
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
Rating★★★★ 4.2 (6K)
Includes Amazon, Goodreads, LibraryThing, StoryGraph
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
26The Kitchen Garden
2Part One Land: Buying It—Building on It
27Gardening in Limited Space
3Buying Country Property
28Herb Gardens
4Planning Your Home
29Fruits and Nuts
5Preparing the Site
30Pest Control
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6Converting Trees Into Lumber
31Grains and Grasses
7Building a Log Cabin
32Beekeeping
8Building With Adobe
33Fish Farming
9Building a Stone House
34Raising Livestock
10Raising a Barn
35Part Four Enjoying Your Harvest The Year Round
11Developing a Water Supply
36Preserving Produce
12Saunas and Hot Tubs
37Preserving Meat and Fish
13Sanitation
38Making Your Own Dairy Products
14Fireplace Construction and Design
39Maple Sugaring
15Stone Walls and Brick Pavements
40Homemade Beverages
16Fences
41Baking Bread
17Part Two Energy From Wood, Water, Wind, and Sun
42Regional Cooking
18Making Your House Energy Efficient
43Cooking With Wood
19Wood as a Fuel
44Part Five Skills And Crafts For House and Homestead
20Heating With Wood
45Natural Dyes
21Waterpower
46Spinning
22Wind Power
47Weaving
23Solar Energy
48Hooked Rugs
24Other Energy Sources
49Braided Rugs
25Part Three Raising Your Own Vegetables, Fruit, And Livestock
50Patchwork Quilting