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thegreatlesley's review against another edition
4.0
There are some great recipes and projects that are really useful. However, the book seems to contradict itself in places. It's a good reference book but should not be taken as scripture.
duparker's review against another edition
3.0
I have determined that there is no one great book about this topic. The permaculture introduction and the short section on urban gardening was really good. The urban livestock section was a bit overdone.
The layout/format and writing was really accessible and made this a good read.
The layout/format and writing was really accessible and made this a good read.
thukpa's review against another edition
4.0
Plenty of good tips. Instituting home-made yogurt and vinegar and baking soda cleaning.
amibunk's review against another edition
4.0
This is one of the best urban homesteading books I've read yet. If you live in a city or in the suburbs and want to be more self-sufficient then this is the place to start. Next year, using an idea from the book, I plan on using old tires to grow my own potatoes. And that thought makes me very happy.
ewg109's review against another edition
5.0
This is the real deal. If you are serious this is the book you get.
mauvealert's review against another edition
4.0
This is an excellent overview of the various things you can do to make your home (whether it's a house or an apartment) more self-sufficient. It discusses gardening, raising livestock, recycling water, reducing energy usage, generating electricity, and a lot more. The book includes directions for some smaller projects and includes pointers to books and/or (free) online resources for the rest. It also mentions where you can buy a lot of the stuff, with a mention that you can usually construct it yourself (with a pointer to directions).
makenziewho's review against another edition
2.0
Ok, because this book does offer some useful information, I'm giving two stars. But the language, the tone, and the overall... er... weirdness of this book was so off-putting that I can't recommend it to anyone. I was first a little freaked out by a blurb about compost reminding the compost-maker of her eventual demise every time she saw her pile of rotting vegetation. Um. Okay? For me, a compost pile can just be a compost pile. Secondly, I was somewhat enjoying the section on raising chickens until I was informed that I needed to "inspect their asses". I get that the writers wanted to portray this book as friendly and relatable, but I really just can't get over the ridiculousness of that statement. But i think the nail in the coffin for me was the espousal of "guerrilla gardening", or basically encouraging readers to find a space to grow their crops, even if that space happens to belong to your neighbor, a business, or the city. This handbook will even teach you how to make a seed-bomb to throw over those pesky private-property fences so you can really get that renegade, devil-may-care feeling when you garden. To top it all off, the author concludes with a bleak call-to-arms for homesteading involving a near-future shortage of resources and an impending apocalypse which will sweep all sinners and hipsters off the face of the earth. The humor of this epilogue was lost on me. I suppose I was just looking for a book to help me make the most of my backyard, and the awkwardness of the writing in this work can be easily avoided; all the information here is explained much better in other books on homesteading. I would highly recommend All-New Square Foot Gardening and The Backyard Homestead for someone who is looking for a wealth of homesteading info with a distinct lack of strange.
mizpurplest's review against another edition
4.0
This book was awesome and inspiring in so many ways, and it's very instructional about things that I really needed instruction on. Now I really want chickens...
They are a bit more invested in the whole concept than I am, but it's not written in a way that requires you to commit whole-hog to their system; you can take what you want or need and leave the rest as filler. It was all really interesting, and fun to read.
They are a bit more invested in the whole concept than I am, but it's not written in a way that requires you to commit whole-hog to their system; you can take what you want or need and leave the rest as filler. It was all really interesting, and fun to read.