This large, fully-illustrated book provides the entire family with the information they need to make the shift toward self-sufficient living. "Self-Sufficiency" provides tips, advice, and detailed instructions on how to improve everyday life from an environmentally and organic perspective while keeping the focus on the family. Readers will learn how to plant a family garden and harvest the produce; can fruits and vegetables; bake bread and cookies; design interactive and engaging 'green' projects; harness natural wind and solar energy to cook food and warm their homes; boil sap to make maple syrup; and build treehouses, furniture, and more. Also included are natural crafts readers can do with their kids, such as scrapbooking, making potato prints, dipping candles, and constructing seasonal decorations. Whether the goal is to live entirely off the grid or just to shrink their carbon footprints, families will find this book a thorough resource and a great inspiration.
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About the Author
ABIGAIL R. GEHRING is the editor of Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills and Homesteading and author of Odd Jobs and Dangerous Jobs. She's practised living self-sufficiently since her childhood in Vermont, being homeschooled, and enjoys home-canning jams and jellies, and natural crafts. She lives in Weehawken, New Jersey, and Windham, Vermont.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
23 reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A beautifully produced addition to a great series!
15 Nov 2010
By David Hodges
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Self-sufficiency is an absorbing paean to traditional crafts and country ways including sections on: Carpentry techniques (without power tools) for making out buildings and bed headboards, tips for raising (and slaughtering) barnyard animals, guides to preserving food, baking, making pottery, tying knots, composting, making your own paper, binding your own books and writing in them with pens you made yourself. I found myself browsing through page after page and getting ideas for projects.There is something for everyone who remembers the ways of our grand-parents and wishes to rediscover skills and techniques that have been all but lost.
Sections of this lavishly-illustrated book are:
- The Family Garden
- The Country Kitchen
- Canning and Preserving
- Country Crafts
- The Barnyard
- The Workshop
An appendix discusses alternative energy such as wind, solar, and geothermal. And a second appendix is a state-by-state directory of food co-ops.
This book is part Boy Scout manual, part Whole Earth Catalog, and part DIY guide, and is sure to stimulate new ideas for projects and for ways that you and your family can be more self-sufficient. SkyHorse publishing has been doing a great job with this series, edited by Abigail Gehring, which started with Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills, Third Edition, continued with Homesteading: A Back to Basics Guide to Growing Your Own Food, Canning, Keeping Chickens, Generating Your Own Energy, Crafting, Herbal Medicine, and More (Back to Basics Guides), and now concludes with Self-Sufficiency. The series is a tremendous resource for anyone seeking to re-connect with the durable ways of self-sufficient living.
Sections of this lavishly-illustrated book are:
- The Family Garden
- The Country Kitchen
- Canning and Preserving
- Country Crafts
- The Barnyard
- The Workshop
An appendix discusses alternative energy such as wind, solar, and geothermal. And a second appendix is a state-by-state directory of food co-ops.
This book is part Boy Scout manual, part Whole Earth Catalog, and part DIY guide, and is sure to stimulate new ideas for projects and for ways that you and your family can be more self-sufficient. SkyHorse publishing has been doing a great job with this series, edited by Abigail Gehring, which started with Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills, Third Edition, continued with Homesteading: A Back to Basics Guide to Growing Your Own Food, Canning, Keeping Chickens, Generating Your Own Energy, Crafting, Herbal Medicine, and More (Back to Basics Guides), and now concludes with Self-Sufficiency. The series is a tremendous resource for anyone seeking to re-connect with the durable ways of self-sufficient living.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Book
21 Dec 2010
By Archer
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
This was a fantastic book. It included many details about becoming self sufficient with little cost. What I loved the most about it was that as a homeschooling parent the book included many projects that I could include as part of my curriculum.
32 of 38 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Nice try, but...
26 May 2011
By M. Hussey
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
I'm glad I took this book out of the library instead of buying it first. It seems to have been thrown together from a mish-mash in informational tidbits that sound good when you read them, yet, all the information is not there. I understand this is not meant to be a comprehensive tome about any one subject, but is some sections, it seems like parts are missing in the instructions. There are many pictures that do not match the descriptions, especially in the craft and livestock sections. What struck me as the most ridiculous was the title - Self-Sufficiency. It most of the craft sections, and some of the gardening, the supplies needed for the projects in questions are purchased at the store - half-and-half, beeswax, seeds, heavy whipping cream, soap base. Not of this is what I think people are looking for when they pick up a book on self-sufficiency. All the money they save will be spent on gas going back and forth to the store for supplies.
It seems like somebody was sitting at a meeting and said;"Hey, let's jump on this back-to-the-land thing that people are interested in right now, and throw a couple of books out there." And that's just what they did. Someone ran around the office, threw together a bunch of subjects, and called it a book.
By the way, authors, when describing the different types of poultry and other livestock, different versions of the same breed are called VARIETIES, not BREEDS. The breed has a name - a Wyandotte - which comes in several varieties. Couldn't you at least have had someone check that before you sent this out? Sheesh.
Well, it saves me from bothering to look at the other books in this series. Thanks! Being interested in efficiency, as well as self-sufficiency, I appreciate the extra time!
It seems like somebody was sitting at a meeting and said;"Hey, let's jump on this back-to-the-land thing that people are interested in right now, and throw a couple of books out there." And that's just what they did. Someone ran around the office, threw together a bunch of subjects, and called it a book.
By the way, authors, when describing the different types of poultry and other livestock, different versions of the same breed are called VARIETIES, not BREEDS. The breed has a name - a Wyandotte - which comes in several varieties. Couldn't you at least have had someone check that before you sent this out? Sheesh.
Well, it saves me from bothering to look at the other books in this series. Thanks! Being interested in efficiency, as well as self-sufficiency, I appreciate the extra time!
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