Product Description: Rediscover the pleasures and challenges of a healthier, greener, and more self-sufficient lifestyle. Anyone who wants to learn basic living skills-the kind employed by our forefathers-and adapt them for a better life in the twenty-first century need look no further than this eminently useful, full-color guide. With hundreds of projects, step-by-step sequences, photographs, charts, and illustrations, The Back to Basics Handbook will help you dye your own wool with plant pigments, graft trees, raise chickens, craft a hutch table with hand tools, and make treats such as blueberry peach jam and cheddar cheese. The truly ambitious will find instructions on how to build a log cabin or an adobe brick homestead. More than just practical advice, this is also a book for dreamers- even if you live in a city apartment you will find your imagination sparked, and there's no reason why you can't, for example, make a loom and weave a rag rug. Complete with tips for old-fashioned fun (square dancing calls, homemade toys, and kayaking tips), this is the ultimate concise guide to voluntary simplicity. 500 color illustrations.

Part 1: Land: Buying It-Building On It -- Buying country property -- Planning your home -- Preparing the site -- Converting trees into lumber -- Building a log cabin -- Building a stone house -- Raising a barn -- Developing a water supply -- Sanitation -- Stone walls -- Fences -- Part 2: Energy From Wood, Water, Wind, And Sun -- Making your house energy efficient -- Wood as a fuel -- Waterpower -- Wind power -- Solar energy -- Part 3: Raising Your Own Vegetables, Fruit, And Livestock -- Kitchen garden -- Gardening in limited space -- Fruits and nuts -- Pest control -- Grains and grasses -- Beekeeping -- Fish farming -- Raising livestock -- Part 4: Enjoying Your Harvest The Year Round -- Preserving produce -- Preserving meat and fish -- Making your own dairy products -- Maple sugaring -- Baking bread -- Part 5: Skills And Crafts For House And Homestead -- Natural dyes -- Spinning -- Tanning and leatherwork -- Ancient science of herbal medicine -- Soap making -- Candle making -- Basketry.