(Part 3) Top products from r/homestead

I really like Putting Food By for preservation guidance.

If you are looking for less how to, Barbara Kingsolver's book, Animal Vegetable Miracle is a wonderful read.

This isn't so much of a homesteading book, but Sara Stein's Noah's Garden is one of my favorites. It's about rethinking the way we garden so that we are doing it in harmony with ecology and nature.

I've been a fan of Ben Falk for a long time and he put out his first book not that long ago, The Resilient Farm and Homestead which is awesome particulary if you live in a colder climate. I have a feeling he will be putting out a new edition though soon given how he wrote the first one so you might want to wait on a purchase of that one.

Again, if you are a cold climate person, almost anything by Elliot Coleman is really great. He does a lot of extending the season kind of stuff that is good for shorter season growers.

Edible Landscaping is more for people with yards (as opposed to acreage I guess....) but I think the book is brilliant and well written and very inspirational with lots of resources.

That's our goal, too. We have offered grass hay, but they've never been too interested in it. Their favorite forage (in the summer) were areas of clover, but they really loved pasture grasses.

In the winter, we've been giving them all of our windfall fruit, squashes, root crops as they become less optimal, etc. But, they still love the grasses, too, and have rooted it all up. Which is a big bonus for us! See book Plowing with Pigs

https://extension.umd.edu/hgic

Consider signing up for gardening classes, lectures, and seminars. Try your local extension service, garden clubs, botanical gardens, and plant nurseries. Youtube has a wealth of information, but it may not apply to where you are. There's a regional aspect to growing.

Start gardening where you are right now. Skip trying to start things from seeds (it's July), and just see if you can keep some herbs alive in pots for now, like basil or mint. Learn to cook from scratch and how to can/preserve/ferment your food. Reddit, youtube, and the internet in general is full of countless resources on this and other related topics, everything from r/gifrecipes to r/cooking to /r/EatCheapAndHealthy/ to r/baking to r/homebrewing - and of course there's tons of garden-related subreddits.

Buying your actual piece of land is step #4209 of homesteading, not #1. Without experience, you'll have no way of evaluating whether the land actually fits what you want to do or not.

Here's two books to consider, to help you learn how to garden where you are currently -

https://www.amazon.com/Grow-Great-Grub-Organic-Food-from-Small-Spaces/dp/0307452018/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/The-Urban-Homestead-Expanded-Revised-Edition-Your-Guide-to-Self-Sufficient-Living-in-the-Heart-of-the-City-Process-Self-reliance-Series/dp/1934170100/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8

I can't agree more with u/SherrifOfNothingtown's questions. I would only add a couple more:

- For most farmers, farming requires community. Will you be able to rent a tractor at both sites? Will you be able to trade some of your product for something else? True self-sufficiency is difficult, especially up north. I tend to think more about the community I'd be relying on.

- I don't want to rush your relationship with your girlfriend, but are kids are in the picture? That could change the whole calculation. My wife and I were looking at larger plots of land, but the best schools are closer to cities.

One final thought: I'm personally toying with John Jeavons' Grow Biointensive Method and will start a plot in the 2020 growing season. The whole design of that farming technique is to grow food for a family on very, very small plots. Could be worth checking out. "How to Grow More Vegetables"

Between "Back to Basics" and a trusty copy of Fannie Farmer for cooking, you can cover a LOT of good ground. There are lots of great books, but those are two I can't live without. To be clear, both are about techniques and methods, not so much the theory behind it. They're fantastic reference books though.

I'm a bit of a generalist. I always have lots of projects going on at once, each in a different state of completion. The books I have listed I do own, and read and pick through the most often.

The first two are generalist books. I say that because they both have such a breadth of information it's hard to describe them. The third is more specialist in that it covers only a single subject, but does so in such detail and in a recipe type format that it's easy to follow along. It starts with how to build a blacksmith shop, what tools you need, and how to use tools you make to build bigger tools to help build other, bigger tools.

https://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Country-Living-40th-Anniversary/dp/1570618402

https://www.amazon.com/Self-Sufficient-Life-How-Live/dp/0756654505/ref=pd_sim_14_3?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=FR7BRBKJ9CA3XRWW1N8H

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Modern-Blacksmith-Alexander-Weygers/dp/0898158966/ref=sr_1_15?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1473081102&sr=1-15&keywords=blacksmithing

Alone in the Wilderness: https://youtu.be/ShLLp94RZMY

Accompanying Book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0882405136/ref=pd_aw_sim_74_2/168-8232578-2674509?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=JF37GEHWS34EEPZW9DCF

Multiple Alaskan Homesteads, the user who posted this video was apart of one of these families before leaving for civilization: https://youtu.be/UlPzlmqp7tI

A documentary by VICE that is dedicated to the Korth family, seen in the above video: https://youtu.be/Iq0rZn8HFmQ

Book about the Korth family from the previous two links: https://www.amazon.com/Final-Frontiersman-Family-Alaskas-Wilderness/dp/074345314X

Those last two are the most interesting, because the Korths are the only human residents of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, so they are basically the only residents of an area as large as the state of South Carolina, which is something I can relate to since I grew up in SC....basically the Korths are the most badass homesteaders alive; SC is pretty fucking big.

EDIT: Well I read that wrong, I thought you wanted documentaries to watch.....well if you have money for the plane ticket and the time you could try and meet one of them, but again the third link is from one of the members from one of those families except he's "civilized" so try and message him on YouTube.

The LL Bean cookbook for game is awesome can use any meat to substitute if they don't eat game.
https://www.amazon.com/L-L-Bean-Game-Fish-Cookbook/dp/0394511913

if you grow an apple tree from a seed the chance of having edible fruit is ridiculously small. And if you actually end up with one, you can name it, sell grafts from it and become quite wealthy off of it.
For example, every Granny Smith Apple is descended from one particular tree in Australia somewhere. But if you take the seeds from that apple, it's offspring will have nothing in common with it.

Source: The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World

Great book but my wife crushed my composting toilet idea after I read it. Farmers of Forty Centuries talks a lot of using Night Soil. Farmers would haul the Night Soil from the cities to their farm for free.

I'm not really sure, but i would recommend you try and get this book.
https://www.amazon.com/New-Complete-Book-Self-Sufficiency-Realists/dp/0751364428

His book from what i remember feature different types of setups for different sizes of land.

link?

edit: JK I just googled it - http://www.amazon.com/Linen-flax-seed-woven-cloth/dp/0764334662
Looks like there's no ebook =(

Are you looking for novels or non-fiction?
I tried googling: "narrative homesteading book"

Found this:

http://www.amazon.com/place-country-narrative-imperfect-homesteading/dp/0156720086

http://ask.metafilter.com/261518/Pioneer-Homesteading-Country-Life-books

http://info.mannapro.com/homestead/bid/126638/Our-Readers-Choice-Homesteading-Book-List

2nd link looks to have a lot of interesting books listed.

https://www.amazon.com/Berne-GWB515-Womens-Overall-Realtree/dp/B07KT9ZLMN/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=Berne+women%27s+overalls&qid=1574522007&sr=8-3

I got my wife a set of women's suspender style insulated coveralls and matching coat in purple a few years ago at a local farm store made by the same company (Berne) but couldn't find that exact product on amazon. They're a Carhart knock-off, she uses them for chores, sledding, etc, they've been very durable.

Ahh, I'm probably referring to the same notes then - I have the Self-Sufficient Gardener which is probably part of/an addition to of your book.

I have 4 beds, each 10x10ft, and do the rotation I described quite easily - the only thing that's difficult is that since I have raised beds (and no spare space) digging down and earthing up potatoes can be a pain. If you're limited on space, then an option is to skip the potato rotation altogether, and grow these in e.g. potato bags instead, and use the extra space for other crops (sweetcorn or jerusalem artichoke perhaps?) or for more rows of the other crops.

It's also worth looking into square-foot gardening - you don't need to work in actual squares, but the measurements they provide can give you better 'density' than what the seed packets say. In general I follow the spacing given for between plants, but ignore the row spacing.

For example I can easily grow in a 10ft row:

160 carrots, beetroots etc
90 leeks, onions, or spinach
40 broad bean or pea plants
10 cabbages, brussel sprouts, fennel

It really maximises your growing area, and the lack of space between plants keeps the weeds down!

We liked Dick & James Strawbridge's Self Sufficiency for the 21st Century. It's not a bible, but a good data point for study.

A must have book for anyone starting out in chickens is your chickens.

If I was you, the first thing I would do is head down to the library and check out The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and read that first. Then I would start reading anything you can find about farming and being self sufficient.

I'm pretty sure you boil the cocoons before they hatch; but my entire knowledge of silkworms comes from reading this book as a child, so I may be wrong.

I could spend hours listing all the fun ways that the agricultural industry abuses its workers. While it's a very depressing story, I'm not sure it's much different than what has generally happened to the American economy - basically, big corporations have worked to systematically suppress unions and deregulate labor standards. Here are some of the fun things that regularly happen right here in the United States:

1. Beef production hasn't changed much over the last few decades. Unlike the poultry industry, it's notoriously difficult to standardize cattle size and shape, which means that most of the work can't be reliably done by machines. So, essentially, most slaughterhouses operate by having people stand right next to each other on an assembly line with giant knives, hacking away at quickly moving hunks of cow. Naturally, the work is quite dangerous, and the faster the plant moves, the more likely workers will get injured from knives or pulled muscles. Unfortunately, the industry has been increasing the speed of the production line for decades in order to maximize profits. When a worker does get injured, an entire system is in place to discourage the person from heading to the doctor - very often, they are given clearance by a nurse and thrown right back into the assembly line until they are too injured to work, after which they are quietly (or not so quietly) pushed out. The fatality rate in meat packing plants is one of the highest in any industry.
   
   
2. Even worse are the cleanup crews that must completely sanitize an entire building of dangerous equipment before work resumes the next day. These people walk around slaughterhouses with high-powered hoses filled with steaming hot dangerous chemicals, which creates a fog so dense that it's difficult to see. In order for the machines to get properly clean, they often must be turned on, meaning that you have people running around spinning blades practically blind. I don't have to really spell out what sometimes happens.
   
   
3. The poultry industry is largely controlled these days by a handful of huge companies. For ranchers to sell chicken in the market, they therefore have to agree to their rules. Nowadays, that usually requires buying special eggs at an exorbitant price directly from the company, raising them, and selling them for a meager profit. My mom remembers when she was younger that farmers were often the best dressed people in school. Today, because of the way big companies have rigged the system, farmers are often struggling in poverty.
   
   This is just a sample. The agriculture industry is on my "shit list" of horrible institutions, right up there with the big banks and the oil companies. Unfortunately, much less people care about the conditions of these workers, largely because they are "poor" and not "middle class" folk. We are all affected by the big banks offering cheap housing loans to basically gamble on the securities market. But who gives a shit if an illegal immigrant loses an arm in a slaughterhouse? Or some poor guy is essentially disabled for the rest of his life because a factory didn't want to report his injury to the government authorities? Or some rural chicken farmer can barely scrape by because Tyson will only buy chickens from their own specially produced eggs rather than the ones that naturally come out of a chicken's ass? The whole agriculture industry is shit. I haven't even gotten into how Monsanto uses genetically engineered crops to basically control the industry. It's not that mass-produced food is bad; it's that our country is currently run by out of control greedy assholes. And it needs to stop.
   
   You can read about all this stuff in Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, although it's mostly common knowledge among people with an understanding of the industry.
   
   EDIT: I just want to add that this is why I get infuriated by discussions of the "healthiness" of mass-produced food. Personally, I'm highly skeptical that the trace residue of pesticides on your tomatoes is going to eventually cause cancer, or that there is any harm to eating a little cellulose gum in your foods, or that sucralose is going to cause you to grow tumors on your testicles, or any of the other silly things people believe about food products. And I think all this discussion misses the point. Why are you so worried that you might maybe have a 5% increased chance of getting cancer at 64, when people are living shitty lives right now directly in front of your noses? It just feels selfish to mention the health risks of mass-produced foods when the bigger problem is how the industry is crapping down the throats of workers.
   
   TL;DR The agriculture industry sucks because it treats its workers like shit, not because it puts cellulose gum in your granola bars.