Books on Homesteading

[Garmine T. Morris No.17379630]

What are some good books that can give me information on the things I would need to do in order to maintain a successful homestead?

I would like to rely as little as possible on society, and am okay missing out on comforts and conveniences (to a degree). Particularly in Poland, if that changes anything. Amount of acres/hectares is still unknown. Probably going to buy land with high grade soil.

Some things that come to mind that are worthy to learn about:

Farming
Gardening
Home upkeep and repairs
Building a well (if I do not get natural water on the land)
Animals
Etc.

[Anonymous No.17379669]

>>>/out/
/Homegrown/

[Anonymous No.17379797]

>>17379630
seconding this. There is a homestead bible basically i bought. I will find the name for you brother.

[Garmine T. Morris No.17380201]

>>17379669
Thanks sir
>>17379797
That would be great

[Anonymous No.17381295]

I got these three books after seeing recommendations for them from homesteaders I follow on twitter:

1. Finding & Buying Your Place in the Country by Les and Carol Scher
2. Farming for Self-sufficiency: Independence on a 5-acre Farm by John Seymour and Sally Seymour
3. Five Acres and Independence: A Handbook for Small Farm Management by M. G. Kains

[Anonymous No.17381317]

>>17379630
I used to have a lot of really great books on botany/homesteading, if I can dig them up I'll make a thread about them.

[Anonymous No.17381361]

>>17381317
do it

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.17381373]

The whole self sufficiency thing can only go so far. It’s best to find clusters of like minded folks

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.17381389]

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.17381398]

[Anonymous No.17381502]

>>17379630
You might have better luck on /out/. There are book threads there on occasion and people post books in the gardening thread all the time.

That aside, I recommend Permaculture: A Designer's Manual if you're interested in permaculture and Stamets' Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms is as good as it gets for small-scale fungiculture. I could recommend more but I'm away from my stacks right now.

[Anonymous No.17381573]

>>17379630
Get books on the skills you need for the area you plan to live in. Field guids, farming/gardening books, etc. The homesteading books are largely a joke since they can not apply to all environments. One can be used as a general outline to guide other book purchases.

If you live somewhere with a winter, Cold Climate Gardening is a great resource.

[Anonymous No.17381601]

>>17381373
I am curious, you always shill the same books, but do you have any first hand experience? It is not that hard to be self reliant, but it is more work than most realize, you will work all day non stop for weeks at a time and a good chunk of the year you will be working at least full time. You do get some good stretches of lazing about, but you can not go on vacation or anything, still have stuff to at least keep an eye on and the odd chores.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.17381616]

>>17381601
Why I mention not going it alone.
I still work retail and don’t have any land. So haven’t peeked into most of these books I was recommended.

[Anonymous No.17381645]

>>17381601
Namefag doesnt have any experience AND 9/10 doesnt read the books that they post. my first encounter with butterfly was in a thread similar to this one and i can assure you the poster is full of shit. do not engage.

that said, op, look into permaculture. the bill mollison book is good, but geoff lawton has some great videos on youtube about it too.
i also recommend watching biggest little farm (it glosses over things but it gives a general gist of the work needed to be done and how long things take) and looking at homesteading youtube accounts. im sure there are similar movements in poland, although your country can be kind of fucked up sometimes.
lastly, i recommend visiting your local community garden and trying to network there, get some farming experience and seeing if it is the right lifestyle for you. you wont learn everything in books.

[Anonymous No.17381696]

>>17381645
>and looking at homesteading youtube accounts
Bad idea; almost all of them are full of shit.

[Anonymous No.17381712]

>>17381696
i think theyre useful for viewing certain techniques. you have to wade through a lot of aspergers and family dynamics but i've found them useful for certain types of building techniquesfor example.

op needs to understand also that he needs a decent amount of capital to start this venture AND it is in his best interest to not be entirely misanthropic. your life will be easier making friends with your neighbours even if they are relatively far away.

[Anonymous No.17381715]

>>17381712
neighbours and community*. farmers markets etc.

[Anonymous No.17382009]

>>17381645
99% of the people on 4chan have no experience. Neither do you.

[Anonymous No.17382147]

>>17382009
i study agriculture and am living in an offgrid cabin, stop projecting. here's what i'm fixing up atm. screenshot of a photo because of size limit.

[Anonymous No.17382161]

>>17382147
nice larp

[Anonymous No.17382187]

>>17382161
>it's impossible that some guy studies agriculture and lives in a cabin
based retard

[Anonymous No.17382190]

>>17382161
cope

[Anonymous No.17382201]

>>17382147
If that were true you would know that permaculture is not the end all be all and regional climate, needs, the land you are growing on and other factors determine the best approach.

[Anonymous No.17382226]

Economy of scale means you can get more food for less money and effort by buying it from an industrial farm than by producing it yourself on a hobby farm.

[Anonymous No.17382324]

>>17382201
i didn't assert that. i suggested it as a good intro to agricultural practice. stay mad.

[Anonymous No.17382329]

>>17382226
some people prefer to live closer to the land than having life abstracted to them in such ways as economy of scale.

[Anonymous No.17382400]

>>17382324
Not mad at all, you are the one that can not ignore obvious trolls. Permaculture fails miserably in some situations and the books and its proponents just ignore that, act like it is the best path for every situation. Idealism is not the path to successful homesteading.

[Anonymous No.17382439]

>>17382400
but it's a good introduction to agriculture and promotes a range of long term benefits. soil health, biodiversity, planting methods etc. no one type of practice is an answer. monoculture farming has lead to the nightmare situation we're in now and learning how to remediate that and introduce good agricultural practice is a good start for those looking to get into this way of life in my experience.

what do you do for a living? what is your living situation? do you have any agricultural experience? your critiques of permaculture seem to be copied from a wikipedia page, but i'd be interested to discourse if you have experience with it.

[Anonymous No.17382836]

>>17382439
I spent a decade living on the family land until i got fed up with family politics, they thought I should cover all expenses on the land including paying all utilities for the cabin I did not use or even live anywhere near. Really they just wanted to sell it. So now i am working and saving for the next stage of life.

Homesteading is more than agriculture and it might be a very small part. If you are moving into heavy forest you probably will not do much farming at all and just have a small garden to supplement a forest diet. This is why i recommended topic specific books for the region one is going to homestead. In these parts we have a glut of failed permacultures from people who bought into the easy simple life the movement likes to promote, but it is not a good path for the northern woods and more work than the alternatives.

[Anonymous No.17382882]

>>17382836
what do you mean living on the family land? were you working the land or did you just live rurally and have a job? how old are you?

the op wanted books covering a variety of topics which is why i recommended a range of media looking at different aspects of the type of life he's looking for. notice i mentioned local community garden and network.

what alternatives are there in the northern woods? what part of what country is that specifically? genuinely curious.

[Anonymous No.17383415]

>>17382882
Family land being forested acreage which my grandma owned and her grandfather had bought. It had a cabin for family events and a hunting lodge which was really just a place to get shit faced and play poker as far as I can tell. I lived out there off the land, occasionally took an odd job to cover the odd expense but mostly just stayed out there and told people if they wantes to see me they knew where i was. Started in a yurt, built a cabin so I would not have to deal with snow buildup collapsing my yurt. 40. Grandma died, kids saw dollar signs, so now i am back to working.

This would be northern MN. In the forest growing stuff is difficult since you have all the trees in the way and making shade and the forest plants can out compete most any food crop in such conditions, but the forest provides a great deal of edibles. So i had a small garden to provide those things which I wanted but the forest would not provide, like tomatoes and beans. I would trade wild mushrooms with a restaurant for things like flour sometimes but mostly i just harvested wild rice and buckwheat for my flour needs. I let my environment dictate my life instead of trying to dictate it to my life.

Hence my rec of region spacific books, makes life easier.

[Anonymous No.17383528]

>>17383415
sounds interesting, thanks for taking the time to type it out. definitely a different area to where i am. subtropics so some rainforest segments, not many edible mushrooms and most trees are fruit. hence the need to maintain vegetable gardens, greenhouse etc. looking into growing fungus which paul stamets is useful for despite critiques of him.

"I let my environment dictate my life instead of trying to dictate it to my life." is how i tend to view things, i think having everything available to you all of the time is a garbage way to experience life.

sorry about family horseshit, i hope whatever life you are trying to reach now works out for you.

[Anonymous No.17383982]

My general prepping list based on a lot of googling:
SAS Survival Handbook, Third Edition: The Ultimate Guide to Surviving Anywhere
Where There Is No Doctor: A Village Health Care Handbook, Revised Edition
Where There Is No Dentist
The Encyclopedia of Country Living, 40th Anniversary Edition: The Original Manual of Living Off the Land & Doing It Yourself
Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving
100 Deadly Skills: The SEAL Operative’s Guide