Books For City Folk Moving to a Farm: Sustainable Living Guides
While doing my usual round of off-grid living blog reading, I ran across a wonderful blog run by the Cockburn family in Tasmania. I liked the blog so much I decided to buy Linda Cockburn’s book Living the Good Life directly from her blog, thinking I was doing a good thing by directly supporting a family. A few hours later my money was returned and I was informed that she would rather have me buy the book from Amazon.com so there wasn’t so much of an impact from shipping it all the way from Australia. Well I am glad Linda called me out on my oversight because when I got over to Amazon I was confronted with hundreds of upsells (i.e. “If you like that book, you’ll love…”), many of which I ended up buying with absolutely zero buyer’s remorse.
All-in-all, I set out to get one book and ended up spending about $180 USD on a miniature library for a city-slicker who wants to give up the rat race and head out to the country. I spent hours pouring over user ratings and reviews, and here are the books I ended up buying (more reviews to come in the future):
- Storey’s Guide to Raising Dairy Goats: Breeds, Care, Dairying
- Storey’s Guide to Raising Sheep: Breeds, Care, Facilities
- Building Chicken Coops: Storey Country Wisdom Bulletin A-224
- Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens: Care / Feeding / Facilities
- Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners
- Five Acres and Independence
- The Self-sufficient Life and How to Live It (I can’t wait to read this one!)
- Pest-Proofing Your Garden (A Storey Country Wisdom Publication)
- Successful Small-Scale Farming: An Organic Approach
- The New Organic Grower: A Master’s Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener
- Storey’s Basic Country Skills: A Practical Guide to Self-Reliance
- Ball Blue Book of Preserving (The BIBLE of preserving food)
While we’re on the subjects of books that every new farmer and off-grid home owner should read, here are a few I’ve already chewed my way through:
- The Solar Living Sourcebook:
If you couldn’t tell by how often I reference this thing, it is the BIBLE of sustainable living.
- The Real Dirt on Farmer John:
This isn’t a book; it’s a DVD. But the documentary about John Peterson (AKA Farmer John) is as inspirational and entertaining as it is informative.
- First Aid & Emergency Preparedness Quick Reference Guide:
This book by the Red Cross is a must-have if you are living more than 50 miles from a hospital.
- Microhydro:
If you are lucky enough to have a perennial water source on your property – buy this book! I had no idea a tiny stream could produce so much power using such a small generator / turbine.
- Water Storage:
Everything you’ll need to know about catching and storing rainwater.
- Recipes From America’s Smallest Farms:
What I would consider a precursor to the Permaculture book below, here is a cook-book with recipes from experienced small-scale farmers across the country.
- Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual:
This book is a great place to start learning about becoming self-sufficient through permaculture / sustainable gardening.
- Animal, Vegetable, Miracle:
A best-selling book about topics such as “goats, the flowers of a peanut plant nosing their way into the dirt, and the lost art of turkey sex”.
- Other Storey’s Guides:
I’ve read several of these, and the first one I received in the male was a disappointment – at first. It was just so thin I thought I had been ripped off. But once I started reading Grow The Best Blueberries it quickly became apparent why these little books are so popular and highly recommended.
And of course we can’t forget Walden by Henry David Thoreau… This book bored the hell out of me when I was sixteen. I read it again last year, at age thirty, and now understand why it is a classic – and why my fast-paced mind at sixteen couldn’t see the beauty of it while reading each page like I was in some kind of race.
Great selection of titles, thank you!
Crunchy cons : how birkenstocked burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party) / Rod Dreher.
This is a great read and should be included on your list to be sure to encompass as many views as possible. That’s what it’s all about, right?
http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Want-Do-Illegal-Stories/dp/0963810952/ref=pd_bbs_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215707387&sr=1-3
Another good one I have read!
Kirsten,
Thanks for the reading tips! I think it is very interesting, and heartening, that most of us want the same things no matter what side of the political fence we are on. Most of us just want to be healthy, happy and free to do as we please as long as it isn’t hurting anyone else.
We are trying to get exposure for a new type of system for water well drilling. It is a completely new and different system than anything anyone has ever seen before, and it makes it possible for people to drill a well to 100′ for as little as $500; we believe it will revolutionize the industry, but it is relatively unknown at the moment, although we’ve already shipped plans and kits around the world to India, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Portugal, Italy, etc. We are very, very competitively priced for a home well drilling system because our method relies on finesse rather than brute force and the concept is very simple and easy to use.
This system makes it possible for anyone to provide a free local water source for themselves at a price which is affordable for just about anyone. All that is necessary is an air compressor, a modified air-powered drill, and some PVC pipe. Would you be interested in writing up a review to post to your website? You can see my website at http://www.HowToDrillAWell.com for more information about the system, as well as a short video which will show you how the system works. Please let me know if you’re interested and I’ll send you a set of plans and DVD for review right away.
Thanks,
Nathaniel Burson
Another great book is Seed to Seed by Susan Ashworth- re: saving heirloom veggie seeds. AND…The Encyclopedia of Country Living – A GREAT Source for EVERYTHING! A real homesteaders BIBLE.
Also check out my site for a one stop shop for ALL your Heirloom Garden Seeds! Backyard Heirloom Seeds & Herbs
Happy Gardening!
Yes, I too highly recommend Suzanne Ashworth’s Seed to Seed. It is invaluable for anyone wanting to learn to save seed. Have to watch this movie on Farmer John…LOL! Cheers!
Aug 25th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
[...] The main reason I would not recommend Five Acres and Independence to the person interested in learning about small farm management and living an off-grid or self-sustaining life is because most, if not all, of the information I found within the book (between bouts of dozing off) can be found in much more modern – and enjoyable – books like: – Successful Small-Scale Farming: An Organic Approach – Mini Farming for Self Sufficiency – Storey’s Basic Country Skills: A Practical Guide to Self-Reliance – The Solar Living Sourcebook – The Self-sufficient Life and How to Live It – And many others… [...]
Sep 3rd, 2008 at 4:21 pm
[...] that I had already read about in more general books like the Solar Living Sourcebook and many other books on off-grid and sustainable living. I ordered this book because I was ready to jump into slipform stone building, not composting [...]