As an avid reader, books are the first place I go to when I become interested in something new. Homesteading made no exception and gave me a new excuse to collect more books.
Over the last couple years, I have collected many homesteading books and while all of them have valuable information, there are a select view that I continuously refer back to.
1. Back To Basics
If there was only one book I could recommend to new homesteaders, it would always be this one. This book is an encyclopedia of every skill necessary for living like our ancestors. From generating your own energy to household skills and crafts, this book explains hundreds of skills in the most basic terms. And don’t worry, if you’re a visual learner, there are detailed pictures as well!
I was able to find my copy at a local consignment shop but you can also get it here.
2. Nourishing Traditions
If you’re venturing into homesteading, eventually you will get into cooking. I believe the two are easily synonymous for obvious reasons. But if you’re like me, then you also have no idea how to cook, what to cook, and recipes with 20 different ingredients are overwhelming. That’s where this book comes in.
Nourishing Traditions is a atypical cookbook that takes you back to our ancestral ways of eating. Nutrition researcher, Sally Fallon, challenges the politics around modern day nutrition and explains how to prepare foods the correct way.
There are 700 recipes that will help you get the hang of cooking from scratch. Simple and easy to follow, these recipes include minimal ingredients that you can grow or raise.
Over 700 pages of useful information, this book is worth every penny and you can get it here.
3. Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving
This one is probably the most popular out of all of the books I’m mentioning, and for good reason. This book contains hundreds of preserving recipes and is beneficial to a beginner or expert. Any social media post I’ve seen about canning has always had this book mentioned.
Containing recipes for both, water-bath and pressure canning, it’s the perfect book for beginners. Along with the recipes, there is also extensive information on understanding your canners, the items you need, as well as safety precautions to take when canning.
You can purchase at any major bookstore but you can also find it here.
4. Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine
As homesteaders, a lot of have the goal of being able to take care of our needs without the help of modern day perks, such as a grocery store. Not only are there many medicinal herbs we can grow in our gardens, there are also hundreds of medicinal plants growing wild all around us.
The Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine is a fantastic book for beginners with amazing pictures for plant identification. Complete with an entire section just on the history of herbal medicine, this book goes into detail about what chemical in the plant is responsible for it’s healing effects and what specific ailment it treats. There are over 500 herbs included in this book with a comprehensive profile of each.
This book is also found at most major bookstores but for convenience sake, you can find it here.
5. Herbs for Children’s Health
When working with herbs for children, I use extreme caution and only use plants and remedies that I have extensively researched to be safe. The Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine is very detailed, but it lacks in giving specific caution for which herbs are safe for children.
Rosemary Gladstar is extremely knowledgable and popular in the herbal remedy space. Her book, Herbs for Children’s Health, is the perfect book for anyone wanting to learn what herbs are safe to use and exactly how to use them.
This is pocket sized and easy to refer to anywhere and available at most major bookstores but you can find it here.
If there was ever a reason we had to desert our home quickly, these would be the books I’d take with us. Between the five of them, there is an invaluable amount of information to not only aid in your homesteading journey, but also just to survive.
I hope you’re able to get your hands on any one of these books and soak up all the information.
Happy Homesteading!
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