Homesteading Books

Quail Days

I will only list books I like and  recommend!  This is a new feature so not all the categories are set up.  Or, populated.  Within categories, I am alphabetizing by title.  I will provide notes, but not all books currently have them (this is a new project) and I may change things around as this grows.  There is still a LOT of work to be done on this page, but it is workable enough to be posted!  

Outright cookbooks are in a different place but you will find fermentation, canning, and dehydrating items here instead of there.  Foraging will probably be both here and as well at the Cookbook link.  

Homesteading – Overview,  General Home Needs, DIY, and Miscellaneous Info –

  • Codes for Homeowners: Electrical – Mechanical – Plumbing – Building – Current with 2015-2017 Codes.  Black and Decker.  This was the copy I checked through when I built my home – PLEASE find out and obtain the most recent edition if you are building or renovating now.  
  • Foxfire 2.  Ghost stories, spring wild plant foods, spinning and weaving, midwifing, burial customs, corn shuckin’s, wagon making, and more affairs of plain living.  Ed: Eliot Wigginton.  
  • Foxfire 3. Ed: Eliot Wigginton.  
  • Foxfire 11. Ed:: Eliot Wigginton.  I plan to get the entire series over time.  “With this … series comes a wealth of the kind of folk wisdom and values of simple living that have made these volumes beloved bestsellers for the last three decades.”  Appalachian how-to and folk knowledge.  
  • How to Be Your Own General Contractor.  Robert E. Emmick.  NO, I was NOT my own GC in the construction of my house!  But it was a great guide to follow along with what my actual GC was doing, and to at least sound reasonably knowledgeable when talking with him!  (Unless you already know a bunch of the trades, don’t do this for a house build!!!  You’ll also need to be on-site with any subs you hire out OFTEN, which is difficult if you are still working a full time plus job two hours away.  Plus subs are more reluctant to sign in and put their all in a job if what you are doing is a one-off!)  
  • Independent Builder: Designing & Building a House Your Own Way, 2nd Edition,  Sam Clark.
  • A Landowner’s Guide to Managing Your Woods.  Hansen, Severson, Waterman.  
  • Not So Big House.  Sarah Susanka.  Keeping your build in perspective.  
  • The Self-Reliant Homestead: A Book of Country Skills.  Charles A. Sanders.
  • The Solar House: Passive Solar Heating and Cooling.  Daniel D. Chiras.
  • Step by Step:  Projects for Self-Sufficiency.  A variety of ideas.  
  • Storey’s Basic Country Skills: A Practical Guide to Self-Reliance.  John M. Storey.
  • The Woodland Homestead:  How To Make Your Land More Productive and Live More-Self-Sufficiently in the Woods.  Brett McLeod. 
  • Working with Tile.  Jim Barrett.

Livestock:  

Setting Up:/ Infrastructure:

    • Fences for Pasture Garden.  Barbara Damerow.
    • How to Build Animal Housing.  Carol Ekarius.
    • The Small Farm Guide to Working with Animals: How to Handle Livestock Safely and Humanely.   Temple Grandin.

Poultry:

    • The Chicken Health Handbook: A Complete Guide to Maximizing Flock Health and Dealing with Disease.  Gail Damerow.
    • How to Speak Chicken: Why Your Chickens Do What They Do & Say What They Say.  Melissa Caughey.  
    • Pastured Poultry Products.  Joel Salatin.
    • The Small-Scale Poultry Flock: An All-Natural Approach to Raising Chickens and Other Fowl for Home and Market Growers.  Harvey Ussery.
    • Storey’s Guide to Raising Poultry: Breeds, Care, Health.  Leonard S. Mercia. 
    • Success with Hens.  Robert Joos. 
    • Urban Quail Keeping.  Karen J. Puddephatt.

Rabbits: 

    • A potential down the road.  Maybe.  Or not.  

Goats and Sheep:  

    • The Angora Goat:  its History, Management and Diseases.  Stephanie Mitcham.
    • How to Garden for Goats.  Leigh Tate.  
    • How to Raise Goats.  Carol Amundson.

Alpaca:  

    • A probable down the road. 

Piggies and Hogs:  

    • A potential down the road (feeder pigs, only).  Maybe.  Or not.

Large Livestock: 

    • Buffalo for the Broken Heart: Restoring Life to a Black Hills Ranch, Dan O’Brien.
    • No interest in raising them, but it doesn’t hurt to learn about cattle or bison.  

Gardens and Yards, Foraging and Grass-Farming:  (Note, I am in Zone 5, and many of my choices reflect this relative zone.)  

  • Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening.  Louise Riotte. 
  • Farming on the Wild Side: The Evolution of a Regenerative Organic Farm and Nursery.  Nancy J. Hayden.  
  • Field Guide to Urban Gardening:How to Grow Plants, No Matter Where You Live: Raised Beds • Vertical Gardening • Indoor Edibles • Balconies and Rooftops • Hydroponics.  Kevin Espiritu.  Even if you are on a large rural space, helpful information so you aren’t wandering all over here and gone, gardening.  
  • The Forager’s Harvest:  A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants.  Samuel Thayer.  An excellent handbook with many useful photos for ID.  
  • Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long.  Eliot Coleman.  A MUST HAVE.  
  • The Garden Primer.  Barbara Damerow.  A MUST HAVE.
  • Growing Citrus: The Essential Gardener’s Guide.  Martin Page. 
  • The Massachusetts Gardener’s Companion: An Insider’s Guide to Gardening from the Berkshires to the Islands.  Barbara Gee.  This one was a useful gift given to me upon retirement, thank you Steve. W.  
  • Mycelium Running:  How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World, Paul Stamets.  The essential role of fungi and mushrooms in our ecosystem. 
  • The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times.  Carol Deppe.  
  • Simple Organic Kitchen & Garden: A Complete Guide to Growing and Cooking Perfect Natural Produce, with Over 150 Step-By-Step Recipes.  Ysanne Spevack.
  • Start with the Soil.  Grace Gershuny.
  • The Winter Harvest Handbook: Four Season Vegetable Production Using Deep-Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses.  Eliot Coleman.  A SERIOUS MUST-HAVE BOOK for anyone wanting to grow in temperate, four-season zones.  .  

Syrup – 

  • How to Make Maple Syrup: From Gathering Sap to Marketing Your Own Syrup,  Steve Anderson.

Preserving – 

  • The Beginner’s Guide to Preserving Food at Home: Easy Techniques for the Freshest Flavors in Jams, Jellies, Pickles, Relishes, Salsas, Sauces, and Frozen and Dried Fruits and Vegetables.  Janet Chadwick.
  • Fermented: A Four Season Approach to Paleo Probiotic Foods.  Jill Ciciarelli.  
  • Home Canning and Freezing.  Jacqueline Heriteau.
  • Keeping the Harvest:  Home Storage of Vegetables and Fruits. Nancy Thurber & Gretchen Mead.  
  • The New Seed-Starters Handbook.  Nancy Bubel.  
  • Real Food Fermentation:  Preserving Whole Fresh Food with Live Cultures in Your Home Kitchen.  Alex Lewin.
  • Wild Fermentation:  The Flavors, Nutrition and Craft of Live Culture Foods.  Sandor Ellix Katz.  

The Wild – 

  • Bark: A Field Guide to Trees of the Northeast.  Michael Wojtech.  
  • Forest Forensics: A Field Guide to Reading the Forested Landscape.  Tom Wessels.
  • Hammond’s Nature Atlas of America
  • The New Larousse Encyclopedia of Animal Life. Ed: Maurice Burton.  

The Tame – 

Livestock Guardian Animals: 

Dogs:  

Cats:  

 

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We don’t know yet what will be posted here..

Test area for this blog…

We shall see, test test test.

Life Long Learning Online, offline, just anything.. another test area.

More sest test test.

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