Complete with tips for old-fashioned fun (square dancing calls, homemade toys, and kayaking tips), this may be the most thorough book on voluntary simplicity available. 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.

The truly ambitious will find instructions on how to build a log cabin or an adobe brick homestead. Now newly updated, the hundreds of projects, step-by-step sequences, photographs, charts, and illustrations in Back to Basics 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. Countless readers have turned to Back to Basics for inspiration and instruction, escaping to an era before power saws and fast-food restaurants and rediscovering 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.

About the Book Offers information and instructions on living a greener, more self-sufficient lifestyle, including how to build a log cabin, how to raise livestock, and how to make candles.īook Synopsis Over 200,000 copies sold-fully updated! Dye your own wool, raise chickens, make your own cheddar cheese, build a log cabin, and much much more.

Back to Basics by Abigail R. Gehring