I love this book. I doubt I'll ever slaughter a pig, shear a sheep, or make my own cowhide shoes but this book covers nearly everything - most of which is actually very useful to the average person - including a lot on gardening. He outlines how to be self-sufficient on the "one acre holding" and the "five acre holding" in pretty darn good detail.

Sometimes, when I'm having a particularly bad day, I take down this book and open it up to the section on how to arrange your self-sufficient farm on 1 or 5 acres. "All we would need," I beg my husband, "is five acres! And then we could keep 2 cows! One to milk and one to eat." His response? "You're a vegetarian."

Ahem. Anyway.

I love this book. It's a DK book, so it's well written, with short chapters/descriptions based on specific subjects. This format makes it easy to flip through for fun, or to find the information that interests you. There are lots of illustrations, drawn in the style that appears on the cover. It includes information on growing crops, keeping (and butchering) animals, cooking, weaving, energy, water, building... basically everything you need to know to do everything you need on your own.

Is this a total fantasy for most people? Yes, of course. But this is still such a useful book, even if you just want to learn the information in it without using it. Most everything in here used to be passed down from parent to child, and it was what people needed to know to survive. It's all information that's being lost and forgotten. And who knows, maybe soon enough we'll need to remember it?

This book is the perfect book for people who want to gain more control over their lives and live healthily in cooperation with the environment. You'll learn everything from rearing cattle, growing onions, harness natural power and furnishing a dairy. The perfect starting point for a better life away from the grind. And the best thing is that it's written in a very introductory manner so you don't have to be raised on a farm to understand it.

It changed my life..