Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills

(Hardback, 1st Edition, First Edition)

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Over 200,000 copies soldfully 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 skillsthe kind employed by our forefathersand 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 dreamerseven if you live in a city apartment, you will find your imagination sparked, and theres no reason why you cant, 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.

Author Bio

Abigail R. Gehringis the author or editor of more than a dozen books includingBack to Basics,Homesteading,The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Living, andClassic Candy. She enjoys writing, gardening, experimenting in the kitchen, and spending time with family.She lives with her husband and two children in an 1800s farmstead they are restoring in Marlboro, Vermont.