Customer Reviews

Encyclopedia of Country Living, 10th Edition

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The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery, A Review, by Sher June

This book is phenomenal! Besides offering general information on
gardening and variations on the usual ways to prepare and preserve
produce, Carla Emery includes thousands of other exotic and old
fashioned recipes. That alone would be remarkable, but she doesn't stop
there. She covers information on every aspect of farming and
homesteading from buying a farm to delivering your own baby---yes, if you
are all alone when you go into labor!

Here is a general idea of what she includes, as well as some of the
weirder specifics:

How to get water - dowsing, getting it to your farm, using it, pollution
concerns
Living primitively - shelter, backwoods refrigeration, campfire kitchens
Alternative energy - information and resources, using a solar cooker (We
have one, and they really do work.)
Washing clothes by hand
Quilting
Candle making - paraffin and beeswax
Foraging - also poisonous plants and mushrooms
Wood - harvesting, heating, wood cook stoves
Fertilizing your soil
Raising earthworms for gardening, bait, or money making
Using draft horses and oxen
Grain (all kinds!) - planting; mowing by hand; binding sheaves and making
shocks to cure them;
threshing by hand, with animals, or machinery; winnowing; drying;
storing; grinding; and protecting from pests
Preserving food - canning, freezing, drying, salting, larding, fermenting,
jams and juices, making vinegar
Saving seeds for next year plants
Herbs - culinary, not medicinal
Pressing oil from seeds
Acorns - making meal and flour
Bamboo - growing, recipes, and various other uses
Wild Rice - foraging and growing your own
Flax - growing and making linen
Maple sugaring - collecting sap and making syrup
Dandelion root or chicory coffee
Beekeeping - keeping bees, harvesting and using wax and honey
Animals
Raising, feeding, and caring for all types of livestock
Building barns, fences, chicken coops, rabbit hutches, etc.
Pastures, forage, hay, feeds
Predator control
Diseases and veterinary care
Reproduction from breeding to births
Dehorning, castrating, hoof trimming
Sheep shearing and using wool
Pigs - housing, fencing, and how to catch a pig!
Rabbit raising
Poultry - chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, guineas; hatching chicks;
preserving eggs and testing them for safety; using feathers
Dairying - milking and milk handling; all types of dairy products; cream
separators and butter churns
Butchering - preserving meat; making sausage, soap, and lard; tanning
hides; making pickled pig feet!
Home funerals and burying your dead

In March 1974 Carla Emery self-published the first edition of what she then called "The Old Fashioned Recipe Book." It made the "Guinness Book of World Records" as the largest book ever printed on a mimeograph machine. It was well over 900 pages, hand bound, and some of the early ones were held together with plastic coated copper wire through a 3-hole punch. We were lucky to get one of the early mimeographed editions before she sold it in 1977 to Bantam Books, who continued to publish until 1988. Sasquatch Books began republishing it in 1992 under the current title, "The Encyclopedia of Country Living," and continues to publish it today.

Carla's recipes and homesteading information came largely from her personal experience farming, which she did while raising 6 children and running the School for Country Living for a while in Kendrick, Idaho with her husband Mike. She also
gleaned much information for the book from elderly farming friends and neighbors who still possessed these basic skills and favorite old recipes. Once Carla started publishing her mimeographed editions, she quickly became famous enough to be interviewed on major national TV talk shows, etc., and folks started sending her even more homesteading tips and recipes. So her book kept expanding until it weighed several pounds and looks today like a big city phone directory!

I have been referring to Carla's book for over 30 years on many topics for our own farm, and found it very helpful. I particularly used her recipes on preparing and preserving food. My own 30 year area of expertise is in keeping dairy goats. I found her goat information quite useful and accurate, although I did disagree with her on a couple of points, which isn't unusual with any
book on animal raising. For instance, she says any doe who has trouble giving birth twice should be butchered. Goat birthing problems are almost always tangled or backwards kids, which you can usually help deliver, and are just bad luck. Also she recommended a wormer that is outdated, because worms do become immune to these products after a number of years in general use.

There are useful resources throughout the book for further reference or purchasing products. These include books, periodicals, government agencies, and organizations.

This book is surely unique. I have never seen anything remotely as useful, thorough, and inclusive as this homesteading reference. It was a labor of love.

- from [...]

Ok... I know most of people just love this book. I know folks that suggest you own multiple copies. So, what's my beef with it? My wife and I found it to be GREAT content that is very poorly presented.

First off, this is not a book you "sit down and read". You'll give yourself a headache. Second, the layout and flow of the material is sub par. For example, in at least 3 sections so far the book talks about the need to "catch yeast from the air" as a primary step to completing a task (i.e. bread making, etc) but I have yet to find where it tells you HOW to actually catch the yeast. This type of organizational oversight happens at several key places.

Third, while much of the content, as I said earlier, is very good - some of it is simply over the top. Look, there is no one that sits down and looks forward to bulgar wheat sorghum yak milk goulash or varieties thereof. Let's keep the discussion in the land of the "reasonably possible".

Finally, and this is likely a personal quirk, it kind of annoyed me that there was so much discussion of things like "lacto-ovo-vegetarianism" and how to accommodate it. Look, when "living in the country" from my experiences, if pa shoots a deer & ma cooks the deer the you eat the freakin' deer. I don't care what your personal dietary preferences are. Am I right?

So, the final verdict, we're keeping it on the shelf as a great reference book but I'd rather have seen a better organized, more clearly written, 66% smaller sized book that I could stick in my bug out bag.

For someone who knew nothing of outdoor, independant living, I walked away from this book a wealthy, knowledgeable person after having read it. In a nutshell, please buy this book FIRST! You will find that after buying this book that you will need very few other books out in the market. This author addresses everything you need to know about various topics of outdoor, independant living, and if she doesn't have all the answers, she forwards you to other sources that will get you the specific info you need. This book is worth the money. I bought it to learn more about gardening, and came away learning so much more. This is a book that one MUST purchase as a staple in their book collection.

I bought the new and updated Encyclopedia of Country Living, (ECL) by Carla Emery about a year ago at a local book store. This book simply put is a total outline of just about every aspect of country living that one could possibly surmise. Whether it is a recipe for dandelion wine, or the basics of a home made out house you are in the need for, or just curious about, you will find it talked about here in depth. Everything in it, every article, subject, paragraph, is written in a comfy, home spun style where Miss Emery forever assumes you are in no big hurry. The knowledge and lore almost requires that before she even gets started, a pot of coffee must be made, and some old fashioned "jawin" has to be the opener first on the front porch. Lest one think that any part of this wonderful book is boring, quite the contrary, it is like you have adopted a wise and wonderful virtual grandmother ready to help you discover, make the best, or just instruct you as to her inherited wit and wisdom and then leave you on your own, if you so choose. Somebody that you can neither get enough of, or manage to be away from or forget. And the only folks that will be put off, and consider this wonderful cracker barrel approach to be excessive and boring, are those people that are destined to never be called the folks back home at all, but are far more addicted in life to forever tightening the reins of those interlacing their butts.

This book really is an encyclopedia. It is not meant to be curled up with and just read from cover to cover. (Although admittedly it is that very thing I am attempting). It's more of a book you pick up whenever you feel its either time you slowed down and smelled the proverbial coffee, or just feel like reading about old time country living that may stay just outside our reach in life, but want to experience the flavor of all the same, in the only way we can. ECL is not just a wealth of humor, wisdom, and lore about all facets of country living, but it is also a genuine bargain as well. Its like finding a farm stand that sells the best tomato's, onions, peppers, and corn you ever tasted for a fraction that the stale supermarket charges for it. It's my personal belief that if this book were to become mandatory in every home, it would evolve into the best remedy for loneliness and depression ever discovered.

I highly recommend this fine book for anyone that is either a doer, or a dreamer. You will find yourself picking it up and rediscovering it for years and years to come. Absolutely superb...

I cannot beleive the amount of information this book contains! The author makes no pretenses. She doesn't claim to know everything. She bases her knowledge on her experiences, letters, & information gathered over the years from others. This massive book is many many years worth of information! It has been updated many times. I'm pretty sure she doesn't leave anything out from the older versions, explaining why the book gets larger and larger. One thing that I'm aware of being left out because she mentions it is raw egg recipes. She says she was requested to leave them out for food saftey reasons. This was very dissapointing to me. No Egg Nog, No Mayonaise. :o( Anyone country living can usually trust that their backyard eggs are safe.
Just about anything you can think of regarding the "simple life" is noted in this book. She gives TONS of information for outside sources so you can further your knowledge in the vast areas. This books makes a fantastic starting point or reference point to whatever it is you are looking for more information on. Look it up in her book, learn the basics (or sometimes much more than the basics), & then use her references to guide you.
From farm animals, to gardening, to canning, to flowers, to recipes, to you name it! It's here! Even giving birth alone! Outhouses, water issues...on and on it goes!
This truly is a must have! You will find yourself picking it up often. It's like curling up to read the letter of a long distance friend...sort of!

The first Encyclopedia of Country Living I purchased was in 2003. My husband and I looked to it for guidance when we raised chickens and culled roosters. We learned how to shear sheep and get through lambing without a hitch. We learned about docking tails and tagging ears, as well as gained knowlege about animal diseases, worming, and proper animal diets. The book provided canning expertise, many fabulous recipes, tanning rabbit hides, making soap, etc. Our book has been splattered on, creased, torn, and extremely worn from all the use. How one woman could have known so much is beyond me. Yet we are thrilled and enriched to have her book even though she is now gone from this world. I purchased three more books--2008 edition and I give these to family and friends who want an extensive knowledge about living in rural areas. But this book is also essential for urban dwellers so they can learn about herbs, canning, alternatives to conventional laundry detergents, ridding your homes of bugs, floral arrangements, making candles, dealing with power outages, drying foods, and countless more tidbits that will help anyone. I love this book and more than that, I appreciate this book!

About two years ago, I started planning my self-sufficient life. About one year ago, I dove into that life head first. During the planning stages, this book was one of the first I came across. I read a very large portion of it. I'd start out being fascinated by soap-making, then I was curious about how to butcher a pig, then, perhaps after having eaten some rice, I thought, "I wouldn't want to live without rice, I wonder if I could grow it in Montana?" This is the value of this book, some (a little or a lot) information on almost everything! Sure, I then decided I needed more information or ideas on some topics and so I bought or checked out more specific volumes. This book, along with The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It and Notes from a country kitchen I highly recommend.

By the way, this lifestyle is tough! But, boy those homegrown potatoes are good. Hat's off to Carla Emery for doing it AND writing and updating a 900 page book about it over the course of 30+ years. Incredible.

I know when your'e looking for a book on the subject of country living/self reliance, it can be a little overwhelming. Every product has good and bad reviews but let me tell you, this one is probably my most valued book. I've got a bookshelf full of books(can you believe it, of all things to fill it with) and this is definitely in my top three. It covers 99.9 percent of anything you are wanting to know.

And for those who are just skimming these review

BUY THIS BOOK, YOU WILL LOVE IT!!!!

If I could suggest another to buy along with this book, it would be Dare to Prepare, 4th Edition, 2011 Between these two, I have been able to figure out anything I've needed to do relating to "living the simpler life" Rounding up my top three is of course SAS Survival Handbook, Revised Edition: For Any Climate, in Any Situation which anyone should consider if they're considering camping or any outdoor sport.

Just my two cents

The Encyclopedia of Country Living is very interesting to reading, but when it comes to looking up information it is really not written like an encyclopedia. Though it's very informative and the information is very useful, the writing style is more conversational.
I am enjoying and using the information, but have found myself seeking more in depth books on a few topics, understandable though, to be in depth on all topics this book would need to be thousands of pages long.

I've owned this book for years. It has a lot of useful information for anyone interested in becoming more self-sufficient, especially those with a Christian outlook. Every homesteader should have a copy of this book on their bookshelf.

The thing that keeps me from giving it 5 stars is the fact that it makes numerous references to other outside sources (books, pamphlets, internet, etc.)which made it so that I had to continually refer to some other source to get all the info I wanted on the given subject.
Also, because she covers so much in one volume, there isn't a great deal of depth, or not as much as I was hoping for.

But all in all, it's a great reference manual!