Ebook: Back to Basics: a Complete Guide to Traditional Skills

The classic guide to self-sufficiency, with more than 200,000 copies sold-now fully updated!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.;Cover; Title Page; Copyright; Contents; About This Book; Part One Land: Buying It-Building on It; Buying Country Property; Planning Your Home; Preparing the Site; Converting Trees Into Lumber; Building a Log Cabin; Building With Adobe; Building a Stone House; Raising a Barn; Developing a Water Supply; Saunas and Hot Tubs; Sanitation; Fireplace Construction and Design; Stone Walls and Brick Pavements; Fences; Part Two Energy From Wood, Water, Wind, and Sun; Making Your House Energy Efficient; Wood as a Fuel; Heating With Wood; Waterpower; Wind Power; Solar Energy; Other Energy Sources.