Customer Reviews

Concise Guide to Self-Sufficiency

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2 star:		(1)
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I bought this book at Borders recently and I don't see anything wrong with pages 24-25. They fit properly within the sections before and after.

With that said, I have only begun to go through this book, but I find it highly informative. This is the stuff our grandparents would have learned growing up on a farm, and its nice to find the basics covered all in one book. The step-by-step illustrations are highly informative and detailed. This book teaches you what all the different construction and harvesting tools are called and what their purposes are. The majority of the book is devoted to food. It explains how to start and maintain a healthy garden or large crop, and how to find all the food you need from nature (of course you will need other books for proper identification of edible wild plants). Then it explains how to kill and prepare poultry and other meats, and how to make bread, jams, syrups, pickles, cakes and biscuits, and how to store and preserve all of your produce. The basics of brewing beer and making wine and cider are also covered. It also covers woodworking, building construction, basketry, knots and ropework.

What's best about this book is how it encourages you to experiment. The people who would want to buy a book like this (such as myself) likely have no knowledge whatsoever about self-sufficiency, and are probably afraid of making stupid mistakes, but this book sees mistakes as a learning process and encourages you to try new things.

This book serves only as a starting point. It will give you the encouragement to move forward. If you want more detail, you can move on to his "Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency" or "The Encyclopedia of Country Living" by Carla Emery, and from there you will want to get specialized books on each of the subjects covered here.

DON'T BUY THIS VERSION!!!! There was a problem with the printing in China and the pages in the intro section, 24-25 are WRONG and don't follow... so wait for the reprint... Email Peter Jones at DK in London to find out when this will be...

Self sufficiency has the right tittle . Even if you are not a land owner you can try to do things with what you have , buy less , make more , think about the authentic quality of what you eat and use . John Seymour questioned everything , and the book is a gold mine of information about how to survive .

This is exactly as described, it will teach you how to make a fence, slaughter a pig, brew beer, make jam, grow vegetables and much more. Dont get the concise edition if you can get the regular one because obviously theres stuff missing.

I've only skimmed through, just got this in the mail, and I LOVE IT. It has lots of step by step pictures on chicken butchering, fermenting wine, building walls, etc, etc, etc. Carla Emery's Encyclopedia of Country Living will always be my main guide but this will definitely be a much-used addition to my bookshelf! Buy it used for under $10! Also shows season by season layout of an small example garden with greenhouse.

I have another book by Seymour that I highly value but this book was a disappointment. Still has some valuable information but don't feel it was worth the purchase.

I am retiring next year and we will be moving to an area where we will have opportunities to experiment with growing and preserving our own food. In addition, we will be next to a huge wildlife area where we can even try finding edible wild plants. I can't think of a better way to pursue a healthy and interesting retirement!