I need a recommendation for a good (well written for smart beginners, factual information) book on being self sufficient when it comes to food.

I'm NOT really a prepper. I don't have a giant end-of-the-world pantry, 2 years worth of water, or more than a few boxes of ammo. But I like to be at least minimally prepared when it comes to knowledge. I have a handful of books concerning various survival topics, edible/medical wild plants and mushrooms, field medicine, general survival techniques, etc.

However when it comes to being self sufficient for food, I have nothing, and am not knowledgeable enough to determine if a book is worth it or not.

Ideally it should be a book that describes farming techniques that doesn't require modern technology (think Amish level stuff.) Topics such as when to plant certain crops, how much they yield, how to save and replant the seeds, raising/caring for/butchering things like chickens, rabbits, and other easy livestock.

I plan on using this on a very small scale for a simple home garden to supplement groceries, but want information that can be expanded for complete self sufficiency if necessary.

It would be especially great if you can recommend books that you've successfully used at least parts of, or know enough about these topics to make a useful recommendation on.

Look at the Foxfire books.

http://www.foxfire.org/thefoxfirebooks.aspx

Do you own them?

I'm looking for a fairly concise manual.

I have a couple of them, but not the entire set. It's mostly just a guide to doing things the old ways. Some of the chapters are very much a tutorial, but others are merely stories of how things used to be done. Still others have no real use in being self sufficient, but are just plain entertaining.

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.

All New Square Foot Gardening is a good start for the "small scale" producer.

We've read, at least once, every book I listed.

I can't believe I almost forgot this! You MUST subscribe to the following periodical "magazines":

Mother Earth News
GRIT

Those two magazines are packed with practical information.

As a side, you can also order, on CD, all of the back articles from MEN. We have, forty years I think, on CD from a special offer they gave several years ago.

If you're tight on cash then I'd get:

"The Encyclopedia of Country Living" by Emery

and

"All New Square Foot Gardening" by Bartholomew


"Square foot gardening" shows how to intensively plant small gardens for "sisters production".

I just snapped this photo looking out my dining area doorway...



In this picture you can see:

* 48" Redbrand Sheep & Goat fence
* (3) Strands of 8800 volt polywire electric fencing
* Grass we're growing for hay
* Some of our chickens

The chickens in the picture include: Dominiques (blackish barred birds), Welsummers (brownish red birds), and Delwares (white birds). My wife selected these breeds after EXTENSIVE research on foraging drive, brooding instinct, food thrift, egg to meat ratio production, etc.

Currently we have eight laying hens that are averaging 7 eggs a day. We have another 16 Dominique pullets (hens too young to lay) brooding. We'll turn them out of the barn and into the protected pasture in about three weeks.

Our birds are feed 100% USDA organic feed as a supplement but are completely free to free range in their protected pasture and set themselves to roost in the evening. (We built a 6'-6" x 7'-6" x 12'-0" mobile coop...this allows us to spread the manure evenly across the pasture). At least we thought that's how we'd run the farm, but we've found that collecting the manure under the roosts in tubs and composting it for garden use (must compost one year) is better.

Here's the front of our mobile "egg mobile"...



The three small roofs on the front hinge open to reveal six nest boxes. This coop is sized to allow 28 birds to roost comfortably.

The fence line you see to the "upper right" above the coop is our vegetable garden. Beyond the fence "beyond" the coop is our infant fruit tree orchard.

Well, my very limited data package on my iphone is about expended so I have to close this down. (Living in a rural area means: no cable, no internet, no gas, no water, no sewer - you have to manage on your own).