Since childhood, I have wanted to live in the country. Six of my earliest years were spent in the city of Bradford, Yorkshire, and San Francisco, California. Sandwiched between those two periods was a year I barely remember on a chicken farm in Zephyrhills, Florida. The fuzzy reminisces of that period elevated it in my mind to a lovely existence in which I roamed about freely, following my parents as they worked in the garden and produced delicious meals from its bounty. I romanticized living on the land as I grew up. My favorite books in childhood were Little House on the Prairie and The Bobbsey Twins in the Country.
This is an academic book, but I found it easy and fascinating to read. The author is a sociologist who studied 1300 of the thousands of individuals who gave up their suburban homes in the 60’s, 70s, and 80s for a few acres of rural land.
I loved it because the experiences of the families the author studied shared my values and my own reasons for living off the grid. It also described some of my romantic misconceptions about what it would be like to live a “simple life” with a group of friends. I would describe this book as an introduction to homesteading for city dwellers who dream of moving to the country.
"[P]ractically everyone I know is nursing fantasies about escaping the life they're trapped in and creating one that makes more sense," writes the editor of Utne Reader in a recent issue. "The people I most admire, though, are those who actually do it-who break free and pursue a higher calling no matter how great the risk."
New Pioneers is about one such group of people-the hundreds of thousands of urban North Americans who over the past three decades have given up their city or suburban homes for a few acres of land in the countryside.
This book tells the story of Helen and Scott Nearing, who left the city in 1932 for a rural life in Vermont based on hard work, self-reliance, good health, and a small amount of cash. They later moved to Main, where they continued living on the land until the early 1980s.
I loved this book because it was a “how-to” guide to rural homesteading, and because the authors made their life seem so rewarding and worthwhile. It must have been, because Scott Nearing lived to the age of 100, and Helen to 91.
This one volume edition of Living the Good Life and Continuing the Good Life brings these classics on rural homesteading together. This couple abandoned the city for a rural life with minimal cash and the knowledge of self reliance and good health.
First published in 1972, Gene Logsdon’s first book about farming is a how-to guide for beginning back-to-the-landers. For those who had romantic or idealistic ideas about farming and raising animals, as I did, the author provides practical advice on gardening and homesteading as well as reassurance that life in the country can be rewarding and enjoyable.
I loved this book because it supported my view that living on the land was possible and would be fulfilling, while teaching me some very important skills needed to get as much as possible out of the land I had purchased.
Two Acre Eden is more than your average how-to book. The first in a long line of beloved books by homesteading sage Gene Logsdon, Two Acre Eden is an insightful and light-hearted treatise on gardening, homesteading, and getting the most out of your land.
With a healthy dose of humor and eye toward pragmatism, Logsdon dispenses page after page of unbeatable advice on designing, building, and living off of your very own two-acre Garden of Eden. Inside you'll find practical and creative tips on:
Mulching
Pesticide use
Planting cycles
Urban farming
Pruning
Seed selection
And much more...
This book is a practical guide to raising a small flock of chickens in your backyard or on a small piece of land. The authors clearly loved their chickens and imbue them with all kinds of personalities and behaviors.
I loved this book because when I moved to the land, I had only vague memories of my grandfather raising chickens in Australia when I was six. I had no idea how to build a henhouse or manage a flock of chickens on my 5-acre piece of land. The authors also started from scratch, so I felt confident that if I followed their instructions, I would be able to do so, too.
Your backyard can be the source of the best eggs and meat you've ever tasted. The answer is chickens--endearing birds that require but a modest outlay of time, space and food.
As they learned to raise chickens, Gail and Rick Luttmann came to realize the need for a comprehensive but clear and nontechnical guide. Their book covers all the basics in a light and entertaining sytle, from housing and feeding through incubating, bringing up chicks, butchering, and raising chickens for show.
Througout the book, the Luttmanns express their wonder at the personalities of chickens--the role of brash protector played by…
I believe everyone should read at least one book by Penelope Lively, and this one is my favorite.
I love this book because I can enjoy it over and over. I can pick it up and read a chapter at random and find something engaging, surprising, even magical.
The author loves reading, writing, and gardening. So do I. When I read a chapter of Lively’s book it immediately draws me in, away from any troubles or challenges I may have been struggling with, and transports me to another place, for example to the prairies of Willa Cather and Laura Ingalls Wilder in the chapter on Time, Order and the Garden, or to a Somerset garden in the UK, overrun with rabbits and foxes and cats, in the chapter she calls Town and Country.
'Wonderful. A manifesto of horticultural delight' Literary Review
'Beautiful. Perfect for literary garden lovers' Good Housekeeping
'Rich and unusual, a book to treasure. Few recent gardening books come anywhere close to its style, intelligence and depth' Observer
'The two central activities in my life - alongside writing - have been reading and gardening.'
Penelope Lively has always been a keen gardener. This book is partly a memoir of her own life in gardens: the large garden at home in Cairo where she spent most of her childhood, her grandmother's garden in a sloping Somerset field, then two successive Oxfordshire gardens…
A powerful memoir of young adventurers with one foot in the quiet abundance of the Valley of Heart’s Delight and the other in the world-changing potential of the Silicon Valley.
This is an intimate story of a teacher, writer, entrepreneur, wife, and mother finding her footing on a special piece of land. The author demonstrates the resilience she needs to navigate the seismic shifts of the times while learning how to grow her own food and raise a wide variety of farm animals. Reading this book is a rewarding journey for a wide array of readers.
