Showing posts with label homesteading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homesteading. Show all posts

32% Off Discounts: Special Prices for A Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs: Of Eastern and Central North America (Peterson Field Guide) Review

A Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs: Of Eastern and Central North America (Peterson Field Guide)

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A Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs: Of Eastern and Central North America (Peterson Field Guide) Review

Here is everything that a field guide should be and contain--small enough to stick into a pocket but comprehensive, definitive, dependable and well-illustrated. Pictures, descriptions, locations, uses, warnings. Foster is not only an herbalist of the first rank but one of the finest plant photographers out there clicking. His gorgeous Healing Plants calendar is on my wall; the verdant photos provide daily pleasure. Herbal preparations as alternatives to synthetic drugs are increasingly chosen. St. John's Wort for depression, Saw Palmetto for prostate treatment, Goldenseal for a multitude of symptoms. Not typically thought of as herbs, trees are also a part of our living pharmacy and 66 are included here. Ginkgolides extracted from leaves of the Ginkgo tree (ginkgo biloba) are the best-selling herbal preparation in Europe. Aspirin derives from the willow. Amongst shrubs I learned that Hawthorn leaf and flower preparations are used in Germany to treat congestive heart failure, based on at least 14 controlled clinical studies. With increasing usage, many plants are in danger of being overharvested. Conservation is necessary to preserve a viable natural community of plants that can and may help alleviate human suffering. Stopping plant thieves is a law enforcement challenge but easy identification of plants may save others of us from bulldozing a patch of ginseng for a house site. It is noted that Pale Purple Coneflower (Echinacea pallida) "is common in eastern Kansas but it is very rare in western North Carolina at the eastern extreme of its range. The plant might be judiciously harvested in Kansas, but in North Carolina it should be left alone." More than just a field guide, Medicinal Plants and Herbs is an essential reference book for our personal library. The value of this big little book can hardly be overestimated.

A Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs: Of Eastern and Central North America (Peterson Field Guide) Overview



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32% Off Discounts: Best Price A Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants: Eastern and central North America (Peterson Field Guide) Review

A Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants: Eastern and central North America (Peterson Field Guide)

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A Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants: Eastern and central North America (Peterson Field Guide) Review

If you're like me and you enjoy trying to eat leaves and berries that you find while hiking and wandering about in nature, this is a handy book to own. The Peterson who wrote this book (son of the Peterson of the many, many wildlife guidebooks writer) is also a forest forrager and details some other cool books to own in the Introduction (including Stalking Wild Asparagus..excellent). I searched for a while to find a guide that would not only easily ID edible berries, roots and leaves..but also give recipe-like tips on how to prepare said roots and leaves..and they do here. Who knew, for example, that one could make a cool and refreshing beverage from staghorn sumac? Crafty! Guide is sub-divided into several search methods: color, plant-type (berry, leaf) and includes many color plates along with ink drawings to help to be sure that Amanita spp. mushroom you're eating won't cause you trouble later! And, the final great feature of the Peterson guides is that the front and back covers are tough so that you can make your copy go camping with you over many moons and you won't wear out your book. Nice!

A Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants: Eastern and central North America (Peterson Field Guide) Overview

More than 370 edible wild plants, plus 37 poisonous look-alikes, are described here, with 400 drawings and 78 color photographs showing precisely how to recognize each species. Also included are habitat descriptions, lists of plants by season, and preparation instructions for 22 different food uses.

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34% Off Discounts: Best Buy for Nature's Garden: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants Review

Nature's Garden: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants

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Nature's Garden: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants Review

These are not good times to put out a book on edible wild plants. Unless you're Samuel Thayer.
When I reviewed Thayer's first book, The Foragers Harvest, I wrote that it is as good or better than anything available on the topic. It has since become the go-to book for students at the Jack Mountain Bushcraft School. His new book, Nature's Garden, builds upon the high standard set by The Foragers Harvest and establishes him as the leading authority and author on edible wild plants that has ever published. It isn't slightly better than other books on the topic; it's in a whole different league.
The meat of the book is made up of plant accounts. These are in-depth profiles of edible plants, full of photos of how to identify, harvest and use them. The author bases all of his work on personal experience, so there aren't the usual falsehoods handed down by authors of lesser works. Instead, you get what works, along with anecdotal stories of how the author got to know the individual plants and how he's used them in the past. His writing style is conversational, and while there is a description for each plant that includes botanical terminology, the author writes it so as to make it accessible to the non-botanist. The numerous photos contribute greatly to aid the neophyte in identifying the individual species. The Harvest And Preparation section for each plant is where the author's experience really shines. Whereas the Peterson's Field Guide To Edible Wild Plants will list "starchy root" or similar descriptive term after a plant, Thayer has several pages of highly descriptive how-to information. To use a specific example, most books on edible plants have a sentence or two on acorns. Nature's Garden has 50 pages.
Anyone who has read The Foragers Harvest would expect the Plant Accounts to be encyclopedic and accessible, full of great photos and useful information. On this point, they deliver. If the book contained just Plant Accounts it would still be a fantastic resource. But there's more to outdoor living and foraging than how-to, and in the first section of the book the author gives a snapshot into the mind of living with wild foods. With sections on getting started, the ethics of harvesting wild plants, conservation, personal experiences on a wild food diet and a harvest calendar, he provides those new to foraging a great jumping off point. In a section titled Some Thoughts On Wild Food, he offers useful advice such as don't make a wild plant fit the description in the book (which is a common pitfall), then expounds upon the myth of the instant expert. The last chapter of the section is titled "Poison Plant Fables", where he discusses the story of Christopher McCandless and how his demise in Alaska, chronicled in the book and movie Into The Wild, didn't occur as the famous author of his biography would have us believe. He didn't poison himself by eating the wrong plant. Rather, he starved to death. By pointing out the facts, though, he doesn't poke fun at McCandless like so many armchair survivalists like to do. Instead, he treats him with respect, saving his derision for the authors and movie producers for not telling the truth. The money quote from this section comes in a section titled "What Lessons About Wilderness Survival And Wild Food Can Be Drawn From The Story Of Chris McCandless?"
'In a short term survival situation, food is of minor importance. However, in long term survival or "living off the land", it is of paramount importance.'
Bushcraft continues to evolve for me away from skills and toward personal relationships with the land and people. While I've never met Samual Thayer, after reading this first section I feel that we're kindred spirits.
There isn't a better book on edible wild plants. Taken together with The Foragers Harvest, it is the last word on the topic in print. I don't think more can be learned from any book; to go beyond what Thayer has written, you have to be out there actively foraging.

Nature's Garden: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants Overview

A detailed guide to all aspects of using edible wild plants, from identifying and collecting through preparation. Covers 41 plants in-depth and the text is accompanied by multiple color photos.

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32% Off Discounts: Lowest Price Basic Butchering of Livestock & Game Review

Basic Butchering of Livestock and Game

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Basic Butchering of Livestock & Game Review

Put bluntly; killing and butchering animals is not a pleasant business. Anyone who has hunted or helped slaughter on a farm can attest to this. You just have to jump in and do it.
Ironically, or perhaps most fittingly, this book was written by a veterinarian. I had a couple of chuckles about that fact.
This is a very "how to" book, so is really not meant to be casually read. The information provided is practical and well presented to make the process easier.
The author handles what some may consider a sensitive subject with honesty and straight-forward thinking. He also provides numerous tips and how-tos when it comes to handling and butchering several different kinds of animals.
While every hunter may not need this book, it sure provides a lot of help and suggestions. If you are going to be butchering a wide variety of animals (pigs, cows, deer, etc.), this is definitely the book for you.

Basic Butchering of Livestock & Game Overview

This is the book for anyone who hunts, farms, or buys large quantities of meat. The author takes the mystery out of slaughtering and butchering everything from beef and veal, to venison, pork, and lamb. The text is clear and easy-to-follow. Combined with 130 detailed illustrations by Elayne Sears, the reader is provided with complete, step-by-step instructions. Here is everything you need to know:
At what age to butcher an animal
How to kill, skin, slaughter, and butcher
How to dress out game in a field
Salting, smoking, and preserving
Tools, equipment, the setup
More than thirty recipes using all kinds of meat


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37% Off Discounts: Buy Cheap Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long Review

Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long

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Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long Review

Eat fresh, home-grown vegetables year round? Eliminate canning and freezing? Do this all at low cost? Eliot Coleman does, you can, too, and here is the how. Coleman is a market gardener in Maine who may eat better than Bill Gates. He shows that sunlight and wind protection are more important that temperature--and, by the way, most of the U.S. gets more winter sunlight than Coleman's place. Inexpensive, unheated greenhouses that he calls tall tunnel houses--some say hoop houses--and cold frames protect from wind and keep snow off the veggies. Greenhouse comfort is more to benefit the gardener. The key is what and when to plant. Full info given for planting dates, construction details, sources of seeds, tools, greenhouses. Well illustrated. An essential guide for organic gourmands.

Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long Overview



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34% Off Discounts: Best Price Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills, Third Edition Review

Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills, Third Edition

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Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills, Third Edition Review

This illustrated book has been published chiefly for those who are new to country living, and/or who have an interest in self-sufficiency and in retrieving some of the "lost arts" which are appurtenant to traditional country life. The information is mostly introductory and rudimentary... a good start for most folks new to these areas of interest.
I have lived in the foothills of rural Appalachia for 55 years and have been involved in carrying out nearly all the construction, activities, arts, and crafts found within this text. Some of the text, (along with the accompanying drawings and photos), is quite good. The information is solid and one can get started along the right track; however, the work goes astray (the publishers sort of "threw in the kitchen sink"), into areas which are not particularly relevant to traditional country living. The editors simply went too far afield when they got into topics such as "Winter Sports," "Kayaking and Rafting," "Foraging for Flour and Emergency Rations," and so on. Most of these subjects are tagged on at the end, I felt just to make the book longer, (it's plenty long enough at 456 pages!)
Additionally, on topics such as "Emergency First Aid," "Fly Fishing" (and fish identification), and "Recipes," there are obligatory sections, none of which are all that useful since these are subjects, any one of which could fill volumes. Had these areas of specific interest been omitted, the more appropriate topics could have been somewhat expanded, such as "Barn Building" or "Preserving Meat and Fish".
While there is quite a great deal of quality information in this Skyhorse Publishing Third Edition (2008) for those seeking a new or improved life in the rural countryside, I still feel that the editors strayed off-base to the point that I cannot heartily recommend the work.

Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills, Third Edition Overview


Anyone who wants to learn basic living skills—the kind employed by our forefathers—and 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 dreamers—even if you live in a city apartment you will find your imagination sparked, and there's no reason why you can't, 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. 2,000 color photos and 200 black-and-white illustrations.

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36% Off Discounts: Buy Cheap The Backyard Homestead: Produce all the food you need on just a quarter acre Review

The Backyard Homestead: Produce all the food you need on just a quarter acre

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The Backyard Homestead: Produce all the food you need on just a quarter acre Review

Like most of the people who buy this book, I'm interested in urban farming and the DIY ethos. So I found this book really exciting for the breadth of topics it covered. How to select a breed of beef cow? Goat? Chicken? Cool! But as I read through some of the sections covering topics I know about I was surprised how out-dated and incomplete they were, which makes me suspicious that the rest of this book is equally poorly researched.
I've been a homebrewer for 5 years, and I grow wine grapes at home. The home-brew beer recipies in this book are from 1989, and are based around buying pre-made beer kits from Coopers or Muntons. Some of the ingredients listed are archane: "Laaglander malt extract" good luck finding it, Laaglander went out of business nearly a decade ago, or "Russian Malt beverage concentrate" whatever that is, you don't need it to make good homebrew.
The wine grapes section is terribly out of date as well. The American hybrid grapes she recommends were the best varieties availible 20 years go (DeChanuc, Baco, Foch) leaving out newer varieties that are much better (Traminette, Marquette, Corot Noir). She refers to Baco, Foch, and Chardonel as European varieties which they aren't. (there's a great book on growing a back-yard vineyard if you search for that phrase)
It may seem like I'm nit-picking, but it leaves me to wonder what careless mistakes are in the sections I don't know anything about? How out-of date are the other varietal recommendations? I get the impression that she culled all of this info from old books and has little experience of her own.
I'm returning my copy.

The Backyard Homestead: Produce all the food you need on just a quarter acre Overview

Put your backyard to work! Enjoy fresher, organic, better-tasting food all the time. The solution is as close as your own backyard. Grow the vegetables and fruits your family loves; keep bees; raise chickens, goats, or even a cow. The Backyard Homestead shows you how it's done. And when the harvest is in, you'll learn how to cook, preserve, cure, brew, or pickle the fruits of your labor.From a quarter of an acre, you can harvest 1,400 eggs, 50 pounds of wheat, 60 pounds of fruit, 2,000 pounds of vegetables, 280 pounds of pork, 75 pounds of nuts.

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37% Off Discounts: Purchase Cheap The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses Review

The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses

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The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses Review

Got a little land? Love a lot of vegetables? Then build yourself a Winter Wonderfarm. You may not be able to enjoy fresh garden tomatoes in the dead of winter, but there are more than 30 green and root vegetables that you can enjoy. From carrots to onions, celery to kohlrabi, and almost every vegetable in between, your Winter Wonderfarm will become the envy of your neighborhood. Perhaps that's where the expression "green with envy" came from . . . a better, greener farm.
The three components to a successful winter harvest, according to Mr. Coleman are:
1) Cold-hardy vegetables
2) Succession planting
3) Protected cultivation
As it turns out, if we can protect our vegetables from the winter winds, we can grow many vegetables successfully, even in the snow. Some vegetables, such as spinach, lettuce and matte, are actually even sweeter and more tender in cooler temperatures. Think you surely have to provide supplementary lighting? Nope . . . not needed when grown in one of Mr. Coleman's "cold houses". He uses these cold houses even in the Maine winters of Zone 5.
You'll also learn about vertical production of tomatoes and how to create your own cold frame with quick hoops made of electrical conduit and 10-foot-wide spun-bonded row cover held down by sandbags. These hoops can cover the same area as a 22 by 48 foot greenhouse at 5% of the cost. Speaking of cost, a recent article in the AARP Magazine indicated that we can save $1,000.00 a year growing our own vegetables in a small garden. Now add your winter crop savings, and imagine what you'd save. Your Winter Wonderfarm will yield delicious, organic vegetables, improving your diet and fattening your wallet. Forget putting out the Christmas lights . . . just grow vegetables.
Lynette Fleming, Coauthor of Lunch Buddies: Buddy Up for a Better Diet

The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses Overview

Choosing locally grown organic food is a sustainable living trend that's taken hold throughout North America. Celebrated farming expert Eliot Coleman helped start this movement with The New Organic Grower published 20 years ago. He continues to lead the way, pushing the limits of the harvest season while working his world-renowned organic farm in Harborside, Maine.
Now, with his long-awaited new book, The Winter Harvest Handbook, anyone can have access to his hard-won experience. Gardeners and farmers can use the innovative, highly successful methods Coleman describes in this comprehensive handbook to raise crops throughout the coldest of winters.
Building on the techniques that hundreds of thousands of farmers and gardeners adopted from The New Organic Grower and Four-Season Harvest, this new book focuses on growing produce of unparalleled freshness and quality in customized unheated or, in some cases, minimally heated, movable plastic greenhouses.
Coleman offers clear, concise details on greenhouse construction and maintenance, planting schedules, crop management, harvesting practices, and even marketing methods in this complete, meticulous, and illustrated guide. Readers have access to all the techniques that have proven to produce higher-quality crops on Coleman's own farm.
His painstaking research and experimentation with more than 30 different crops will be valuable to small farmers, homesteaders, and experienced home gardeners who seek to expand their production seasons.
A passionate advocate for the revival of small-scale sustainable farming, Coleman provides a practical model for supplying fresh, locally grown produce during the winter season, even in climates where conventional wisdom says it "just can't be done."

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36% Off Discounts: Best Price The Encyclopedia of Country Living Review

The Encyclopedia of Country Living

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The Encyclopedia of Country Living Review

The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery, A Review, by Sher June
This book is phenomenal! Besides offering general information on
gardening and variations on the usual ways to prepare and preserve
produce, Carla Emery includes thousands of other exotic and old
fashioned recipes. That alone would be remarkable, but she doesn't stop
there. She covers information on every aspect of farming and
homesteading from buying a farm to delivering your own baby---yes, if you
are all alone when you go into labor!
Here is a general idea of what she includes, as well as some of the
weirder specifics:
How to get water - dowsing, getting it to your farm, using it, pollution
concerns
Living primitively - shelter, backwoods refrigeration, campfire kitchens
Alternative energy - information and resources, using a solar cooker (We
have one, and they really do work.)
Washing clothes by hand
Quilting
Candle making - paraffin and beeswax
Foraging - also poisonous plants and mushrooms
Wood - harvesting, heating, wood cook stoves
Fertilizing your soil
Raising earthworms for gardening, bait, or money making
Using draft horses and oxen
Grain (all kinds!) - planting; mowing by hand; binding sheaves and making
shocks to cure them;
threshing by hand, with animals, or machinery; winnowing; drying;
storing; grinding; and protecting from pests
Preserving food - canning, freezing, drying, salting, larding, fermenting,
jams and juices, making vinegar
Saving seeds for next year plants
Herbs - culinary, not medicinal
Pressing oil from seeds
Acorns - making meal and flour
Bamboo - growing, recipes, and various other uses
Wild Rice - foraging and growing your own
Flax - growing and making linen
Maple sugaring - collecting sap and making syrup
Dandelion root or chicory coffee
Beekeeping - keeping bees, harvesting and using wax and honey
Animals
Raising, feeding, and caring for all types of livestock
Building barns, fences, chicken coops, rabbit hutches, etc.
Pastures, forage, hay, feeds
Predator control
Diseases and veterinary care
Reproduction from breeding to births
Dehorning, castrating, hoof trimming
Sheep shearing and using wool
Pigs - housing, fencing, and how to catch a pig!
Rabbit raising
Poultry - chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, guineas; hatching chicks;
preserving eggs and testing them for safety; using feathers
Dairying - milking and milk handling; all types of dairy products; cream
separators and butter churns
Butchering - preserving meat; making sausage, soap, and lard; tanning
hides; making pickled pig feet!
Home funerals and burying your dead
In March 1974 Carla Emery self-published the first edition of what she then called "The Old Fashioned Recipe Book." It made the "Guinness Book of World Records" as the largest book ever printed on a mimeograph machine. It was well over 900 pages, hand bound, and some of the early ones were held together with plastic coated copper wire through a 3-hole punch. We were lucky to get one of the early mimeographed editions before she sold it in 1977 to Bantam Books, who continued to publish until 1988. Sasquatch Books began republishing it in 1992 under the current title, "The Encyclopedia of Country Living," and continues to publish it today.
Carla's recipes and homesteading information came largely from her personal experience farming, which she did while raising 6 children and running the School for Country Living for a while in Kendrick, Idaho with her husband Mike. She also
gleaned much information for the book from elderly farming friends and neighbors who still possessed these basic skills and favorite old recipes. Once Carla started publishing her mimeographed editions, she quickly became famous enough to be interviewed on major national TV talk shows, etc., and folks started sending her even more homesteading tips and recipes. So her book kept expanding until it weighed several pounds and looks today like a big city phone directory!
I have been referring to Carla's book for over 30 years on many topics for our own farm, and found it very helpful. I particularly used her recipes on preparing and preserving food. My own 30 year area of expertise is in keeping dairy goats. I found her goat information quite useful and accurate, although I did disagree with her on a couple of points, which isn't unusual with any
book on animal raising. For instance, she says any doe who has trouble giving birth twice should be butchered. Goat birthing problems are almost always tangled or backwards kids, which you can usually help deliver, and are just bad luck. Also she recommended a wormer that is outdated, because worms do become immune to these products after a number of years in general use.
There are useful resources throughout the book for further reference or purchasing products. These include books, periodicals, government agencies, and organizations.
This book is surely unique. I have never seen anything remotely as useful, thorough, and inclusive as this homesteading reference. It was a labor of love.
- from [...]

The Encyclopedia of Country Living Overview

No home, whether in the country, the city, or somewhere in between, should be without this one-of-a-kind encyclopedia — the most complete source of information available about growing, processing, cooking, and preserving homegrown foods from the garden, orchard, field, or barnyard. For more than 30 years, people have relied on its practical, step-by-step advice on basic self-sufficiency skills such as how to cultivate a garden, buy land, bake bread, raise farm animals, make sausage, milk a goat, grow herbs, churn butter, build a chicken coop, cook on a wood stove, and much, much more. First written at the height of the 1960s back-to-the-land movement, the book has been continually revised, updated, and expanded, and has grown from a self-published, mimeographed document to an exhaustive reference of more than one million words, 2,000+ recipes, and over 1,500 mail order sources. Emery's personal advice, reflections, and anecdotes ensure that this incredibly detailed, diverse reference is as enjoyable as it is useful.

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32% Off Discounts: Best Price Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables Review

Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits and Vegetables

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Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables Review

This is a great book for (food) gardeners and for people who have some land available to them. Although there are suggestions for "nooks and crannies" in your house, most of those ideas sound like ideas for older (draftier) homes.
The suggestions for building your own working root cellar are clear, with illustrations to help you plan. There are lists of things that keep well and under what conditions to keep them. The authors even list certain varieties of (for instance) apples that keep better than others. There's a month-by-month plan of what could be coming out of your garden, going into the root cellar, and what could be canned or frozen. If you have a large garden, this is an incredibly useful book.
However, those of us with smaller modern homes, smaller yards, and smaller, less heavily-producing gardens will be a little disappointed. As I read this, I came to the conclusion that it would be pretty darned difficult to have a root cellar on our property, because we don't have a useable cool north corner to put one in. Not impossible, mind you, it would just take a lot more effort, planning, and money to build it.
I recommend this book highly for people who raise substantial amounts of their own produce. This book will really extend your harvest. With imagination and a little time and effort, you can have a root cellar that keeps your family in fresh food you grew all year long.

Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables Overview

Anyone can learn to store fruits and vegetables safely and naturally with a cool, dark space (even a closet!) and the step-by-step advice in this book.

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37% Off Discounts: Lowest Price The Forager's Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants Review

The Forager's Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants

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The Forager's Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants Review

I am a botanist and I'm in love with this book. Admittedly, it treats only a few dozen plants, but each is described in detail, with methods of distinguishing it in the field from similar species, harvesting, and preparing it. Numerous color photos are very useful. There are good general discussions of plant identification, harvesting, and preservation. The author complains about previous edible plant references, which exhaustively list hundreds of plants but give inadequate information on each, and frequently recycle information from previous literature, allowing misinformation to creep in (an undeniable problem). Thayer proposes that writers on edible plants should provide only information from their own experience or else specifically referenced information, a praiseworthy code of conduct and one that really makes this book shine. When he gives you detailed instructions for when and how to gather and prepare a plant, you know that he's actually done it himself and it worked. I like his standards for the plants as well: Food should taste good! If it doesn't taste good, he says, don't eat it! So, while other books provide long lists of "survival foods" that would gag a goat, Thayer discusses only the plants that he actually enjoys eating. He tells you what sort of quality to expect in the final products, and whether they will be worth the work you put into them. The only volume I can recall seeing of remotely similar quality was Steve Brill's book, which dealt with a different set of plants (emphasizing the common "weedy" species that Thayer is not particularly interested in), so if you already have Brill, you can buy this too. Otherwise, if you want to start learning to use edible wild plants, start with this volume.

The Forager's Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants Overview

A practical guide to all aspects of edible wild plants: finding and identifying them, their seasons of harvest, and their methods of collection and preparation. Each plant is discussed in great detail and accompanied by excellent color photographs. Includes an index, illustrated glossary, bibliography, and harvest calendar. The perfect guide for all experience levels.

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Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving

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Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving Review

I got this book about three weeks ago, having never canned or preserved, and I was completely impressed. Using the recipes inside, I've made pickled ocra, green beans, brandied cherries, sweet asparagus, and the hands down best pickle relish I've ever had in my life. It has hundreds of recipes, and they are all wonderful. If you're into fruit preserves or jams, sweet or dill pickles, slasas, relishes, chutneys, condiments, you name it, there are dozens of recipes of each type of food. I'll be tackling some home made wine and cranberry mustard next week. The first batches of pickles I made were with utensils I already had on hand. All you need is the mason jars if you have a well stocked kitchen. I've sense bought some bottle clamps to get the jars out of the hot water, but that's about it.
Here are the pros:
*) Thorough discussion of the steps of preserving.
*) Discussion on foodborne illness and how to kill it through preserving.
*) A look at high acid versus low acid canning.
*) A handy guide of produce weight and volume (for example, one pound of cherries equals 2 1/2 cups of cherries, so you know exactly what to get at the store).
*) Amazing, easy recipes for all levels of skill and tastes.
*) Dozens of variations on recipes (not just one type of cucumber pickle, but several!)
Buy this book if you're thinking of starting or even an old time pro. It's great fun, and it can produce pickles, ketchups, and preserves where you controll all the ingredients (and can even go organic!).

Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving Overview


From the experts, the new bible in home preserving.

Ball Home Canning Products are the gold standard in home preserving supplies, the trademark jars on display in stores every summer from coast to coast. Now the experts at Ball have written a book destined to become the "bible" of home preserving.

As nutrition and food quality has become more important, home canning and preserving has increased in popularity for the benefits it offers:

Cooks gain control of the ingredients, including organic fruits and vegetables
Preserving foods at their freshest point locks in nutrition
The final product is free of chemical additives and preservatives
Store-bought brands cannot match the wonderful flavor of homemade
Only a few hours are needed to put up a batch of jam or relish
Home preserves make a great personal gift any time of year



These 400 innovative and enticing recipes include everything from salsas and savory sauces to pickling, chutneys, relishes and of course, jams, jellies, and fruit spreads, such as:

Mango-Raspberry Jam, Damson Plum Jam
Crab Apple Jelly, Green Pepper Jelly
Spiced Red Cabbage, Pickled Asparagus
Roasted Red Pepper Spread, Tomatillo Salsa
Brandied Apple Rings, Apricot-Date Chutney



The book includes comprehensive directions on safe canning and preserving methods plus lists of required equipment and utensils. Specific instructions for first-timers and handy tips for the experienced make the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving a valuable addition to any kitchen library.


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