Introduction to permaculture homesteading books
Ben emailed to ask if I could recommend some books about "starting
up...going from the "normal" way of life...and ESCAPING and getting
into a permaculture lifestyle." Here are my top picks:
There are a lot of good homesteading
overview books,
but my favorite is John Seymour's The
Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It. (Well, also my Weekend Homesteader
series, of
course.) This type of book will grab your
attention about a lot of different projects, but you'll need to look in
other directions once you choose a certain area you're interested in.
In my opinion, vegetable
gardening
is at the heart of homesteading, so you might start your more in depth
reading there. Lee Reich's Weedless
Gardening and Steve
Solomon's Gardening
When it Counts are two of the best books for helping you start in a
permaculture fashion. A lot of beginners prefer Mel Bartholemew's
Square
Foot Gardening, but
I find the technique expensive and not as
focused on soil health. Speaking of which, Teaming
With Microbes by
Jeff Lowenfels is a beautiful and easy to read
primer on what's going on in your dirt.
Chickens should also be
considered low-hanging fruit in the homesteading world. By far
the best book on incorporating chickens into a permaculture homestead
is Harvey Ussery's The
Small-Scale Poultry Flock. I'm still in the
middle of that
book since it came out not long ago, so no lunchtime series on it
yet. (Speaking of which, most of the links in this post point you
toward my summaries of the top points in each book, although a few just
send you to Amazon if I haven't written a post about that book yet.)
In terms of general
permaculture
information, a
lot of people love Toby Hemenway's Gaia's
Garden. For
some reason, I didn't get into the book when I
flipped through it, but I 
suspect that's because I'd
already read a lot
of more advanced permaculture books and knew the basics. As I
look at the table of contents on Amazon, I think I should give it
another shot, and I would recommend you check it out. Another
introductory permaculture book is Bill Mollison's Permaculture:
A Designer's Manual.
Edible
mushrooms are
easy and
fun and are one of the hidden sides of the permaculture garden. I
recommend reading Paul Stamets' Mycelium
Running for
inspiration, but starting with something simple like
oyster mushrooms in logs. (I don't have a more basic edible
mushroom book to recommend, but there are lots of resources on the
internet.)
There are also a range of inspirational,
memoir-type books
you might be interested in. The most
well known is The
Good Life by Helen
and Scott Nearing. Possum Living
by Dolly Freed is a fun book written by an 18 year old about "how to
live well without a job and with (almost) no money." More
recently, Barbara Kingsolver's Animal,
Vegetable, Miracle
covers one family's experience eating locally
and in season.
If you're interested in
the traditional
cultures that
spawned many modern permaculture techniques, you
might want to check out Farmers
of Forty Centuries by FH King.
And, finally, I have to
plug our own book, Microbusiness
Independence, which
helps you fund
your homesteading adventure.
So, what am I
missing? What are the best introductory books for
off-grid living, sustainable building, aquaculture and other
homesteading topics I'm not as up to date on? I hope you'll
comment with your own beginners' reading list.
Want more in-depth information?
Browse through our books.
Or explore more posts
by date or
by subject.
About us:
Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Start with a frugal lifestyle:
This is a journey that one must make. I agree you cannot learn it from a book, but books, websites and blogs can point you in the right direction.
It is a journey that requires self reflection and experience. It is realizing that more stuff doesn't make you happier, it just encumbers you.
Roland --- I think simplicity is a bit like religion --- something that's best not preached because you really have to get there on your own.
Heath --- If you experiment with rabbits, I hope you'll come back and tell us all about it! (Take some photos and write a guest post??)
Folks with a decent internet connection can find a lot of permaculture resources through videos. Some well known permaculturists have videos around the web, like Bill Mollison's Global Gardener series: "http://www.veoh.com/watch/v20678727GXjcx5R"
I like Brad Lancaster's "Water Harvesting" book, which focuses mostly on dryland irrigation techniques(where land is often cheaper, so some aspiring homesteaders/permaculturists seem to end up there), but also discusses harvesting and landscape control to get the most out of water while minimizing erosion/flood risk.
You're right about Gaia's Garden. I think Hemenway held back a lot of his more radical ideas to make that book, which is kind of a mainstream (maybe slightly edgy) gardener's intro to permaculture. He says it himself. Some of his best work is on the topic of "invisible structures" or social building. He's got some nice articles at the website: http://www.patternliteracy.com A good book on invisible infrastructure is EF Schumacher's book "Small is Beautiful," which introduces a few great examples and ideas about ethical economics. There's a rough, unfinished quality to this book, but there are definitely a few good pieces of wisdom. And it spawned the Schumacher Society, which every permaculturist should be familiar with as a model, or at least inspiration for a new economy.
Simplicity is more like rationality or the lack of religion.
Simplicity's virtues are self-evident, while religion is a fairy tale at best and self delusion and destructiveness at worst. As opposed to simple living, countless people have been murdered in the name of religion.
Sara --- I'm not an auditory learner, so I vastly prefer books to videos. But it's true that folks who learn with a different style can get huge amounts of information off youtube.
I'm going to have to buckle down and read Small is Beautiful. Maybe that, plus Your Money or Your Life, are the books that would introduce folks to voluntary simplicity?
Roland --- I'm not saying that voluntary simplicity itself is like religion, just that it's a personal journey that no one can really expedite for you. Maybe you'd be happier if I replaced "religion" with "philosophy"?
I was given a copy of "Back to Basics" http://www.amazon.com/Back-Basics-Traditional-American-Skills/dp/0895779390 by a couple who live near me who have been homesteading for more than a decade. It's quite useful in many areas.
I also love Helen and Scott Nearing's book "Living the Good Life."