garden, livestock. Informational
This was a nice overview kind of book. It's really a coffeetable book, not a how-to guide.
While this book covers a good bit of do-it-yourself, living-off-the-land frontier-ism, it doesn't go in depth enough to be useful. Still, an interesting read.
Excellent resource for homesteaders! Has info on just about anything you can think of!
Can't keep my nose out of this book. It's one of my favorite things.
It has everything your great grandparents knew. Awesome.
another book for my shelf.
This book is AMAZING. I can't believe how thorough it is, and how much information is packed into one book. It's incredible, and fantastic.
The color illustrations and pictures really take this book higher than some other similar books, as well as the level of detail with which everything is treated (not too much, just enough).
This is something Chris and I decided to buy because it will be endlessly helpful when we build our own house and do the homestead thing.
The color illustrations and pictures really take this book higher than some other similar books, as well as the level of detail with which everything is treated (not too much, just enough).
This is something Chris and I decided to buy because it will be endlessly helpful when we build our own house and do the homestead thing.
taking a look at the library copy to see if I want to purchase one...
Feb 16, 2013
Gabrielle W.
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
own,
country-living
I love this book!! It's a must for everyone that dreams of or is the process of becoming self sufficient. It's filled with lots of illustrations, tips, and obviously, tons of info. The title explains it all, 'Back to Basics', it'll show you everything from building a home, canning veggies, and old time games!
This book is a gold mine. Wanna plant a garden? Clear land for a homestead? Keep bees? Generate your own sustainable energy? Make cheese? It's ALL here. If the world ever experiences a nuclear fallout, or the like, you will survive with this book. It will be a constant reference on my shelf for the rest of my life.
Probably one of the best works ever written. It should have a place on the shelf amongst Chaucer, Joyce, Cervantes, and Dante.
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Abigail R. Gehring is a writer who divides her time between New York City and rural Vermont. She is the editor of Back to Basics, Homesteading, and Self-Sufficiency, and author of Odd Jobs: How to Have Fun and Make Money in a Bad Economy and Dangerous Jobs: The World’s Riskiest Ways to Make an Extra Buck. The Simple Joys of Grandparenting: Stories, Nursery Rhymes, Recipes, Games, Crafts, and More....more
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