The Back To Basics Handbook

Anyone who wants to learn basic living skills -- the kind employed by our ancestors -- and adapt them for a better life in the twenty-first century need look no further than this eminently useful guide.

With hundreds of projects, step-by-step sequences, photographs, charts and illustrations The Back to Basics Handbook will help you plant a vegetable garden, graft trees, raise chickens, and make treats such as blueberry-peach jam and cheddar cheese. With clear, easy-to-follow instructions, the truly ambitious can challenge themselves by designing and building a stone wall and even constructing a livable log cabin.

More than just practical advice, this is also a book for dreamers --- even if you live in a city apartment there's no reason why you can't, for example, dip candles or make your own soap. This is the ultimate concise guide for voluntary simplicity in the modern age.



Abigail R. Gehring is the editor of Back to Basics: Third Edition, Homesteading, Self-Sufficiency, and The Homesteading Handbook. She spends her time editing in Manhattan and homesteading in Vermont, where she grew up.