With just a quarter acre of land, you can feed a family of four with fresh, organic food year-round. The Backyard Homestead is a comprehensive guide to self-sufficiency that gives you all the information you need to grow and preserve a variety of vegetables, fruits, herbs, nuts, and grains; keep chickens for eggs and meat; raise cows, sheep, and goats for meat or milk; raise pigs and rabbits; and keep honeybees. Simple instructions make it easy to enjoy canned, frozen, dried, and pickled produce all winter; use your own grains to make bread, pasta, and beer; turn fresh milk into delicious homemade yogurt, butter, and cheese; make your own wine, cordials, and herbal teas; and much more. It truly is possible to eat entirely from your backyard. Want a companion planner book, too? The Backyard Homestead Seasonal Planner 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.

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.

Detailed instructions for making candles, furniture polish, beauty products and nearly 100 honey-themed recipes are included. Fully illustrated with how-to photography and unique etchings, The Beekeeper's Bible will provide any backyard enthusiast or gardener with the confidence to dive into beekeeping (or simply daydream about harvesting their own honey while relaxing in the comfort of an armchair).

While keeping bees certainly isn't rocket science, doing it properly does involve decent levels of understanding, commitment, and attention to detail. Getting the basics right is essential, and this demands a solid appreciation of important areas such as hives management, breed choice, and health requirements. There is plenty to think about for those getting their first bees, and careful planning is the key to a successful initial experience. One thing that complicates matters is the bees' ability to disguise problems. Although this might seem a useful ability, it actually makes recognizing trouble in the crucial, early stages that much more difficult, even for experienced owners. And although bees are remarkably resilient creatures, they remain vulnerable to predators, disease and climate changes. There is plenty of potential for things to go wrong and, unfortunately, it's always the bees that suffer when problems strike.

Whether you're a newcomer or an old hand, The Beekeeper's Problem Solver provides the information you need to nip problems in the bud and, better still, avoid them in the first place. Let longtime bee keeper and apiary expert James E. Tew guide you through 100 common problems faced by beekeepers, spelling out in clear and simple terms what the underlying cause is and how to solve it. Each one is tackled in depth, with photographs and diagrams, as well as a wide range of practical tips and useful insights. The problems are divided into ten chapters covering the main areas of beekeeping, from health to housing and parasites to predators. A subject-specific index is also included for easy reference.

The Bio-Integrated Farm is a 21st-century manual for managing nature’s resources. This groundbreaking book brings “system farming” and permaculture to a whole new level. Author Shawn Jadrnicek presents new insights into permaculture, moving beyond the philosophical foundation to practical advanced designs based on a functional analysis. Holding his designs to a higher standard, Jadrnicek’s components serve at least seven functions (classical permaculture theory only seeks at least two functions). With every additional function a component performs, the design becomes more advanced and saves more energy.

Renowned outdoors expert and New York Times best-selling author Dave Canterbury provides you with all you need to know about packing, trapping, and preparing food for your treks and wilderness travels. Whether you're headed out for a day hike or a weeklong expedition, you'll find everything you need to survive (and eat well) out in the wild. Canterbury makes certain you're set by not only teaching you how to hunt and gather, but also giving you recipes to make while on the trail. Complete with illustrations to accompany his instructions and a full-color photo guide of plants to forage and those to avoid, this is the go-to reference to keep in your pack. The Bushcraft Field Guide to Trapping, Gathering, and Cooking in the Wild helps you achieve the full outdoor experience. With it, you'll be prepared to set off on your trip and enjoy living off the land.

The information you need to nip problems in the bud … and, better still, avoid them in the first place. Let longtime chicken keeper and poultry expert Chris Graham guide you through 100 common problems faced by chicken keepers. You'll discover in clear and simple terms what the underlying cause is and how to solve it.

The Community-Scale Permaculture Farm describes not only the history of the D Acres project, but its evolving principles and practices that are rooted in the land, its inhabitants and the joy inherent in collective empowerment.

For almost 20 years, D Acres of New Hampshire has challenged and expanded the common definition of a farm. As an educational center that researches, applies and teaches skills of sustainable living and small-scale organic farming, D Acres serves more than just a single function to its community. By turns it is a hostel for travelers to northern New England, a training center for everything from metalworking and woodworking to cob building and seasonal cooking, a gathering place for music, poetry, joke-telling and potluck meals, and much more.

While this book provides a wide spectrum of practical information on the physical systems designed into a community-scale homestead, author Josh Trought also reviews the economics and organizational particulars that D Acres has experimented with over the years.

The D Acres model envisions a way to devise a sustainable future by building a localized economy that provides more than seasonal produce, a handful of eggs and green appliances. With the goal of perennial viability for humanity within their ecosystem, D Acres is attempting an approach to sustainability that encompasses practical, spiritual and ethical components. In short: They are trying to create a rural community ecology that evolves in perpetuity.

No other book contains such a wealth of innovative ideas and ways to make your farm or homestead not only more sustainable, but more inclusive of, and beneficial to, the larger community. Readers will find information on such subjects as:

• Working with pigs to transform forested landscapes into arable land
• Designing and building unique, multifunctional farm and community spaces using various techniques and materials
• Creating and perpetuating diverse revenue streams to keep your farm organization solvent and resilient
• Receiving maximum benefits and yields for the farm without denigrating resources or the regional ecology
• Implementing a fair and effective governance structure
• Constructing everything from solar dehydrators and cookers to tree houses and ponds
• Connecting and partnering with the larger community beyond the farm

Emphasizing collaboration, cooperation and mutualism, this book promises to inspire a new generation of growers, builders, educators, artists and dreamers who are seeking new and practical ways to address today’s problems on a community scale.

Wild meat, hunted in a responsible way, is one of the most healthful, sustainable foods possible. Depending on how it is done, hunting can be as local, intimate and humane as it gets. And aside from this, it demands the hunter enter a world of awareness, wildness, life and death that we have lost connection to as a culture.

The Compassionate Hunter's Guidebook is a guide for those that come to the act of hunting with pure intentions, motivated by a desire for healthy food that comes directly from the land where they live. This practical manual suggests that hunting is not a "sport" and the animals whose lives are taken are not "game." It combines a deep, philosophical exploration of the ethics of killing with detailed instructions on every step of the process including:

• Understanding your prey
• Tools, techniques and preparation
• The act of the hunt
• From forest to table: processing, preserving and preparing your kill

A unique and comprehensive, fully illustrated guide to the complexity, ethics and spirit of the hunt, The Compassionate Hunter is a must-read for beginning and experienced hunters alike. It will appeal to anyone who wishes to delve more deeply into the complex, humbling and ultimately profound reality of our relationship with the food that nourishes us.

A step-by-step ultimate guide to building life-saving structures for every climate and wilderness situation which is for beginners and experienced outdoor enthusiasts alike. Without shelter, a person stuck in the wild can die of exposure in a matter of hours—long before they run out of food or water. But most people, even hardened backpackers, don’t know how to build an adequate shelter. Packed with 30 easy-to-follow tutorials and over 200 step-by-step photos, this all-encompassing primer teaches readers how to construct a wide range of life-saving shelters using the natural materials available.