Customer Reviews

New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency

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Sometimes, when I'm having a particularly bad day, I take down this book and open it up to the section on how to arrange your self-sufficient farm on 1 or 5 acres. "All we would need," I beg my husband, "is five acres! And then we could keep 2 cows! One to milk and one to eat." His response? "You're a vegetarian."

Ahem. Anyway.

I love this book. It's a DK book, so it's well written, with short chapters/descriptions based on specific subjects. This format makes it easy to flip through for fun, or to find the information that interests you. There are lots of illustrations, drawn in the style that appears on the cover. It includes information on growing crops, keeping (and butchering) animals, cooking, weaving, energy, water, building... basically everything you need to know to do everything you need on your own.

Is this a total fantasy for most people? Yes, of course. But this is still such a useful book, even if you just want to learn the information in it without using it. Most everything in here used to be passed down from parent to child, and it was what people needed to know to survive. It's all information that's being lost and forgotten. And who knows, maybe soon enough we'll need to remember it?

This book is the perfect book for people who want to gain more control over their lives and live healthily in cooperation with the environment. You'll learn everything from rearing cattle, growing onions, harness natural power and furnishing a dairy. The perfect starting point for a better life away from the grind. And the best thing is that it's written in a very introductory manner so you don't have to be raised on a farm to understand it.

It changed my life..

I've been looking for a general self-sufficiency skills handbook to help me with the myriad tasks farm life requires, an aid to improvised problem solving in a very remote area where many of the old skills are dead or dying or unaffordable. Positive Amazon reviews pointed me to this revised classic. What I discovered is a far-ranging, beautifully-illustrated, weighty tome that somehow manages to answer very few do-it-yourself question with enough depth to be useful. The author lives in Ireland, and in some cases the materials available to him are almost impossible to find in America: osiers? Slashing hooks? Peat knives? So, here in the American west many of the suggested solutions are simply out of reach. And I was immediately suspicious of the less familiar chapters when I saw that the sections on animal husbandry cover just a few pages. This topic is perhaps the most demanding that a farmer can face, and many beginner's guides are hundreds of pages long. This book leaves the reader with the misapprehension that keeping a hog is like keeping a stuffed bear. I think the subtitle should read: "a Classic Guide for Dreamers", so as not to mislead the realists into thinking that this book actually proposes any farming solutions. The one thing it does perfectly is underline the fact that a small farm is an intensive, demanding, all-encompassing undertaking for which no amount of pretty pictures will ever suffice. I love the idea, and I enjoy flipping through the book, but don't be fooled into thinking that there is much practicality to match the folksy wisdom in this book.

This is the greatest self-sufficiency book ever written. That's my opinion. :) I highly recommend this to anyone who wishes to become less impactful on the environment and to have more money in their pockets thanks to this style of living. You can do a little or a lot, depending on what you have to work with initially. This is an awesome, non-hippie/tree-hugger book about self-sufficiency free of all of the "lefty green" dogma you usually have to put up with. Great stuff!!!

"The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency: The Classic Guide for Realists and Dreamers," is a truly wonderful book. But I didn't know until today, when I received my copy and recognized very familiar contents, that it is almost identical to "The Self-sufficient Life and How to Live It: The Complete Back-to-Basics Guide." "The New Complete Book" seems to be the British edition of "The Self-Sufficient Life", which was published in the United States. If you already have the "The Self-Sufficient Life" (as I do), "The New Complete Book" is not new. I'm glad Amazon has such a convenient return system!

I haven't completed reading this book, however, the introduction, which provides the author's philosophy, is excellent. The chapters that I've read (about half the book) are giving me the information I hoped for. In that I am looking for a piece of rural land on which to build an organic, family farm, it will take some time to apply all that this book has to offer. I am confident it will.

I love this book. I doubt I'll ever slaughter a pig, shear a sheep, or make my own cowhide shoes but this book covers nearly everything - most of which is actually very useful to the average person - including a lot on gardening. He outlines how to be self-sufficient on the "one acre holding" and the "five acre holding" in pretty darn good detail.

I've owned several editions of this book...and it has molded my relatively self sufficient life over 3 decades...for all of you wishing to escape from the 9 to 5, materialistic world...you can't go wrong with this book in your hands.

I also recommend "Living the Good Life: How to Live Sanely & Simply in a Troubled World", by Helen and Scott Nearing.

Peace on all your homesteads, and justice on earth in our lifetimes.

John Seymour has improved and brought his work up to date with the times. It is every bit as informative as his first publication of this great and truly "complete" work for those who want self-sufficiency. There is no subject that is not covered for the self-sufficient. This is a great companion to his other great work the Self Sufficient Gardener.

This book helps you learn how to become completely self sufficient, from growing and storing your own food to making your own bricks to build with. For the people out there who like to do things the old fashion way, this book IS A MUST HAVE!