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The Backyard Homestead, Ed. Carleen Madigan

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The back cover of The Backyard Homestead claims you can harvest 1,400 eggs, 50 pounds of wheat, 60 pounds of fruit, 2,000 pounds of vegetables, 280 pounds of pork, and 75 pounds of pork for a quarter of an acre of land. Whether this is an and/or situation is unclear (an “and” situation seems impossible), but the philosophy of getting the maximum yield from a small space is the guiding principle of the book itself, which is practically bursting at the seams with information.

It’s almost overwhelming, actually. While books like The City Homesteader allowed me to cruise through and get a general idea for things, this book goes even deeper, covering more categories and breaking things down in more detail. Sometimes that’s still not enough: I wouldn’t want to start canning or keep bees relying on this book alone (in fact, the author takes care to tell you you shouldn’t), but you get a pretty realistic picture of what might be involved.

Since I don’t know a lot about wine making or animal husbandry, I always use the gardening sections as the yardstick for the book. In this case, you get enough detail to grow your veg relying on this book alone for basic planting and sowing, though there isn’t much in the way of troubleshooting or pest or disease control in case things go wrong. I really loved the section on herbs, which has two very useful chart on tea herbs (annual/perennial, growth conditions, usable parts, etc.) and another on cooking with herbs (Sweet/savory/tea, parts to harvest, classic uses). I’d like to put the second one right up in my kitchen. The section on drying and preserving I also found particularly useful — who knew I could use my microwave to dry my herbs? — giving me just enough detail that I could confidently dive right in.

The book also explores raising animals (poultry, pigs, cows, sheep, and goats), processing and preserving meat, making cheese and other dairy products, growing and processing grain, wild foraging, wine and beer making, and growing fruit and nuts. The abundance of information means it can be a bit much to just sit down and read (especially toward the end, when less time is devoted to each topic), but taken in chunks, there’s much to learn here, and I’ve already applied what I’ve learned to my first foray in strawberries this year. The lovely two-colour design presents the content in a way that’s digestible, using plenty of line drawings, tables, and sidebars. (You can have a look at a huge chunk of the book courtesy of the Amazon.com Look Inside feature.)

While the prospect of raising your own pigs (and turning them into sausage yourself) can be daunting, this book is anything but. It’s friendly and accessible, offering a great starting point for whatever new homesteading task you’re ready to take on, and after you’ve spent some time in these pages, you’ll likely have a lengthy to do list that would make your grandparents proud.


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