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The Backyard Homestead

The Backyard Homestead

$18.95

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$18.95

SKU: 9781603421386 Category:
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Description

This comprehensive guide to homesteading provides all the information you need to grow and preserve a sustainable harvest of grains and vegetables; raise animals for meat, eggs, and dairy; and keep honey bees for your sweeter days. With easy-to-follow instructions on canning, drying, and pickling, you’ll enjoy your backyard bounty all winter long.

Also available in this series: The Backyard Homestead Seasonal Planner, The Backyard Homestead Book of Building Projects, The Backyard Homestead Guide to Raising Farm Animals, and The Backyard Homestead Book of Kitchen Know-How.
On just a quarter-acre of land, you can produce fresh, organic food for a family of four — year-round!

Before becoming an editor at Storey Publishing, Carleen Madigan was managing editor of Horticulture magazine and lived on an organic farm outside Boston, Massachusetts, where she learned the homesteading skills contained in The Backyard Homestead. She enjoys gardening, hiking, foraging, baking, spinning wool, and knitting.

From a quarter of an acre, you can harvest 1400 eggs, 50 pounds of wheat, 60 pounds of fruit, 2000 pounds of vegetables, 280 pounds of pork, and 75 pounds of nuts.

Put your backyard to work. Enjoy fresher, organic, better-tasting food all the time. The solution is as close as your own backyard. Grow the vegetables and fruits your family loves; keep bees; raise chickens, goats, or even a cow. The Backyard Homestead shows you how it's done. And when the harvest is in, you'll learn how to cook, preserve, cure, brew, or pickle the fruits of your labor.

The indispensable guide to food self-sufficiency: learn how to milk a goat, prune a fruit tree, dry herbs, make dandelion wine, bake whole-grain bread, tap a maple tree, make fresh mozzarella, brew beer, mill grains for flour, save seeds for next season, and a whole lot more.
Contents

Preface
Introduction

Part 1
GETTING THE MOST FROM FRESH FOOD

  1. Setting Up the Homestead Kitchen
  2. Fresh Vegetables: Harvesting, Handling, Cooking
  3. Fresh Fruit: Harvesting, Handling, Cooking
  4. Grains and Beans
  5. Homemade Sweeteners: Honey, Maple Syrup, and Apple Cider Syrup
  6. Eggs, Birds, and Rabbits
  7. Fresh Milk
  8. Meat: Goat, Lamb, Pork, and Beef


Part 2
FOOD PRESERVATION
 

  1. Cold Storage
  2. Freezing
  3. Canning: Boiling-Water-Bath and Pressure Canning
  4. Drying
  5. Pickling
  6. Making Fruit Preserves
  7. Culturing Milk and Making Cheese
  8. Curing Meats and Making Simple Sausage


Part 3
HOMESTEAD COOKING

  1. Breakfast and Egg Dishes
  2. Vegetable, Cheese, and Bean Dishes
  3. Poultry and Meat Dishes
  4. Desserts and Baked Goods


Appendix: Basic Cooking Methods
Resources
Metric Conversion Charts
Index

“Bottom line is, even if you’re not ready for complete self-sufficiency, in today’s economic climate, it just makes sense to try to produce some of your own food. And this book is a great way to get your feet wet.”
—Bust “The tone is sweet and accessible, and the well-organized chapters cover all the bases…” — July 2009—Everyday Prepper“This book delivers what it aims to sell. Its 368 pages of information on creating a successful, self sufficient, backyard homestead that will keep you and your family busy and eating all year long. 4.5 out of five stars, this is the book homestead enthusiasts have been looking for. Go buy this book!” —Boston Sunday Globe

“The Backyard Homestead is a comprehensive and accessible guide to starting a vegetable garden, raising chickens and cows, canning food, making cheese, and a whole lot more. Editor Carleen Madigan…a homesteader in her own right, draws on the dozens of books about country living that Storey has published since its founding in 1983.”

—New York Times Book Review

“Because you need to brace yourself for what’s on the horizon: The Backyard Homestead. This fascinating, friendly book is brimming with ideas, illustrations, and enthusiasm. The garden plans are solid, the advice crisp; the diagrams, as on pruning and double digging, are models of decorum. Halfway through, she puts the pedal to the metal, and whoosh! At warp speed, we’re growing our own hops and making our own beer, planting our own wheat fields, keeping chickens (ho hum), ducks, geese, and turkeys (now we’re talking) and milking goats, butchering lamb, raising rabbits, and grinding sausage. Oh, and tapping our maple trees, churning butter, and making our own cheese and yogurt. Peacocks, anyone? Need I say more? Well, yes. Stock up on some knitting books because next winter, you’ll want to grow your own sweaters, too.”

Additional information

Dimensions 0.9375 × 7.0625 × 9 in
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Subjects

beginner beekeeping, beginners homesteading, backyard fruits and nuts, harvesting vegetables, how to grow from seed, garden planning, preserve your harvest, preserving herbs, how to raise bees, homemade preserves, GAR025000, basic beekeeping, canning for beginners, beginner gardener, chicken coop, raised beds, food self-sufficiency, homesteading, TEC003070