Are you interested in the country lifestyle or becoming more self-reliant? Do you think about someday raising livestock or growing crops? If you're ready to make these thoughts a reality, The Complete Illustrated Guide to Farming is the perfect place to start. Farming experts Philip Hasheider and Samantha Johnson explain farming from start to finish: build your own fence, repair your own machinery, and know what to look for when you're buying a tractor. Instead of buying a book on each subject area, you need just this one, which condenses the most important and relevant information on every aspect of running a farm into a single handy volume. Unlike other books, it's designed specifically for the owner of a working farm. This practical illustrated guide provides hard-won expert advice on raising livestock, growing crops, making repairs, harvesting and butchering, managing a woodlot, and more. It's everything you need to know to establish and maintain your farm.

Increasing the energy efficiency of your home can save you money, help the environment and enhance your comfort, but how do you decide which improvements are the most beneficial and cost-effective? Completely revised to incorporate the latest developments in green technology, The Consumer Guide to Home Energy Savings is the definitive resource for consumers who want to better their home's performance while reducing their energy bills.

Well-organized and highly readable, The Consumer Guide to Home Energy Savings begins with an overview of the relationships between energy use, economics and the environment. Updated and expanded chapters focus on specific aspects of any home, such as heating and cooling, ventilation, electronics, lighting, cooking and laundry, and provide helpful explanations for each, including:

• Energy use characteristics
• Comparisons between available technologies
• Cost-effective repair and replacement options
• Step-by-step guidance for finding the right equipment

This comprehensive resource is packed with tips on improving existing equipment and guidance for when and why to invest in new purchases, as well as a reminder to check local government and utilities for purchase or retrofit grants or incentives. It is a must-read for anyone concerned about reducing both their energy bills and their environmental impact.

In this book, you’ll learn how to build inexpensive infrastructure, harness energy from the sun, manage an off-grid home, grow vegetables in tough conditions, preserve the harvest, build an earthbag root cellar, raise beginner’s livestock, and so much more. These attainable, game-changing tips and projects have allowed the Stongers to live a simpler, more rewarding life with their children. If they can do it, so can you!

Rainfall levels are rarely optimal, but there are hundreds of things you can do to efficiently conserve and use the water you do have and to reduce the impact of drought on your soil, crops, livestock, and farm or ranch ecosystem.

America’s favorite small farm tractor is retrieved from the shed and shined up for duty in this essential guide by tractor repair expert Rachel Gingell and longtime writer Kenneth Updike. The Farmall Cub Encyclopedia is a comprehensive manual for any self-starter, at-home historian, or backyard farmer.

This anniversary edition brings us generations of voices and lessons about the three essential Appalachian values of faith, family, and the land. We listen to elders share their own memories of how things used to be, and to the new generations eager to preserve traditional values in a more complicated world.

The Foxfire 45th Anniversary Book continues the beloved tradition of celebrating a simpler life, this time with a focus on Appalachian music, folk legends, and a history full of outsized personalities.

First published in 1972, The Foxfire Book was a surprise best-seller that brought Appalachia’s philosophy of simple living to hundreds of thousands of readers. Whether you wanted to hunt game, bake the old-fashioned way, or learn the art of successful moonshining, the Foxfire Museum and Heritage Center had a contact who could teach you how with clear, step-by-step instructions.

Today, Foxfire’s mission remains the same, and The Foxfire Book of Simple Living is both a rich look back at five decades of collected wisdom, as well as an intriguing look forward at the artists and craftsman who are working to preserve the Appalachian tradition for future generations.

A pioneering urban farmer and MacArthur "Genius Award" winner points the way to building a new food system that can feed-and heal-broken communities.

The son of a sharecropper, Will Allen had no intention of ever becoming a farmer himself. But after years in professional basketball and as an executive for Kentucky Fried Chicken and Procter & Gamble, Allen cashed in his retirement fund for a two-acre plot a half mile away from Milwaukee's largest public housing project. The area was a food desert with only convenience stores and fast-food restaurants to serve the needs of local residents.

In the face of financial challenges and daunting odds, Allen built the country's preeminent urban farm-a food and educational center that now produces enough vegetables and fish year-round to feed thousands of people. Employing young people from the neighboring housing project and community, Growing Power has sought to prove that local food systems can help troubled youths, dismantle racism, create jobs, bring urban and rural communities closer together, and improve public health. Today, Allen's organization helps develop community food systems across the country.

An eco-classic in the making, The Good Food Revolution is the story of Will's personal journey, the lives he has touched, and a grassroots movement that is changing the way our nation eats.

The Half-Acre Homestead is a record, with over 500 color photos, of Lloyd and his wife Lesley’s owner-built home and garden. They show you what the house and garden look like, how various functions (solar panels, septic systems, skylights, etc.) operate, and tools they use in the kitchen, garden, and shop.

Take control of your own health care and that of your family, pets, and livestock, with tips on growing and foraging herbs safely and ethically; secrets to preservation and processing; and easy, soothing recipes. With bonus sections on creating your own herbal apothecary, creating a foraging journal, and more, this handy book is sure to become your go-to reference for all things herbal.

Energy bills have skyrocketed in North America, and traditional energy sources can be as damaging to the environment as they are to your pocketbook. The Homeowner's Guide to Renewable Energy will show you how to slash your home energy costs while dramatically reducing your carbon footprint.

Completely revised and updated, this new edition describes the most practical and affordable methods for making significant improvements in home energy efficiency and tapping into clean, affordable, renewable energy resources. If implemented, these measures will save the average homeowner tens of thousands of dollars over the coming decades.

Focusing on the latest technological advances in residential renewable energy, this guide examines each alternative energy option available, including:

• Solar hot water and solar hot air systems
• Space heat: passive and active solar retrofits and heat pumps
• Wood heat
• Passive cooling
• Electricity from solar, wind, and microhydro
• Hydrogen, fuel cells, methane digesters, and biodiesel

This well-illustrated and accessible guide is an essential resource for those wanting to enter the renewable energy field. Packed with practical tips and guidelines, it gives readers sufficient knowledge to hire and communicate effectively with contractors. It’s a must-read for anyone interested in saving money and achieving energy independence.

The Homesteader’s Natural Chicken Keeping Handbook is the modern homesteader’s guide to raising, feeding, breeding, selling, and enjoying the noblest animal on the farm: the chicken. From the rooster’s crow in the morning to the warm egg in the nesting box, chickens are the gateway livestock for almost every homesteader and backyard farm enthusiast. In this book, you’ll learn everything you need to know about raising chickens naturally. Author Amy K. Fewell guides you in:

• Understanding why chickens do what they do
• Creating your own poultry or egg business
• Preventing and treating ailments with herbal remedies
• Setting up your property, coop, and brooder
• Hatching chicks
• Purchasing chickens properly
• Cooking delicious recipes with your farm-fresh eggs and poultry

This is heritage chicken keeping skills 101, with a modern twist. Gain knowledge about naturally keeping chickens through every stage of their lives, and fully embrace the joy and ease of raising all-natural chickens on your homestead.

Such self-sufficiency is largely the result of basing their farming practices around intensive pasture management. witty and welcoming style, The Independent Farmstead covers everything from choosing a species of ruminant and incorporating it into a grass-based system to innovative electric fencing and watering systems. Best of all, it’s the kind of rare how-to book that the authors themselves view not as a compendium of one-size-fits-all instructions but as “the beginning of a conversation,” one that is utterly informative, sincere, and inspiring.