It’s still a great book, but now that I’m an adult I realize how much work some of these DIY activities are Doesn’t discourage me too much - I still have a garden! - but I won’t be slaughtering my own chickens any time soon.

I’ve baked my own bread for years and years. I always bake loads and put it in the freezer. I pack it up in roasting bags. This way you can re-heat the bread and get a nice crust again.

For a weekend treat I make the dough the night before. Shape into rolls and put on a baking tray. Cover it with a wet tea towel and put it in the fridge. The next morning I stick the baking tray in the COLD oven. Turn the oven on and bake until the rolls are golden. My husband adores freshly baked warm rolls with his breakfast on saturdays and sundays and the whole house smells lovely…

:O)

Great choice J.D.!

I will have to look into getting this book. My girlfriend is very DIY and I think that she would flip over this. Thanks for the great review.

…hmm, both of these things were popular in the ’70’s– do recessions bring on urges for simplicity and diy?

And yet, I know more about building and fixing things than a lot of people my age. If a chair breaks, I fix it, and I’ve picked up the occasional piece of broken furniture from the curb and fixed it and put it back to use.

I have a great admiration for those who are able to do this kind of thing, and I’ve had grand dreams of urban homesteading for several years, although it’s never really come to much of anything since I never knew where to start. So this book looks like a good thing to put on my Christmas list, since I inevitably have trouble coming up with things.

I live in a small apartment without a balcony. I don’t have access to the basement and there isn’t any land to turn into a garden (assuming a landlord would even allow a tenant to dig up the lawn). I don’t own a car.

I agree these are excellent ideas, but other than making my own bread (which I enjoy doing), how could I adopt the ideas in this book?

Even though we live in town we’ve been trying to add more of those practices at our home,which I blog about. We have chickens, a large garden and do a lot of home canning and freezing. Although I’ve never posted before, I really enjoy your blog!

It’s nostalgic to think how people lived in the allegedly good old days. That’s because we forget they didn’t live for very long. Infant mortality was as high as 50% and a man could expect to live about 50 years.

Think of all the things we can do that they couldn’t imagine, in many instances could not do if they were suddenly dropped into the 21st century, and might have a difficult time learning to do: operate a computer; drive a car safely; talk to friends around the world at the push of a button; see images of things happening on the other side of the planet as they’re happening; get immunizations that make us safe from polio, tetanus, diphtheria, smallpox, cholera, yellow fever; immunize our dogs against rabies; get to a hospital five miles from home in 10 minutes; refrigerate and freeze food right in the kitchen; cook food in seconds in a strange little box; fry a steak on a stovetop with a flick of a dial; wash our clothes in 30 minutes without a scrub board; vacuum the dirt out of our rugs; turn on an air conditioner or a heater to keep our living environments comfortable and safe; avoid having babies till we’re ready to have them; negotiate a shopping mall; eat every kind of vegetables and fruit all year round….

I wouldn’t trade an adobe house with hand-hewn vigas for any of those. Now, I wouldn’t mind having the house in addition to all those things….

This book isn’t one of the best. We have had it for awhile (one of those free things that people like to give you when you talk about homesteading) and it doesn’t give out much details. It is a good one to look over a think about things, though.

Check out The Lost Arts series, they are hard to find but worth it. And the other two you mention are wonderful resources. Now, off to go milk the cows, gather eggs, check on the bees and tend the garden

The bonus part to this was that it included a lot of modern day adaptations and applications for these skills. It could be a useful how-to manual for those that want to live a more simple life. It also includes a description of alternate eco-friendly fuel sources. Very nice book!

Sam
Fix My Personal Finance
http://fixmypersonalfinance.com/

Any tips for self sustainability in an urban environment?

—-
Austin Hike and Bike

The neighbor across the street (the real millionaire next door) has a big old cherry tree. He’s in Alaska right now, of course, but we’re friendly with his renter, Patrice. She can’t eat all of the cherries (no normal human could), so she’s been letting us glean them.

We’ve already picked all the low-hanging fruit (which led me to understand finally what that phrase actually means), so we headed over with a ladder this afternoon. Kris climbed into the tree first, but she chickened out. “You’re a girl,” I said. “I’m a boy. Let me at it. This is boy’s work.”

I remember climbing similar trees as a boy, monkeying around from branch to branch. I did something similar this afternoon — in a 40-year-old man sort of way — snagging all the gorgeous cherries.

Then, while Kris went inside to make some cherry preserves, I stayed outside to meet the new neighbors. I let them use my ladder to climb into the tree to pick fruit of their own. We chatted a little to get to know each other.

“This is a strange neighborhood,” said one of the new neighbors. “It feels so old-fashioned. We’re so close to Portland, but it feels like we’re in the country. I mean, here we are all getting together to pick cherries.”

Exactly. That’s why I love it here, too.

I have a very old copy of The Encyclopedia of Country Living, written before it was professionally edited… very fun to read.

The book we had had a yellow cover, and the title in brown stencil lettering. I see it at used bookstores all the time, if anyone wants to support a local business on the cheap and doesn’t mind the mustiness of a used bookstore.