YouTube Channel: Becky’s Homestead
To those that may not be very familiar with this nature-oriented lifestyle, homesteading is a self-sufficient, healthy way of life that numerous people, in mostly rural areas, have adapted and chosen to apply to their lives. It involves depending primarily on oneself for a majority, if not all, of the essential goods and services. Homesteaders often make their own clothes, grow their own foods such as fruits, vegetables, and wheat in addition to utilizing the old-fashioned trade and barter service between neighbors. Check out these five books below to learn more about this agricultural lifestyle!
1. How to Store Your Home-Grown Produce by John and Val Harrison
This book is spectacular for providing detailed information regarding the storage of your surplus fruits and vegetables of the season. It explains how to perform various methods of storing and preserving and provides a few recipes and quick guides for different fruits and vegetables. A very useful book to read if you plan on surviving off the food that you grow.
Source: Amazon
2. The Ultimate Guide to Homesteading by Nicole Faires
A wonderfully comprehensive guide to all of the skills and knowledge required to be a homesteader. It covers everything from money, building a shelter and obtaining resources, to raising livestock and gardening. This book also covers topics such as first aid, making primitive tools and how to do certain maintenance jobs around the home.
Source: Amazon
3. Grow a Sustainable Diet by Cindy Conner
This book focuses on the mathematics and planning involved in preparing a garden to be of adequate size and one that can provide adequate food supply to sustain your families diet. It provides information on how to grow enough calories, protein, calcium etc. to support a healthy diet. It also explains companion planting, crop rotating, food storage and preparation and structures for the sustainable garden.
4. The Ultimate Self-Sufficiency Handbook by Abigail Gehring
Abigail Gehring has written several books on homesteading, self sufficiency, country living and going back to the basics. I recommend reading all three if you are truly serious about becoming a homesteader but her Ultimate Self-Sufficiency Handbook is a good place to start learning all you need to know about growing vegetables and raising chickens, preserving your harvest, curing meats, baking cakes and pies, keeping bees, spinning your own wool and much more. The author has several books on the diverse topic so you can’t go wrong with picking up a book written by Gehring. Also by the author: Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills, Homesteading: A Backyard Guide and The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Living.
Source: Amazon
5. Backyard Homesteading by David Toht
Another comprehensive guide to homesteading though David Toht’s book focuses on realistic and modern plot sizes and how to accomplish a homestead with less acreage. It provides information on vegetable and fruit growing, raising chickens, beekeeping and how to harvest and store your produce. Backyard farming does not have the room or the facilities to cater for livestock such as cows, or have the need for tractor maintenance, therefore the book does not bother with information such as this. This is a good starters book to read if you want to practice homesteading in an urban garden.
Source: Amazon
Featured image via Resilience
