Customer Reviews

The Encyclopedia of Country Living: An Old Fashioned Recipe Book

5 star:		(104)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Carla Emery was a national treasure and this book ensures her legacy. This is simply the most informative book ever written on country living, the next best thing to having a live-in grandmother who knows everything there is to getting homegrown food from dreams to dinner plates plus nearly anything else you need to know. Begun as a 12-page table of contents for a recipe book in 1969, the present ninth edition has 858 pages of far more than recipes. Veggies, vines, trees, grains, poultry, goats, cows, bees, rabbits, sheep, pigs. Planning, nurturing, harvesting, preserving, preparing. Flipping pages at random finds starting transplants, breads leavened with eggs and beating, speeding up tomato sauce-making, harvesting herbs, making cider, managing an existing stand of trees, root cellar storage, soap making, brooding chicks, secrets to safe cattle handling, cultured buttermilk, cooking on a wood stove, jams and jellies, making a wool quilt. I use my "Carla book" constantly. If your budget or bookshelf has room for only one book, this is the book to buy. Yes, even before you buy mine.

When I purchased an 8-acre ranch in 1985 I had a six-month old baby one on the way and had never been off of concrete in my life. Now I had 8-acres, goats, chickens, rabbits, ducks, geese, pigs, 60 fruit and nut trees and an acre garden. I had no clue how or what to do! I learned everything from reading that book. How to harvest, can and cook up your garden & orchard harvest, feed and butcher animals, all kinds of doctoring for kids and animals, crafts, and even how to cut hair. That book is so dog-eared with tape from all of my years of use. I owe my sanity to that book. It has every scenario imaginable. I recommend it to anyone living in the country or on a farm or thinking of it. What I learned from Carla Emery's book will stay with me forever! The knowledge is priceless.

This book appears to have a devoted following so I'm sure I'll arouse some ill will with this, but here goes.

There are several things potential readers need to know about this book. The first is that, as the other reviewers suggest, the author comes across as very friendly and sincere. Another is that it has been around in some form or another for a long time, long before many "hobby farm"-type books were available, and for that reason has many devoted fans, at least some of whom appear to be unaware of more modern reference books that have superceded this one in many respects. The next is that if you have a lot of free time, and you like nine hundred page books whose author is in no rush to get to any of its thousands of points, you'll love it.

The most important, though, is that if you would like the best, easiest to understand advice available on raising sheep, keeping chickens, growing a garden, and all the other fun but challenging aspects of hobby farming, you will be far better served by other books out there. I have a hobby farm on seven acres with fruit trees, vegetable garden, livestock, etc., and own many of the hobby farm books available. We have had the opportunity to consult them as we have learned from direct experience, and have found that there is a wide variety in usefulness.

While The Encyclopedia of Country Living contains good advice, this book has features that I believe the average modern, would-be hobby farmers will be put off by. One is its overwhelming, unnecessary, and frustrating length. It wouldn't be so bad if each paragraph was a sparkling, concise gem of practical wisdom, i.e, if it really were written like an actual encyclopedia, but core information is often clouded with anecdotes, nostalgia, sermonizing, etc. If you are the kind of person who likes reading books about country life, but who doesn't actually live in the country and doesn't plan to, this may be something you enjoy, but it made this book difficult to use for me.

Moreover, the author regularly feels obliged to list the many and disparate views on a particular topic held by her friends, or by people who have written her letters over the years. A number of these printed comments are either pointless or really daft, and are liable to confuse more than enlighten the would-be hobby farmer, especially since the author often does not make clear which ideas have most merit, scientifically or from her own personal experience.

I believe the average person who plans on "country living" or hobby farming will find other books far more useful. The updated and revised "Backyard Livestock", by Steven Thomas, is absolutely brilliant for beginning hobby farmers serious about keeping animals for food, eggs, milk, etc. It is concise while still telling you everything you need to know. For those wishing more detailed information on livestock, the various Storey's guides to raising farm animals are also excellent. If you are interested in fruit or berry cultivation, you will find the Stella Otto books far more valuable than this one. For vegetable gardening, "The Vegetable Gardener's Bible" by Edward C. Smith is the best. I could go on, but my personal experience is this: if you would like to hobby farm, be successful at it, and have fun doing it, you'll need the best information you can get. For most of us, this means a few A-list, reliable, practical, concise, understandable reference books. Despite its length and sometimes charming autobiographical features, there's no reason why you should buy "The Encyclopedia of Country Living" when so many other books on country living now are superior to it.

I have the first, home-printed edition of this book, as well as the latest edition.When I read the various comments, I see some misunderstanding of the nature of this book.Carla's book is not just a reference (there are better ones in specific areas)but an autobiography as well. We learn about a lifestyle many of us will never know, but find facinating. We learn of the struggles and successes of one family. And along the way, we learn a great deal about small subsistance farms (not hobby farms). Use Carla's book for reference, but also entertainment and education. It's a fun read, and need not be done in one sitting or in any order. Just enjoy!

This is a charming and useful book. I am a newcomer to Carla Emery's work and indeed have read many of the other more concise, straightforward and professional books out there about farming and country living. Not only is there a TON of useful information in this book, people who enjoy the meandering, prolific style are not at fault for liking the book. Carla Emery, who has been living this way and writing long before other resources appeared, is still a respected source of wisdom. There are tidbits and tips that you might never see in a "professional" book, and the "Oddments" section alone was worth buying this book. The list of resources from native skills to homesteading to renewable energy sources to emergency preparedness is amazing. If you want to live closer to the land and be radically more self-sufficient doing so, you probably will not find more information on a wide range of topics in one place. In Carla's book, you get detailed information PLUS recommendations about other sources of information, classes, organizations, magazines, and more. I didn't know so much was out there!

Together with a stock of standard, concise, and more professional books on raising livestock, organic gardening, energy, or whatever else you choose to incorporate into your lifestyle, this book is invaluable and passionate -- because passionate is what we SHOULD be about the agrarian movement.

[To add to this review...] The scope and detail of this book is amazing. It has TONS of recipes, stories, and ideas for back-to-basics traditional living that come from years and years of collected wisdom and experience that you probably couldn't get anywhere else. What if you lived in a rural area for, say, a month, and couldn't go to a grocery store and wanted to know how to survive? It is truly an encyclopedia of folk knowledge and so much more. Want to know how to use garlic and onion for medicinal purposes? Want to learn about different types of diets? Want to use up scraps and throw away very little, or eat more vegetables, or be entertained by tidbits and tales from the country? Here is a compendium of information, in all its glory.

"The Encyclopedia of Country Living" is an expansive volume of collected wisdom, techniques, recipes, and other information for living in the country. To a great extent it is a volume on self-sufficiency without harming the environment in any substantial way. The only assumption that seems to be made is that the land you purchase will have a house on it or you will have one built. Everything else, from buying the land, to what plants to plant, when to plant them, where to get them, how to grow them, and how to harvest them to what animals to raise, how to raise them, how to use them for food and dairy to how to deal with child birthing in the wilderness (where you may be alone when it happens), dealing with pollution, enriching your soil, and even worm farming. This is an exhaustive study in country living with very detailed and thorough sections on farming. In addition the author includes page after page of other sources of information, where to purchase things, catalogue sources, websites, and just about every other conceivable way to get the items mentioned in the text. If there was a way to take all the old-timers in the country, get them all together, draw out all the skills they have learned over the years and distill it into a book this is the book that you would create. "The Encyclopedia of Country Living, 9th Edition" is a very highly recommended read not only for those looking to move to the country after a lifetime in the city, but also for those who, like me, have that backyard garden and could use the extensive information presented here to make it even more successful and fun.

What the previous reviewer seems not to realize, is that this book began more like a subscription recipe newsletter than a book. My grandmother subscribed to it in the 70s and she got it a few pages at a time, as Carla wrote it... oft times her subscribers wrote her their ideas/experiences/etc and she included these notes in her "newsletters"... the book kind of grew from this, and that's why it's a huge book where the author seems to take a long time getting to the many points made in the book... there are a lot of points, because she sent out a lot of separate "newsletters" on different topics! And that's also why there are lots of comments from her friends (subscribers) through-out.

This book is a wonderful treasure for any homesteader, and I'm happy to have inherited my grandmother's copy (in a *huge* three ring notebook) as well as a newer bound edition.

Sadly the world lost Carla Emery this week, but I'm sure heaven is enjoying her presence! She was an amazing, fascinating person.

Unlike the previous reviewers, I lived this book. I was raised in a big city in Florida and moved to a small country town (pop. 181) in the Arkansas mountains. I was in my late 20's and imagined myself as part of the back-to-the-earth movement. A friendly librarian pointed me to this book, which I bought after checking it out so often.

Since we moved to a small community where "everyone was related" except us, we did not get much neighborly help at first. The first week there we bought baby goats (which rode home in the front seat with me), 2 pigs (which didn't), and planted our garden. Using Carla's book we mail-ordered baby chicks who lived in our bathtub until the weather got warmer. We bought a wood stove and learned to can and dry vegetables. I tried most everything, using Carla's book as a reference.

When it came time to butcher our hogs, we could not get anyone to help us, even for $$. The closest we had been to a hog before moving to Oden was in the grocery store. So we checked out Carla's book and I sat on the cab of the truck reading the instructions aloud while DH took aim and shot the pig. We were both very nervous, so we went inside (it was very cold) and had a cup of coffee. Unfortunately, when we went back outside, the pig was up and boy, was he mad! I won't go into any further details except to say we had funny looking meat that winter, but it was tasty. By the way, the townsfolk treated us differently from then on.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that you can really do what she says and make it happen. Carla gives you practical backyard-to-table "hands-on" advice, and I've recommended it to may people.

This is it folks. This gem is unbelievable. In my life I must have purchased over 3,000 cookbooks - probably 500 from amazon alone. Although this is NOT a cookbook (it does have many recipies), this is "THE" book! Read the previous reviews. I'll echo them. Be warned though, it is going to take you months to get through it all. It is THAT detailed. There are no pretty, color, glossy pictures - rather a weatlh of information I think would take you and I years to find. Carla Emery pulled this one off for us! It took her 24 years to produce (read about it in her bio in the back of the book).
Want to learn how to churn butter? ...turn to page 759. Need info on raising chickens? ...turn to page 619. How about topics like this: practical advice on milking a goat, canning peaches, cooking on a wood stove, how to catch a pig, buying land, drying your herbs, making sourdough spiced apple cookies, secrets of quick pickles, homemade spiced orange tea, preserving meat. Also learn how to: travel with animals, what to do if you see a downed animal, how to make good gelatin, freezing fish, raising chickens, feeding geese, vetting and grooming a goat, butchering a cow, making home made cheese - I mean this gem is loaded.
I also thought what a great gift this would make for someone bedridden - say in traction in the hospital? This will certainly keep ones interest since it covers THOUSANDS of topics - hence the name; The ENCYCLOPEDIA of Country Living. (Move over Martha Stewart!) Give this book to some of your city slicker friends - they might learn a thing or two about life outside of a 10 x 10' garden. Hey - get one for yourself, a dozen or so for Christmas gifts, a gross for the Annual Church Bizaar. Enjoy! (DISCLAIMER: I am in no way receiving compensation for this review - heck, I just loved the book!)

This is a huge book 11x9 and shy 900 pages. The cover says over 600,000 copies have been sold but I bet its millions by now. When I first ordered the book I assumed it would be good, but its better than good. As a real homesteader I recommend this book for a variety of reason.

The chapters are long and thorough. Choosing to Buy Land and the chapters on Resources for Back to the Basics, Living Simply, Health Matters and Living Simply are excellent. Because in the buying land section which is long she covers everything from can you get a job near by if you need to still work, can you do with your land what you want, how do you know if the land is fertile, and the wheel and deal aspects involved. Knowing if the land is fertile is a must for anyone who wants to be fully self sufficient since growing food is a top priority.

Being able to do what you wish with your land is also important, because there are places where if you want to use a stream that runs thru your property to harness water generated power, or you want to cull trees, you have to get permits. Same with wanting to add an addition onto your abode. Some places demand you get a permit while others will let you build with the understanding that when you sell, the place is sold 'as is'.

Her food section is humongous and covers everything from seeds to growing the garden to preserving what you grow either in a cellar, or by canning, freezing or drying. She has information galore on predators, insects and snakes. Barns and fences, which is important because I know first hand what a poor fence job or poor animal shelter will do when it comes to animals getting in or out.

She has a huge section on poultry as well as goats cows, home dairying, bees, rabbits and pigs. And what is involved with birth to butchering. Speaking as someone who has had chickens for decades, and have consumed my fair share of home grown milk and meat, knowing what is involved in growing quality animals will save you lots of money in the end. Not to mention the home grown item tastes so much better than commercially grown animals. And knowing what is involved, what tools you will need when it comes time to cull or slaughter an animal is a must if the job is to be done humanely, safely and well.

She also has an important section on caring for your own dead. Don't wince! This is very important and is a natural life process. And knowing how to deal with the local authorities as far as burying a loved one on ones own property is very important. I speak of this as a widow. Caring for ones own dead isn't as hard or creepy as one thinks. Same with knowing how to handle a birth at home. On page 35 as an example she also writes about how to bath under primitive conditions, which is what we have to do here in the Sierras when the power goes out due to snow.