This is the key reference to living off the land. Packed with practical information and tried-and-tested tips, author John Seymour's visionary handbook explains how to reap the harvest, respect the land, stay healthy and waste nothing.

The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It teaches all the skills needed to live independently: harnessing natural forms of energy, raising crops and keeping livestock, preserving foodstuffs, making beer and wine, basketry, carpentry, weaving, and much more.

This new expanded edition includes 150 new full-color illustrations and a special section in which Seymour, the father of the back-to-basics movement, explains the philosophy of self-sufficiency and its power to transform lives and create communities. More relevant than ever in our high-tech world, The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It is the ultimate practical guide for realists and dreamers alike.

Recommended Product for Wiser Living: Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, MOTHER EARTH NEWS is recommending books to readers. For 40 years, MOTHER EARTH NEWS has been North America’s “Original Guide to Living Wisely,” creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature.

The Solar Food Dryer describes how to use solar energy to preserve your summer's harvest. With your own solar-powered food dryer, you can quickly and efficiently dry all your extra garden veggies, fruits and herbs with free sunshine and enjoy their goodness all year long! Solar food dryers perform amazingly well under a wide range of conditions, working effectively in almost any climate where you can grow fruits and vegetables. As a bonus, solar food drying is a great way to learn about solar energy and experience the incredible power of the sun — as well as being a great deal of fun! The Solar Food Dryer includes everything you need to get started:

• Complete step-by-step plans for building a high-performance, low-cost solar food dryer from readily available materials
• Solar energy design concepts
• Food drying tips and recipes
• Resources, references, solar charts and more

Fully illustrated with both photographs and helpful design and construction plans, The Solar Food Dryer also includes resource and reference lists, and more. It will appeal to gardeners everywhere, to solar energy enthusiasts and to everyone interested in healthy foods, sustainable lifestyles, self-reliance and preserving more locally-grown produce for year-round enjoyment.

Author Eben Fodor is an avid organic gardener with a background in solar energy and engineering. He's always looking for opportunities to enjoy nature and the sun — such as solar food drying! He's even invented a super-efficient solar-heated sauna. He works as a community planning consultant in Eugene, Ore.

Recommended Product for Wiser Living: Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, Mother Earth News is recommending books to readers. For 40 years, Mother Earth News has been North America’s “Original Guide to Living Wisely,” creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature.

Reduce your lawn and your grocery budget. Take gardening to the next level! Would you like to grow healthy food for your table? Do you want to learn the secrets of farming even though you live in a neighborhood? Author Amy Stross talks straight about why the suburbs might be the ideal place for a small farm.

In these pages you'll learn:

• How to make your landscape as productive as it is beautiful
• Why the suburbs are primed with food-growing potential
• How to choose the best crops for success
• Why you don’t need the perfect yard to have a micro-farm
• How to use easy permaculture techniques for abundant harvests

The Useful Book is a modern and energetically designed encyclopedia of DIY.with step-by-step instructions and illustrations, relevant charts, sidebars, lists, and handy toolboxes.Practice measuring, cutting, and nailing by building a birdhouse. Make a bookshelf or a riveted metal picture frame. The tools that everyone should have, and dozens of cool projects that teach fundamental techniques.

Make your food garden more productive and more enjoyable! These 39 simple-to-make projects — including cold frames, compost bins, planters, raised beds, potting benches, gates, trellises, storage containers, outdoor furniture and more — will increase your harvest, make your garden chores easier, and turn your garden and yard into an appealing outdoor space for relaxing and enjoying the fruits of your labors. Each project includes step-by-step instructions, detailed illustrations, complete materials and lumber lists, no-nonsense tips, and a four-color photograph of the finished product. Many of the projects are ideal for beginners, and most can be completed in just a few hours.

Recommended Product for Wiser Living: Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, MOTHER EARTH NEWS is recommending books to readers. For 40 years, MOTHER EARTH NEWS has been North America’s “Original Guide to Living Wisely,” creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature.

Are you looking for ways to save water -- or money? This accessible guide by Laura Allen, founder of Greywater Action, explains how to use water smartly and efficiently, increasing supply, saving money, reducing wear on your septic system, and fulfilling your home and garden needs. She describes proven conservation techniques, explains how to create a water-wise landscape, and provides illustrated, step-by-step instructions for setting up a waterless composting toilet as well as systems to reuse greywater, harvest rainwater, and more.

Hobby farming is alive and thriving in semi-rural, suburban, and rural areas across the country, and female farmers have been cited as the fastest growing sector within the farming community in recent years. With more than 1 million women in the United States and Canada describing farming as their primary source of income, and many more for whom hobby farming is just that—a hobby—the time is right for a publication dedicated to hobby farming from a female perspective. Written for women, by a woman, this insightful volume is packed with stories and advice from women hobby farmers and looks at female-specific farming challenges as well as issues that all farmers face.

Inside The Woman Hobby Farmer:

•Discussions on the who, what, why, and where of hobby farming

•Deciding on your farming goals and making a plan

•What to expect in your new endeavor

•How to decide what to plant and prepare your planting sites

•Advice on feeding, caring for, and housing different types of livestock

•A look at “agripreneurship”—running and marketing your hobby farm as a successful business

•Stories, quotes, and advice from successful female hobby farmers

Bringing together the collective wisdom of a past generation of craftsmen, Traditional Toolmaking provides an in-depth record of the skills and techniques that made the mass production revolution of the 20th century possible. When first published in 1915, this book was an answer to a vast array of toolroom problems and explained many essential toolmaking operations. It includes timeless practices as well as some personally tailored methods by master toolmakers, including how to:

• make straight forming tools
• grind curved surfaces
• gauge the angle of a thread
• re-flute worn cutters
• and much more!

With detailed descriptions of every procedure, essential mathematical rules and calculations for use in the workshop, and a number of illustrative figures, this book stands as an invaluable reference for those with an interest in practicing hands-on toolmaking processes.

The homesteading movement is continuing to grow, as more people are stepping up to have a hand in where their food comes from. Whether you want to dabble or immerse yourself completely in the do-it-yourself, back-to-basics lifestyle, Welcome to the Farm is a comprehensive, fully illustrated guide to growing the very best food right in your own backyard. Shaye Elliott takes readers on a journey that teaches them how to harvest baskets full of organic produce, milk a dairy cow (and make butter), plant a homestead orchard, can jams and jellies, and even raise chickens and bees. From her experience running The Elliott Homestead, Shaye provides all the how-to wisdom you need to know about:

• The benefits of a home garden
• The basics of seed starting
• Building your own greenhouse
• What belongs in the winter garden
• Canning, freezing, and dehydrating techniques and recipes
• The pros and cons of caged vs. free-range chickens
• Keeping a dairy cow and what to do with all the milk
• Raising animals for meat
• Making your own cider and wine
• And so much more!

Welcome to the Farm is aimed to serve homesteaders and urban-farmers alike, guiding them through the beginning stages of small-area farming and utilizing whatever amount of space they have available for optimal and delicious food production.

Disasters often strike without warning and leave a trail of destruction in their wake. Yet armed with the right tools and information, survivors can fend for themselves and get through even the toughest circumstances. Matthew Stein's When Disaster Strikes provides a thorough, practical guide for how to prepare for and react in many of life's most unpredictable scenarios.

In this disaster-preparedness manual, he outlines the materials you'll need—from food and water, to shelter and energy, to first-aid and survival skills—to help you safely live through the worst. When Disaster Strikes covers how to find and store food, water, and clothing, as well as the basics of installing back-up power and lights. You’ll learn how to gather and sterilize water, build a fire, treat injuries in an emergency, and use alternative medical sources when conventional ones are unavailable.

Stein instructs you on the smartest responses to natural disasters—such as fires, earthquakes, hurricanes and floods—how to keep warm during winter storms, even how to protect yourself from attack or other dangerous situations. With this comprehensive guide in hand, you can be sure to respond quickly, correctly, and confidently when a crisis threatens.