118. My Current Favorite Homesteading Books

Recently I’ve been sorting through my library of homesteading books.  I’ve read countless books over the years, but the ones that still remain on my shelf today are the one’s that I truly cherish.  Finding great homesteading books can be a pretty difficult task.  Many books tend to be more of a broad brush rather than digging into specific topic.  Listen today to find incredible reference books for extending your seasons, organic gardening, beef cows, cheese making, cookbooks, and everything in between.  No matter where you’re at in your homesteading journey, you are sure to find a valuable source of information you can implement immediately!

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Transcript

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welcome to the old fashioned on purpose podcast. I've been doing a lot more reading lately and going through my bookshelves and decluttering and other than sorting through things, it's become very apparent to me how picky I am about the books I keep. I don't have a lot of shelf space, so if a book's gonna earn a place in my library, it has to be super meaty and have lots of high quality, very actionable information. So has it been sorting through my collection? I have my favorites and a pile, and I thought it would be fun to give you a quick little list of the homesteading books that I am absolutely loving lately. I'm your host, Jill Winger, and this is the podcast for the Trail Blazers, the Mavericks, the makers, the homesteaders, the modern pioneers and the backyard farmers. If you're ready to boost your food security and increase your self sufficiency, well, you have found your tribe. Hey, friend, I'm interrupting this episode for just a sec because I know a lot of you are planning on expanding your homestead efforts this year, and you are in need of some supplies because it's more important than ever to be supporting small businesses. I wanted to tell you about one of my favorites. Lehman's hardware. Trust me, if you're listening to this podcast, then I guarantee that Lehman's is pretty much your dream store. They're all about supporting old fashioned people like us, and they carry everything from kitchen supplies to canning equipment to gardening tools and everything in between. I have yet to find it. Any home studying supply store as comprehensive as they are. And guess what they are offering a special discount on all of their baking supplies just for my listeners. Use code. JillMay, when you check out to save 10% on any things in the baking category, so head on over to theprairiehomestead.com/lehmann's L E H M A N s. Check out all they have to offer and take advantage of your now back to the show. So as I've collected a lot of different books related to homesteading over the years, I've kind of come to the conclusion that it could be a very tricky topic to write about because it is so broad and there are a 1,000,000 little sub categories that can fit under this home setting umbrella. And when you have that you're trying to pack all of that into one volume, you just It's hard to get all the details in there, and it can kind of produce some shallow content. And by shallow I mean, it's not that it's bad content or bad information. It just doesn't give you quite an up enough hoof to actually do the thing or master the thing. Now that's completely fine. And sometimes welcome. If you're just trying to figure out what this idea is, you're just brand new to home studying and you're just trying to figure out what your options are and go from there. But after a little while into your new hobby or into the kitchen or into the garden of the chicken coop, you kind of need more. And that's what I found myself really craving as I started to mature in this homestead lifestyle. Now I have been ordering some books lately because I've had more time to read, and a lot of these books have been absolutely transformative in how I'm thinking of our home setting goals and our small scale farming, and I wanted to give you a quick list of these today because these air good These are the ones that I have dog eared that are going out to the garden with me that are like they're the books doing the work and are really shifting my mindset in perspective and just giving me more knowledge. So I think you're gonna really like these because I am loving them, I've noticed is kind of a fun shift. When I first started trying to find homesteading books like a decade ago, remember going to our local library? There was a few, but they were very much kind of like industrial farming scaled down, and they were attempting to transition it into more of a backyard perspective. But it was rough, right? The books were not super user friendly, and they didn't have a lot of that really actionable info. Keep using that word. But that's my like my favorite word, that information you can latch onto and then take it the next day and like do something with it. And these books were a lot of theory and a little bit more lofty in their approach and So I've noticed that there's a new crop of books over the last couple of years, and some of them have been around way longer. But they are all about opting out of your standard standard agriculture, industrial systems, and they're introducing these new thought processes and new ways of thinking about growing meat and milk and vegetables. And I love it. It's so awesome. So before I get a list, I'm going to encourage you to get these books from small bookstores, if at all possible. I know it's really easy to order them right out of Amazon, and I have done that a lot in the past, but I'm trying to shift. I have a podcast episode coming out on that topic. It may be either right before this episode or right after all, about why I'm shifting into more small business support than ever before. But if you can go to your small local bookstore in order this or buy it, please do that instead of just going to the big guys. Okay. All right. Here we go. So I got to start the list with Eliot Coleman. I know, I know. You guys knew about him a long time before I did cool, but it does found him. I mean, I knew I knew his name, but I just got his books and I am so loving them. I started with the fourseason harvest, and that is what really started to get me thinking on cold frames and greenhouses. And I'm like, Oh, my gosh, this is possible because Eliot Coleman, his stuff is in zone five as well. We're in zone five like a light bulb moment. Honestly, when I read that when I saw the title four season harvest, I'm like, Yeah, yeah, whatever. You probably live in Florida. Well, he doesn't. He lives way up north, and he doesn't have the wind that we do. I don't think, but they still are in that cold zone, so if he can do it, I can do it. So the four season harvest is fantastic. Um, on all the sorts of season extension and then he also has a well well known book called the new organic gardener. That is just your typical. Not typical is your more over arcing gardening information like weeding and pest control and mulching and composting. It's also fantastic, and what I love about the way he writes and shares information is that it's very detailed, but not in an overwhelming way, but in a way that you can take these principles and apply them, and it's very tangible, and I love it. I did get his Winter Harvest Handbook, and honestly, after having the two other books, I kind of felt that one was a little bit redundant. I don't know if he would need all three, but I would say Definitely start with the Four Season harvest and the New Organic Gardener and go from there. Another book that I was so excited to get is shifting gears a little bit into cheese making. It's called The Art of Natural Cheesemaking, by David Asher. So have a lot of cheese books there I've used for years, but I've never seen a cheese book like this one. And honestly, when I first got it, I before it opened it up. Like I hope I just didn't waste 30 bucks on this book. And it's some crazy, lofty artistan gourmet, hoity toity cheesemaking techniques, and it's not. I was so pleasantly surprised to see that it's very real life homestead scale, cheesemaking and what I love about David Asher's techniques is that he uses Kiefer or kafir, however you say it, as the culture for a lot of his cheeses. And the thing with your typical home cheesemaking is that you need to buy a lot of the, um, cultures in little packets, which is fine. But I love that he teaches you how to do this with keeper grains and their sustainable, and you'll have to keep buying things. And he teaches you how to use less plastic in your cheese making and just how to get a lot more of these natural cheeses with a sustainable system. He even shows you this. I was trying to express to Christian my excitement on this, and he did not get it. So maybe you'll get it. He shows you how to create or not create but capture, your own mold for making blue cheese off of bread. He tells you to take a piece of sourdough bread, and then you cultivate this mold on the bread, and I was just, like, so excited. I cannot wait to try that. I'm waiting for my cow to freshen and as soon as she does, I'm going to be a cheesemaking fanatic. I'm gonna make my own mold, you guys, and you're gonna hear all about it all over Instagram. So prepare your hearts. But yeah, the mold made me super excited, cause I had never seen before in my whole life. And now you know the true depths of my weirdness. I'm a complete nerd. Um, but I'll let you know how it goes when I start growing mold on purpose. Anyway, I highly recommend it. He talks about cheese caves. He talks about waxing. He talks about the simple cheeses, the hard cheeses, the mold ripened cheeses. It's a great, great book. And I wish I found it years ago. Okay, My next choice on my list. I've had this one for a long time, but I still refer to it. It's Harvey Ursery, you sory do not know how to pronounce his name. But his first name is Harvey. And here he wrote a book called The Small Scale Poultry Flock and it's so good. It's so meaty. He talks about how to feed chickens for free and how he uses them in his garden and his meat bird set up and how he butchers them in his laying him set up and how he breeds them. And it's very natural. He tries to be dependent on CIST, like the industrial systems as little as possible and his thought processes around chicken keeping or just refreshing and fascinating. And if you're wanting to do chickens in a more sustainable way, then he is the guy I would look to first really, really good book the small scale poultry flock. Now, I can't have a list of books without Joel Salatin. Of course, he has plenty of books, lots of books. The tooth I'm loving the most right now. Um, I have mentioned this on, like, three podcast episode, so I'm sorry if you heard me say this before, But folks, this ain't Normal so good, I've read it. I just finished it for the second time. It's so good you haven't read it. You really need to read it. It will shift your perspective on a lot of really important things in a very good way. The other one I'm loving is salad bar beef, which is that it's an older book. Um but it just goes through his processes of how he raises his grass fed beef herd, and I've had it a long time. I read it many years ago, but it kind of has a new meaning to me since we are getting into commercial grass fed beef sales. So those two are great. He has lots of books, though You can't go wrong with Joel Salatin. You just you just can't Another book that I love because it's in that line of Joel Salatin is way of thinking, but they take a lot of the concepts and apply it more to a small scale homestead would be the independent farmstead by Sean and Beth Dockery. And like I said, they're very heavily influenced by Joel Salatin. But Joel's operation is a little bit bigger, not ginormous. Just it's more on a cool commercial scale. Where is the independent farmstead focuses on more of a family size operation. Just if you're feeding your family and they're just they think outside the box. I like how they explain things, how they talk about pasturing and moving things around, and just their systems and processes does a very compelling book that really makes you think so. If you need, we have these ideas swimming around in your head and you're looking for more tips on actually implementing them. I would check that one out. Okay, now confession. I don't have this book yet. Um, but it's coming today, and I think it's gonna be good, So I'm putting it on the list just so you can check it out. It's called the Small Scale Dairy, and it's by the same publisher is a lot of these other books Chelsea Green, and the reason I purchased it is because I trust the publisher because so many of the other books are fantastic, but it's called the Small Scale. Excuse me. A small scale dairy by Jee Ah Nicholas Caldwell and have kind of a classic Bible for family cows has been keeping the family cow, which is still a fantastic book. But it's older, so I've been looking for a while for a really, um, detailed quality home dairy book that would apply to homestead folk. That's a little more recent, and I'm thinking this one's going to be the one I'll let you know for sure, but, you know, maybe go check it out online. If you want Teoh, take a peek at it before you buy it, but I think it's going to be just some good ideas and food for thought. And here's the thing. We've been obviously doing this homestead thing for a long time, but you were, I learned in layers. Maybe you learn like this, too, When I'm absorbing a new concept, there's only so much that I can absorb and learn at one time. So you learn that first layer and the rest just kind of has to leave your brain. Otherwise you'll lose your mind and I implement that first layer. And then once I have those initial basic processes flowing, I like to come back to that information and kind of absorb the next step, right. So as we are moving into this new season of home dairy, we're building on a better milking parlor. I have more cows were potentially going to be selling milk. I'm ready to upgrade my systems. My systems have worked great for us for a long time, but I'm ready to kind of up level a little bit, and so that's why I dig into these resource is and see how I could improve or tweak things, and that's when it just gets more streamlined and efficient, which makes me happy. Okay, I wanted to shift into a few food books because those were kind of my top picks for the food growing. And this is the food, food, cooking and preparing. So, um, obviously shameless plug. I have to put my cookbook on the list because I actually do use my cookbook on a regular basis, cause I don't have all the recipes memorized. Sorry, it that shocking, but I don't, um but my cookbook is the book I wanted for when I started homesteading that I couldn't find right. The simple from scratch recipes that don't use process foods in cans and boxes and frozen components. And they're just really ingredients turned into classic dishes. So that's why I wrote it the way I did because I wanted it back then. I didn't have it. That being said, I'm just is picky with my cookbooks, the ones I keep as I am my home setting books. I do not have a giant collection of cookbooks. To be perfectly honest, I find that most cookbooks I pick up just are not compelling to me, and I like to go to the library and check them out before I buy them. And I can't tell you how many cookbooks I brought home from the library, and I just was not impressed by you. They just didn't have ingredients that spoke to me. Or actually, let me rephrase that I didn't have ingredients I could even buy in Wyoming. In a lot of cookbooks, that seems, are written for folks who live in, um, places like L. A or New York. And they have the most amazing farmers market that we just don't have that here. So, um, anyway, I need cookbooks that use simple whole ingredients. But I love cookbooks that take those whole ingredients and use some magic techniques to make them extra special. And I think one cookbook that does that better than any other I know is salt fat acid heat by some Ignaz rat. And it's fantastic. You may have seen the Siris on Netflix. I recommend that as well. She will make you fall in love with salt in olive oil and just the different techniques. And the way she writes about it is beautiful. and poetic and a recipes are amazing. Um, just amazing. And they're simple. They use regular old, everyday human ingredients that we can all find. So they're not, You know, unicorn teardrops and crazy things. You have to buy it. Super fancy farm farmers market so highly recommend her book. That was when I got at the library. I didn't return to library and about my own copy. I liked that much. Another one. This is very confusing, cause these were both book titles with four ingredients in them. So flour, water, salt, yeast is the 2nd 1 I like by kin for Kish, and that's super well known. It's won a ton of awards. If you want to get into artistson bread baking, that's one of my favorites has amazing piece across recipe in there. If you're branded of bread bread baking, it might feel a little bit confusing, but if you're kind of ready to take it to the next level, it's wonderful. Has beautiful pictures, clear instructions. I really love it. And in my final book on the list is called The Art of the Pie by Kate McDermott's I really Love This Book. I would say at least 50% because of the cover, has a beautiful cover with an amazing font, because I really like good fonts. I know that's weird and the photography is gorgeous. It's just a really well done book, and the rest of these are good and they're simple and their understandable. And like I said, I love those books that take simple ingredients but teach you how to maximize the has those ingredients and make them better than ever, or give you a little technique tweaks to shift, how you make a food and that makes it so much tastier. And that is a great example of that book. Her half butter half lard pie crust is That's my go to pie cross recipe. Um, love it. So in a way, that's a few of the books I'm reading. Um 01 little trick. I think I told you about this in another episode, but I use an app on my phone called Scribd, and this episode is not sponsored by them. I'm just telling you about them. It's eight bucks a month, I believe, and it's unlimited so you can listen to all the audio books you want and read all the digital books you want now. I don't really actually like reading books on my phone. I'd much rather have a paper book, but sometimes I will. I do like audiobooks. So I have a subscription for the audio books, and what I will do is a lot of the times they'll have the book I'm interested in in digital form. So all this going describe and look at it and see if I like it. That's what I did with the art of natural cheese making. I opened up the digital version and looked at him like, Oh, this is good. This has really good recipes so that I wouldn't bought the paper version cause there's no way I'm making cheese recipes off a phone like it would be a disaster. I need paper. I need a paper book for that. So scribe is one of my best recommendations for your audio books in some digital books. If you want to do some snooping around before you buy, also, if you don't have, um, local bookstores that you can tap into, I like to get used books online, and one of my favorite is a B e books dot com, and I mentioned them again in another episode, but that they give him that. I give him another shot out, Um, can save a few bucks when you buy stuff used, and that's my list. I love to hear yours. If you have ah, favorite homesteading book, you think I need to add to my collection. She mean email. Let me know on Instagram, and I will definitely check it out. So if you are ready to do this homestead thing, but you're not quite sure of where or how to start, well, that is my specialty, and I just so happen to have an entire library of resource. Is I put together for homesteaders just like you. You can get complimentary access over at theprairiehomestead.com/grow, and that is it for today. Don't for hit. Forget to hit. Subscribe. So all the new episodes will show up automatically in your podcast player. And if you found this episode helpful, I would be so grateful if you could take a minute to leave a quick rating or review. Thanks so much for listening. We will chat more on the next episode of the old fashioned on purpose podcast