Customer Reviews

Storey's Basic Country Skills: A Practical Guide to Self-Reliance

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

We bought this tome just a few weeks before moving from the city where we'd lived our entire lives to a 20-acre rural country place miles and miles from any city limits.

For the first year especially, we kept this book out. You would be astonished at its contents. It describes the pros and cons of water wells, reusing dirt, planning land for gardens and barns, chicken problems, keeping goats, arranging around weather, tanning leather, insect control, tree problems to watch out for and their solutions, energy in places where the lines don't run, getting water from point A to B, storing grains and other foods, and... you NAME IT!

This made our lives so much better. We didn't even use all the advice we read simply because one family can only do so much the first year they move into the country for the first time but this book was our comfort book in knowing that if we had problems, we'd find the solutions here.

If you are looking for one book to serve as a comprehensive guide to nearly every aspect of living in the country and fending for yourself, then you atleast owe it to yourself to browse through this book atleast once; at a minimum, you should borrow it from the library for a peek. This book takes you from start to finish; dawn to dusk; season to season. It may not be as detailed in some areas as you may prefer but you can always find a book dedicated to areas in which you require more information. As a general resource, this book won't be perched on your bookshelf long enough to collect dust since you'll be picking it up on a regular basis.

This is a GREAT resource book. It contains a little bit of info on just about anything you could want to know about. It is amazing how much it covers--and how well. It is full of very good advice, techniques, and practical skills and solutions for not only country dwellers, but for anyone interested in being able to rely on themselves--inside the home (covers anything from electrical help to help in the kitchen with recipes and canning/freezing) to the great outdoors (covers decks, gardening & tree houses to caring for livestock). I just recently moved to the country, and I will be using this book as a primary reference and guide for many of the projects I have planned. Thank you, John and Martha Storey!

I bought this book because of the high review rating, and for the first time was very let down by a highly rated book. I already have a whole bookshelf of books dedicated to small farming/homesteading/sustainable living and thought this would be a comprehensive addition. Unfortunately, this would be an excellent book for someone who has grown up in the city, never been to a working ranch/homestead, and has absolutely no knowledge of the subject. If you already have such knowledge and/or experience you will find this book woefully deviod of useful information. It has a WIDE range of topics (most of which I was not interested in, such as how to install hardwood floor and how to build a treehouse) and each topic is only touched on in the most superficial way. For example, the chapter on treehouses only shows you how to build one kind, assuming that's the only kind you would want to build, and the whole chapter is 4 pages. I suppose the best use for this book would be for a novice to purchase in order to BEGIN a library on the subject, and then use this book to decide what topics to invest in more books on so as to get better information and more detail. If you are looking for real information on specifics such as how to keep a healthy and productive meat flock of chickens, or detailed food preservation techniques, find a specific book on the subject.

I bought this book for my husband who owns and operates a saw mill. He also raises bees. This book has sections on his interests and mine as well. There is information on gardening, canning, animal care, herbs and so much more. There are wonderful recipies and literally hundreds of tips and ideas. This is a book will we read and read again. It has very clear illustrations and clear, useful directions. A real find.

This has been such a great help. It gave me lots of ideas for things I want to do, and gives me encouragement for what I am currently trying. I like the simple illustrations. All I would like more in this book is ... more. It's a great book to get started trying different things, although I do find other books with more detail after I get started. For example, making soap - great practical first-timer information in this book. Once I tried it, I went to the library and found more detailed books on soapmaking. But the Storey book is my best starter.

Storey, for me, is quickly becoming my reference book of choice, as far as "how to live on a farm if you weren't born on one" goes. This book was my jumping off point. It contains sections on how to buy land, how to build your home, how to raise chickens, sheep, goats, pigs, and cows. I should note, however, that this book is more like a "compilation" of works by other authors. The Basic Country Skills (BCS) extracts information from many other books, and puts them in one reference text. There are a few parts where I think the editors forgot to re-lable diagrams (specifically in the "how to butcher a cow" section) but if you're planning on slaughtering your own animals, you should probably buy a reference manual specific to butchering to compliment this one. BCS is a great book for people like me who are planning to buy a little patch of earth somewhere far away from the hubub of city life, but who can only dream about it for the present. BCS is a great primer for those who want to get closer to where our food comes from than waxed supermarket produce, or shrinkwrapped beef. I'm not a vegetarian, but it doesn't seem fair for meat eaters to eat something that they didn't have to feed and care for, and finally, to come to terms with the fact that this animal you've had for 9 months is going to be the beef for your family for the next year. Taking its life, so that you can continue yours.. that should be each of our (meat-eaters anyway) responsibility. To treat our food with dignity, and kindness, and thank it for nourishing and providing for us.

This book is well dubbed "A Practical Guide to Self-Reliance." It is a good choice for anyone interested in someday getting their own farm and making it self-contained; or just for people who are interested in the way grandma used to do all that neat stuff back on the farm in the old days. It includes chapters both on specific techniques of country living (gardening, care of livestock, self home maintainence, etc.) as well as a chapter on the planning of the farm itself, including discussions of house designs, methods of construction (and economy thereof), layout of farm as well as overviews of particular building and design schemes such as passive solar heating and solar and wind power, 'living off the grid'. Overall an excellent primer in rural living.

Since I live in a rural area, I was eager to see what Storey's encyclopediac book of useful country skills would have to say about gardening. It turns out that this fascinating book has quite a lot of helpful information about many different rural activities, including gardening.

This book has twelve chapters packed with information to help the country gardener, as well as a very useful chapter on preserving the fruits and vegetables your garden produces. The gardening section of this amazingly complete book begins with chapter nine. This chapter discusses everything you need to know about planning, planting and harvesting a vegetable garden. Some of the most valuable sections of this chapter are the garden planning chart and the information on extending the season.

Next, the book discusses herb gardens. From theme gardens to uses for herbs, this chapter is again packed with information. I really enjoyed the recipes, but the crafting ideas were also useful.

Storey knows that even country dwellers need extra beauty, so the book includes a chapter on flower gardening. Sections on flower arranging and drying flowers are included.

Water gardens and rock gardens can be fun and add a lot of interest to the landscape. Besides clear instructions for creating both garden types, Storey gives some useful lists of plants to put in these gardens.

The next two sections on improving soil and garden pests and diseases are terrific resources for the beginning gardener. Additional sections of the book cover feeding birds, lawn care, building outdoor structures, and growing fruit.

This book is well written, crammed with ideas, and fun to read. It is a terrific resource for someone interested in the country life.

John Storey has created an excellent reference guide for people considering living on the land - if nothing else it gives a vast range of pros and cons - and considerations, which need to be made to live rurally. As it is a massive reference work not everything can be dealt with in huge depth, but it has proved to be enormously useful as a first stop off point on what to do. If we have needed to go further we have then consulted other books, however often that is not necessary.

There are some things such as slaughtering cattle which just aren't really what we want to do anyway! What I really liked is that it has the issues you need to think about, with newbies to rural living like ourselves we had no idea of what we needed to even think about - it has saved us making a lot of huge mistakes! I have felt overwhelmed at times by the amount of information you need to have to live successfully off the land, in the past this would have been passed down from generation to generation - so it is learning a whole lifetime of information in one book. Luckily this book is well set out and well written and illustrated which makes using it a whole lot easier.