We are not "preppers" nor do we associate with them. We're environmental yuppie organic homesteaders that left an upper middle class suburban life for a smallholding rural farm life where we could grow our own organic fruit, vegetables, meat and eggs.

That said...

I grew up in a survivalist household, and am very well versed in the mentality. I also have 30+ years of related skills.

My wife grew up in an upper middle class / upper class urban setting without any outdoor experience.

As such, when we decided to leave the comfort of suburbia (mostly due to our environmental and food beliefs but also because of my background we feared the difficulty in surviving any calamity while on 1/8 acre only 18 minutes from 125,000 starving people) my wife embarked on a relentless search for knowledge. She spent the better part of three years studying farming, food preservation, animal husbandry, etc.

I spent 18 months learning as much as I could about the areas I had little or no experience (mostly how to select and raise sheep and chickens as well as rotational pasture management).

To that end, we own over sixty books on these topics and have borrowed MANY MANY more from the library. HOWEVER, nearly all of our books are for the organic producer. We don't have or use any chemicals, preservatives, petrochemical fertilizers, etc.

A good place for you to start would be:

"The Encyclopedia of Country Living" by Emery. Our copy is the 10th Edition.

Other good books include:

"Putting Food By" by Greene, Hertzberg, Vaughan.

"Rodale's Illustrated Encyclopedia of Gardening and Landscaping Techniques CHEMICAL FREE" by Rodale

"The Backyard Homestead" by Madigan

"Mini Farming Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre" by Markham

"The Complete Book of Composting" by Rodale

"All New Square Foot Gardening" by Bartholomew

"Rodale's Illustrated Encyclopeida of Organic Gardening" by Rodale

If you notice a lot of Rodale books, that is because he started the "return to basics / anti Big-Agri (anti-GMO, anti-petrochemical fertilizer, anti-over tillage) movement WAY before it was hip.

If you want something more philosophical then "Folks, This Ain't Normal" by Joel Salatin is a good book about a family's process of developing a natural farm.


I have four or five of the Foxfire books too. They're a collection of colloquial stories from (mostly) Appalachia. Not to knock rth548's suggestion, but I've found them entertaining but not overly "how to informative".

There are some good videos available on Youtube as well.

If you're wanting to understand "pre mechanical" farming look for "Tales from the Green Valley". This is a series produced by BBC that placed two archeologists and one historian on a farm (for one year) and required that they only use technology from a certain period. The same people also made another series "The Edwardian Farm" that dealt with the time period where the internal combustion engine started to invade farming. It isn't nearly as good as Green Valley.

Another interesting watch is "Frontier House". PBS produced a series that placed three families in a period homesteading situation where they had to prepare for winter. Its a little more of a docu-drama, but is nonetheless interesting.

If you can find the EARLY episodes of Hugh Fearnly Whittingstall's "River Cottage" series they are very interesting. Hugh is an englishman that left "city life" to start a small holding organic farm. The first two seasons are very educational and entertaining. Later, he became so successful he outgrew his small holding and moved up to a larger farm. Then, to yet another larger farm. The later shows are more "cooking shows" than homestead teaching shows.

When my wife gets in from tending the vegetable garden, I'll ask her what to recommend. She's the food expert.