Customer Reviews

Food Production Systems for a Backyard or Small Farm

5 star:		(52)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an amazing DVD for anyone interested in backyard food production!!

From simply adding a few hens to your backyard to incorporating an entire closed system of food production and water collection, this DVD has something for everyone. It is the most comprehensive yet compact instruction I have seen for becoming more self-reliant from the standpoint of a homesteader.

Water collection and treatment systems, garden success, rabbit and poultry production, home butchering, benefits of having dogs, food forests and edible landscaping, solar food dehydrators, contour mapping . . . the list goes on.

The DVD itself is about 2 hours long and is very easy to understand. The DVD is broken up into 9 main chapters and is further divided into sub-chapters making it very easy to go back and locate any particular topic to watch again.

Obviously it would take much longer than two hours to go into the detail necessary to understand all of the subjects on the DVD, and so an excellent resource CD is also included. There are 64 PDF documents included on the CD. Some documents, such as the one that instructs how to make a spray to get rid of fire ants, are only a few pages in length, but others, such as permaculture and rain water harvesting, approach 100 and 50 pages, respectively. Other documents include subjects such at catfish ponds, companion planting, rabbit and poultry butchering, hide tanning, compost tea, solar food dehydrator construction, homemade vegetable oil, water treatment, contour mapping and many others.

Learning something on your own invariably involves much trial and error . . . well, Marjory and her family have endured many of these errors and she goes through great lengths to point out the right and wrong ways. Everyone's system will vary and require different approaches depending on climate, soil, variable rainfall, but this DVD provides an invaluable starting point. I could not imagine approaching homesteading or permaculture without this wonderful resource.

I received an advanced copy of this DVD as an apprentice at the homestead of the Permaculture Activist, and it is remarkably helpful. The featured family has an impressive home system, and they present their findings and practices in a concise but thorough way. There's great information about poultry and rabbit raising, utilizing dogs for livestock and garden protection, garden and orchard design and maintenance, water systems and food preservation. I especially appreciated the respectful and highly practical demonstration of a rabbit's slaughter and butchery. The second disc offers a great collection of useful material, covering information on permaculture, overseas aid (perhaps to become highly practical for us domestically too in a low-energy future), and myriad useful topics complementing Marjory's presentation on the main disc.

Overall, an excellent, highly useful production done by a quite clearly sincere, dedicated, informed and deeply grounded family. Highly recommended.

One thing I wish right off is that I had waited a couple of weeks to get this. I bought it on her website and it was quite a bit more expensive than Amazon and that always bums me out.

But that is not a review, is it?

There is virtually too much information on this one DVD. She needs to break down each subject and make a DVD just on that one subject. Every subject she covers is a great introduction but just not enough meat.

I saw the miniture cows, but no explaination on what she uses them for. Nothing that produces milk? No butter, cream, milk, etc. for this family?

I also know there is a much faster way to kill a rabbit and a lot less messy if you bleed it out before you butcher it. And what does she do with the fur? How does she market it?

I appreciate all the information I did get, just not enough of it. I LOVE the newsletter, guess the price was worth it just to get that!

Excellent instructional material! A lot of experience (trial & error) is behind this DVD.

To the reviewers who wanted more details about water usage, etc. -- it depends... on where you are farming, your soil's fertility, and how much rain you get. She did lots of referrals to other books and documents for more details. Any of the documents which were in the public domain, she put on the accompanying CD.

I also disagree with the comment on the cost to make this video. I'm sure Ms. Wildcraft had to make at least an outline of what she wanted to say. She talks continually and doesn't hem and haw. She put in time and that is worth my money.

What an incredibly valuable resource! Short of a personal mentor, there could be no better way to learn homestead food production skills. It's not just that Marjory knows what she's talking about because she's living it, it's that she started out where her target audience is - not knowing how to get these systems up and running. So often our teachers are people who have done what they are teaching for so long, they've forgotten what it's like to be a beginner. By contrast, Marjory is sharing her recently gained knowledge, so she has a good feel for what aspects of the subject will be most helpful to the uninitiated. The combination of her clear narration/demonstration and the excellent videography made me feel that I could start right in even with no previous experience.

She is very candid about the fact that some lessons were learned the hard way and she takes every opportunity to advise you on what she now understands would be a better way than what she did. I saw Marjory's place when she was dealing with the failure of many of the first orchard trees she planted. Four years later, watching the DVD, I was astounded to see the progress she has made and how much better everything looks. Her solutions to the problems of growing fruit trees in Texas are impressive--she didn't give up and was willing to change direction when her first plan didn't work. By studying this video, you can avoid those costly and time-consuming mistakes.

Both the video and the CD are jam-packed with information--much more than can be absorbed in a single viewing. This will become a frequently revisited resource. The pacing is excellent. You get enough time with each point to really see and understand what Marjory is saying but not so much that your attention can wander. In fact, the information flows so clearly and smoothly that my first viewing was a spell-binding experience. The breadth of what she covers is truly amazing. If you have any interest at all in producing your own food, this set is a must-have.

From the time I received this DVD set I have listened to it more than 10 times. I have not been able to make it through the multiple documents that were provided with this set but each I have gone through is not only helpful but tweeks my interest and starts me thinking about another project. The systems she talks about can be used on a large farm or a back yard. Although hard to watch, the rabbit section helped me understand that I do have the ability to raise rabbits for meat. I have always thought that it was not possible here in Texas. Marjory's respect of life won my heart. As I had already made many of the gardening errors they had made, I saw immediatly how I could fix my problems using either their systems or altering hers. The systems she describes are all flexible and you can adjust them to meet your own needs.

The biggest help on this video and provided by Marjory herself was understanding that my wonderful big farm dog has a hopeful future as a working dog on my farm.

I am encouraged each time I watch the video and inspired to try new things. Sometimes when I am working on my computer, I will simply play it in the background and listen to her words so that I can pick up things I might have missed while watching it.

If she uses a pressure canner or hot water canner, I hope she will consider making a future video for home canning.

My son is coming home this week from Afghanistan and he and his wife and two children are going to be gifted this video from me. I feel that if they can begin early to be responsible to the earth and themselves, become self reliant, then their future will be filled with peace.

I can not encourage you enough to invest in this DVD set.

This is one package that I'll bee referencing for a long time in my endevours to live sustainably. It's very comprehensive, so much information in a small package, many how-to documents, referencesas, articles, as well as the DVD.

What an excellent DVD on small home farming and food production. I have visited Marjory's home and saw first hand the planning and work she did. I ate their food and toured their place and got to see the successes and even their failures. She is very dedicated to a correct approach on a sustainable farm life and what she presents is exactly what works! Enjoy.

Best regards,

Chuck Fenwick, Director, Medical Corps

When I got this DVD I did not know what to expect but I must admit I was pleasantly surprised by the depth and layout of this DVD. The information is so valuable for the price it is sinful what I paid for it!!!. Then to add more value they provide additional information and resources which most do not do. I even contacted the author for more information and they answered promptly! I recommend this DVD for anyone planning a homestead and do not know where to start or someone who needs ideas to get them going. If they do another DVD I will definitely purchase it!

This DVD is an exceptional value. Marjory really walks her talk, and her matter-of-fact, nuts-and-bolts presentation will empower and inspire you to do the same. The "tags" section of this review would not allow me to input any text, but if I were to assign tags, they would be Permaculture, Self-Reliance, Homesteading.
- Jenny Nazak, Austin Permaculture Guild