Self-Sufficiency Handbook: Your Complete Guide to a Self-Sufficient Home, Garden, and Kitchen (CompanionHouse Books) Sustainable Methods for Growing Food, Raising Farm Animals, Solar, and Wind Energy

This book is an excellent resource for self-sufficient living. Easy to follow and implement the methods subscribed.

This is a great resource for those wanting to be more self sufficient and to live greener

It gives me information I need.

Subtitled Your Complete Guide to a Self-Sufficient Home, Garden and Kitchen, The Self-Sufficiency Handbook is a 240 page general guide to the concepts and ideas involved in becoming more self-sufficient. The content is divided into 5 broad categories: The Land, The Self-sufficient House, The Organic Food Garden, Animal Husbandry, and The Pantry.Each of these sections are pretty much standalone and could be read in any order. There is no required cohesiveness to the content and it can be read and accessed as needed. To that end, the book includes a fairly good index which makes the content specifically accessible.This is a very broad and general book. It's a good 'starting off' guide, a 'dreaming' guide; it's emphatically not a specific how-to guide. If it errs, it tries to be everything to everyone. Anyone actually going into homesteading will hopefully have a solid workable plan for getting from lifestyle A to whatever level of self-sufficiency is desirable.It's very tempting to see pictures of healthy gardens and adorable lambs and healthy beehives and want to be a part of that lifestyle. (I did!) The guides rarely show pictures of neighbor's pet-dog ravaged lambs, nosema infested empty beehives, or flattened gardens with more weeds than produce and production that wouldn't feed a toddler.This is a very pretty book. It is a positive upbeat book, a 'you can do it' book. There are recipes and crafts in the final section with nice (very general) tutorials about apple cider, wines, soap and candlemaking etc.Of good use to those beginning to explore options and at the 'dreamer' stage. Very well photographed and written in accessible layman language. Available in ebook, paperbound and hardback formats. Published 14th Nov, 2017 by Fox Chapel publishing. Authors Alan & Gill Bridgewater have been living a smallholding lifestyle for many years.Three and a half stars, some very good general info here.Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.

This review is based on a copy provided by the book's publisher and netgalley.com. It is not a paid review.The authors' story and inspiration for their lifestyle are very inspiring, a back-to-the-land couple from the late Sixties who made their choice of life work for their family. Many of their generation dreamed of this but either didn't try the lifestyle or didn't succeed as well as the authors. The advice they lay out in this book is exactly what anyone contemplating a move such as this will need to know to plan, and succeed, at their choice.But that's also the problem with this book, it is a planning advice book for those considering a homesteading lifestyle. It is not a "complete guide to greener living" as suggested by the title. To find that complete guide you would need a shelf of books, on all subjects specific to your particular plan and needs. For example, the tips for gardening don't apply in more extreme climates, such as the subtropics of Florida or Hawaii, or the shorter and limited seasons of Northern Alaska. Recommended crops may not even grow in your chosen area. You would need a gardening and farming guide that is within your locale, such as provided by county farm cooperatives or extensions.There is nothing inherently wrong in this book, and dreaming of a more self sufficient lifestyle is what inspires all the home and garden channels and shows you find on current TV. But be forewarned, if this is your only guide, you will likely fail miserably at returning to the land.

I wanted badly to like this book, because I am all about self-sufficiency and learning skills to make the best life I can on my rural property. How well you like this book will depend on what you are looking for. I was hoping for more self-sufficiency skills. This book focuses far more on finding the correct parcel of land for your needs, and energy sources. The chapters include: The Land, The Self-Sufficient House, The Organic Food Garden, Animal Husbandry, and The Pantry. While the book does talk about how to begin the path to self-sufficiency if you live in a city, the bulk of the book is focused on things you can do in a rural setting. I also found there was nothing really new here if you have read quite a bit on the subject of self-sufficiency and rural living. That said, if you are new to the idea, it is a good, and somewhat comprehensive, "manual" on the subject.

Because my husband and I are looking towards our retirement soon and hoping to have a plot of land somewhere, I thought that this book would be a great start. This is a very comprehensive book about how one can start to live on their own, off-the-grid so to speak. This particular book goes into quite a bit of detail and, frankly, it was over my head. It talks about the types of water filtration systems, animals, plants, food-making, and house you need to be self-sufficient. This book will work for those wanting to live off-the-grid, preppers, and those who are looking to reduce their dependency on municipalities.I received this book free for an honest review from NetGalley. The opinions are my own.

The Self-Sufficiency Handbook by Alan & Gil Bridgewater is a free NetGalley ebook that I read in mid-November.This handbook shares a lot in common with the BBC series Victorian Farm, but with more information, advice, and instructions toward craftsmanship for the home, garden, kitchen, and alternative energy sources than historical accuracy. There was also plenty about planning an organic garden, animal husbandry (especially about traditional farm animals, plus bees), and creating home-processed items, like bacon, butter, cheese, beer, soap, or candles, while also emphasizing the importance of testing aspects of self-sufficiency over a trial period, rather than a full-bore, lifelong commitment.

Not that i would like a disaster to wipe out most of the population, but with this book you could move on and be 100% self sufficient, but of course it would involve a lot of hard work.Very practical information in this book and useful even in today's modern world as we all forgot the old ways already.I recommend this book to everyone who would like to have more knowledge then just how to go to a shop and buy ready to eat food.

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As described and arrived promptly - thank you!

Really good info for my back garden smallholding. recommended for ease of understanding without being too easy.

ok