
Back to Basics
A Complete Guide to Traditional SkillsBy Gehring, AbigailLength37h 9m
About this audiobook
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.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.
Audiobook details
GenreOther
Length37 hrs 9 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateOct 14, 2014
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1About This Book
38Making Your Own Dairy Products
2Part One Land: Buying It—Building on It
39Maple Sugaring
3Buying Country Property
40Homemade Beverages
4Planning Your Home
41Baking Bread
5Preparing the Site
42Regional Cooking
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6Converting Trees Into Lumber
43Cooking With Wood
7Building a Log Cabin
44Part Five Skills And Crafts For House and Homestead
8Building With Adobe
45Natural Dyes
9Building a Stone House
46Spinning
10Raising a Barn
47Weaving
11Developing a Water Supply
48Hooked Rugs
12Saunas and Hot Tubs
49Braided Rugs
13Sanitation
50Patchwork Quilting
14Fireplace Construction and Design
51Rope and Twine
15Stone Walls and Brick Pavements
52Tanning and Leatherwork
16Fences
53Woodworking
17Part Two Energy From Wood, Water, Wind, and Sun
54Broommaking
18Making Your House Energy Efficient
55Scrimshaw
19Wood as a Fuel
56Household Recipes
20Heating With Wood
57Metalworking
21Waterpower
58Stenciling
22Wind Power
59Flower Drying and Pressed Flowers
23Solar Energy
60Gourd Craft
24Other Energy Sources
61Soapmaking
25Part Three Raising Your Own Vegetables, Fruit, And Livestock
62Candlemaking
26The Kitchen Garden
63Basketry
27Gardening in Limited Space
64Part Six Recreation at Home And in the Wild
28Herb Gardens
65Old-time Good Times
29Fruits and Nuts
66Crafting a Dulcimer
30Pest Control
67Celebrating Holidays
31Grains and Grasses
68Canoeing and Kayaking
32Beekeeping
69Wilderness Camping
33Fish Farming
70Outdoors in Winter
34Raising Livestock
71Fishing
35Part Four Enjoying Your Harvest The Year Round
72Living With Nature
36Preserving Produce
73Appendix: Organized Assistance : The Extension Service and Other Groups
37Preserving Meat and Fish
74Index