Over 1,500,000 copies sold—an international bestseller!
NATIONAL BESTSELLER!
#4 BALTIMORE SUN BESTSELLER
#7 AMAZON WEEKLY BESTSELLER
Fully updated—Dye your own wool, raise chickens, make your own cheddar cheese, build a log cabin, and much much more.
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.
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.
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. 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 may be the most thorough book on voluntary simplicity available.
Finally, a book that prepares me for the apocalypse AND my in-laws!
"If you’ve ever thought, “What would I do without Wi-Fi?” this book has the answer—apparently churn butter, raise goats, and build a log cabin with nothing but an axe and sheer willpower. I bought this thinking it was a cozy read about simplifying life. Nope. It’s a 500-page manual on how to survive when the power goes out for good—or when Jeff from work finally snaps. By page 10, I was Googling “how to buy a cow. ” By page 20, I was Googling “what’s a scythe?”"
