Back to Basics

Live Greener. Live Smarter. Live Better! Countless readers have turned to earlier editions of Back to Basics for inspiration and instruction, rediscovering the pleasures and challenges of a healthier, greener, and more self-sufficient lifestyle. Now newly updated and including hundreds of projects, step-by-step sequences, photographs, charts, and illustrations, this book will show you how to: dye cloth, raise chickens, graft trees, milk cows, build a log cabin, make cheese, weave a rug, cook over a wood fire, can foods, pickle foods, preserve foods, raise a barn, make candles, shear sheep, design a home, brew beer, keep bees, harness and use natural energy, plant a kitchen garden, spin wool, craft furniture, skin a rabbit, churn butter, tan leather, make natural cosmetics, and butcher livestock. The author is a freelance writer and editor who grew up in Vermont. From childhood she has been fascinated with simple living, helping her brother build a log cabin with timber from her family's property, home canning jams and jellies, and enjoying countless hours of natural crafts.