the best book I ever bought
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Genuinely, this book has enriched my life. This sounds very strong language, but a glimpse of how achieveable a degree of self sufficiency can be is a great stress-buster and very uplifting.
Practical, useful, full of ideas and inspiration, this book will motivate anyone to take a step or two towards self sufficiency, wherever they live.
Every chapter is interesting, well written, and well illustrated. The craft skills are useful and practical and whilst a compost-toilet is not quite the thing for our garden in the suburbs, all the practical projects are well described and amply illustrated.
A great reference book, a comfort on a cold winter's night, I recommend it to anyone.
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review
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A must have for all small holders.Not a full complete guide but nonetheless full of great info and knowledge. A book i reread and reread from one season to the next.
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worth while
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Im not much of a person for writing or reading, more of a hands on sort of person, but i read this book and it was incredible. The author makes it clear and easy to understand, giving good diagrams along with step by step procedures. I would reccomend this book to anyone, as i hve done, its well worth the money.
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Excellent addition to the coffee table. . . or museum
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Regarded as a classic by many, Seymour's tome has slipped sadly out of date and the 2003 relaunch did little to correct some aspects which - in Britain at least - have been overtaken by legislation. To recommend a swill bucket for pigs is inexcusable as contaminated swill is generally accepted to be the cause of the 2001 foot and mouth outbreak.
There's a lot of interesting stuff - including Seymour's unusual and ill-informed culinary ideas - which will keep you amused, but little for the serious smallholder. It is rarely looked and never consulted on our farm.
One fellow-farmer, on being asked if he followed Seymour's advice, said he would love to, but the day had yet to be extended to 37 hours.
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Excellent introduction but you will need more detail
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Well maybe not a complete book of self sufficiency but certainly a very good place to start.
Some people have criticised this for being more a book for dreamers than realists but as every ambition starts as a dream is that such a bad thing. Large sections of this book are really aimed at the smallholder so if you have five acres and a cow you are pretty much the target audience for this book but even if you have just a semi and an allotment you should find something of value in here. A lot of it is also an introduction rather than a complete manual. So, for example, covering how to keep chickens in just three pages is never going to be a complete guide but it does have a place, it let's me know that putting chickens in my back garden is a viable idea and that really is its value this is usually the first place to look for a start to my next downsizing project.
Of course that breadth of subject and shallowness with which each is treated is also it's problem; the range of subjects covered here is probably unrealistic for any one person to cover and if you do try any of them you will probably want more detail. So while it's inspiring and might encourage you to believe you can do more than you thought you could you it really is just the first step. Nonetheless it's an excellent place to start and for inspirational value alone I'd recommend this.
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