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Abigail R. Gehring

Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills, Third Edition Hardcover – Illustrated, April 17, 2008

by Abigail Gehring (Editor)

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Anyone who wants to learn basic living skills—the kind employed by our forefathers—and adapt them for a better life in the twenty-first century need look no further than this eminently useful, full-color guide. Countless readers have turned to Back to Basics for inspiration and instruction, escaping to an era before power saws and fast food restaurants and rediscovering the pleasures and challenges of a healthier, greener, and more self-sufficient lifestyle.

Now newly updated, the hundreds of projects, step-by-step sequences, photographs, charts, and illustrations in Back to Basics will help you dye your own wool with plant pigments, graft trees, raise chickens, craft a hutch table with hand tools, and make treats such as blueberry peach jam and cheddar cheese. The truly ambitious will find instructions on how to build a log cabin or an adobe brick homestead.

More than just practical advice, this is also a book for dreamers—even if you live in a city apartment you will find your imagination sparked, and there's no reason why you can't, for example, make a loom and weave a rag rug. Complete with tips for old-fashioned fun (square dancing calls, homemade toys, and kayaking tips), this may be the most thorough book on voluntary simplicity available. 2,000 color photos and 200 black-and-white illustrations.

Print length

456 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Skyhorse
Publication date

April 17, 2008
Dimensions

10.75 x 1 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10

1602392331
ISBN-13

978-1602392335
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From the Publisher

exterior and interior home planning pages

Specifics of planting strawberries, grapes, and other edible items

How to bake bread sourdough kolaches anadema bread sally lunn


	Mini Farming	The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Living	The Essential Guide to Self-Sufficient Living	Simpler Living	Homesteading Handbook
	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Abigail R. Gehring is the author or editor of more than a dozen books including Back to Basics, Homesteading, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Living, and Classic Candy. She enjoys writing, gardening, experimenting in the kitchen, and spending time with family. She lives with her husband and two children in an 1800s farmstead they are restoring in Marlboro, Vermont.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Skyhorse; 3rd edition (April 17, 2008)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 456 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1602392331
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1602392335
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.92 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 10.75 x 1 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #123,576 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #75 in Herb Gardening
- #177 in Home Design & Construction (Books)
- #216 in Home Cleaning, Caretaking & Relocating

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4.7 948 ratings

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Abigail R. Gehring

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Abigail R. Gehring is the author or editor of several books on country living skills, cooking, and baking. She enjoys writing, gardening, experimenting in the kitchen, and spending time with family. She lives with her husband and two children in an 1800s farmstead they are restoring in southern Vermont.

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nicki

Ideal for the beginner homesteader.

Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2023

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An array of homesteading topics for the beginning homesteader.

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r.

This way of life is not just for hippies any more

Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2011

Verified Purchase

Back to Basics is a wonderful manual on how to live a life free of all the modern distractions. How many people want to return to a time when things were different: people felt good about working hard, living in close connection the the seasons, and worked with the environment instead of trying to conquer it? How many people have tried this way of life, but failed? Here, in one simple book, you have all the information you need to succeed.

The book includes how to choose land, build a house and out buildings, create energy, raise your own food, preserve foodstuff, crafts for the home, and a section on old time recreation. The writing is clear and instructions easy to follow. There are plenty of pictures to help you create your own bit of paradise.

As a child, I had an earlier version of this book. It was a big, heavy, hard cover book and I spent hours mulling over how different life use to be like. Life was so much more work, but in many ways easier. This book nurtured the simple thought that we could recapture some if not all of that life. Maybe if we adopted some of these ideas then we could find a place for ourselves in the world. If I had to choose just one, I would say this is the most influential book of my youth.

So, you can imagine my surprise to see this available for my Kindle. I thought, "This is a book about getting away from technology and living a life full of pre-electronic traditions. What's it doing as an e-book?"

My curiosity peaked, I downloaded this and started reading. I have to say, I LOVE it!

The book takes full advantage of the Kindle format. The pictures, and there are a lot of pictures, show up clearly on my Kindle 3. They are in colour when I read the book on my PC. Although, the huge number of pictures makes this book really slow to download. The index is interactive, the sections are easily navigable via the 5-way controller.

9 people found this helpful

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Kevin

A great overview of the traditional skills our generation is lacking

Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 2015

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A great overview of the traditional skills our generation is lacking.

I am reading this book for an ethnography project. An ethnography project is done by unbiasedly studying a particular culture. Through studying one learns what aspects define the culture of choice. For my project I chose to study self sufficient living. The book Back To Basics edited by Abigail R. Gehring relates to my ethnography topic by explaining step by step how to do basic living skills by yourself. These skills in turn enable a person to live self sufficiently. For example chapter one explains where to buy land and how to build on it, this section includes how to guides for items such as raising a barn, creating a stone wall, and converting trees into lumber.

In my opinion Back to Basics edited by Abigail R. Gehring is well worth the money. The book is able to cover almost every basic essential living skill. Each skill is depicted accurately with visual graphics to go along. For example pictures of country plants are shown and below them is a blurb about what plant shows what water, “Saltbush: Indicates water near the surface, but the quality may be poor.” The only drawback to the book is that since so many skills are covered many skills are not explained as in depth as needed to learn the skill or do the project. While this may seem to be a problem, sources and resources can be found after every skill/project. These sources and resources can provide the depth needed to accomplish the skill. For example in the building a log cabin section a source can be seen as “Nash, George. Old Houses: A rebuilder’s Manual. Needham Heights, Mss.: Prentice Hall, 1979.”Overall I would recommend this book to anyone who is considering starting a self sufficient lifestyle.

3 people found this helpful

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A Great Place to Start Toward Sustainable Living

Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2011

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I have lived in a log cabin in the wilds both in my adolescent years and now as an adult with adult children of my own. So, I bought this book back in the early 80's when it was initially published by Reader's Digest Books. Not much by way of information has changed in it over the years, except now it is also available on the Kindle. I still have my hardcover copy from all of those years ago however, having a eBook version on hand is useful, too.

The book is meant to be inspiring mainly to those who dream of someday getting back to the land, living on their own homestead and making their own life off of the grid. All of the advice is very good toward that end, but it lacks the detail needed for anyone to benefit from in an actual homesteading set up. They don't tell you how hard it can be to undertake such ambitions even as everyone goes toward mores sustainable living.

The section on medicinal herbs is not nearly large enough. Putting food up after harvest could use some expension, too. But the book does do what it is intended to do and that is point those who would go for the natural life toward exploring more in depth and the hands on approach. I can tell you, after having lived in a log cabin most of my life that the section on log cabin construction and livig is nowhere near exhaustive. Keep reading and talk to other owners of log homes and ask them about the unique challenges about them! This book doesn't really have that kind of information.

I would recommend this book as a great place to start, but by no means don't stop after you have read this one and truly want to get back to basics.

32 people found this helpful

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Rizwan Khan

excellent book :: must have

Reviewed in India on July 9, 2023

Verified Purchase

excellent book :: must have

JC Scott

A Homesteading Favorite

Reviewed in Canada on July 18, 2011

Verified Purchase

I generally do not go in for all-in-one books, seeing as how they tend to be neglectful in some way on all the topics they try to cover. This work is neglectful in some areas, yet I would definitely have it on my homesteading bookshelf.
'Back to Basics' is essentially a book for beginner homesteaders, preppers, and even survivalists (the section at the back has some roughing it info). It tries to cover all the skills a homesteader needs, such as: choosing land, building a house (a variety of ways), alternate energy, growing a garden, preserving your harvest, raising livestock, dairying, blacksmithing, woodcarpentry, rugmaking, candlemaking, soapmaking, homemade cleaners, and more.
As you can see, there is quite a list. Many compare Carla Emery's famous 'Encyclopedia of Country Living' to this book, but as Mrs. Emery's work focuses simply on food raising, this book provides the wider scope in a whole section devoted to alternative energy for the do-it-yourselfer, including plans for a solar food dehydrator, solar water heater, water wheel power, wind power, etc. That chapter and the chapters on numerous crafts/skills such as the above mentioned soapmaking and such, are the jewels of this book.
Granted, as others have said, this book could use more depth, but as someone just making do with what I've got, I'm not too interested in making artisan cheese, so the dairying chapter which shows me how to make a few simple cheeses as well as yoghurt, butter, and sour cream completely meets my needs. As a back-yard gardener with a million things to do at once, I don't have time to make glistening jars of 5 different kinds of jelly, and so a few simple recipes/methods for preserving my harvest such as dried tomatoes and apple butter again, meet my needs just fine.
All this to say, if you are looking to specialize in soapmaking (selling a variety of soaps) or raising a rare breed of chickens, this is not the book for you, and I'd instead recommend Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens or Simple Soapmaking. But if you are, like me, a homesteader striving to live sustainably, you likely wish you had four extra hands and 48 hours instead of 24 in a day, and likely can't go into the finickety things. You need a book that will teach you the basics of the many things that need to be done, and so this book would be a good place to start.

12 people found this helpful

Patrice Robert

L'art de vivre au temps jadis, nouvelle édition anglophone.

Reviewed in Canada on December 26, 2012

Verified Purchase

Il y a 4 ans, j'avais emprunté le livre, L'art de vivre au temps Jadis, à ma bibliothèque locale. J'ai aimé ce livre, mais il n'était plus disponible, ni réimprimé. À 105$ pour un livre usagé, je trouvais le prix prohibitif.

J'ai décidé d'acheter, Back to Basics, en me basant sur les commentaires des autres lecteurs. À la réception du livre, le format m'a rappelé celui de L'art de vivre au temps jadis. Quand j'ai feuilleté ce livre, j'étais abasourdi! J'avais retrouvé un compagnon de lecture. Non seulement ma recherche du livre était terminée, mais j'avais ce livre pour moins cher et avec plus d'informations.

Très bon livre touche-à-tout qui donne un bon aperçu des techniques anciennes qui auraient usages à être redécouvertes: fabrication d'un tourne-borche ( je l'ai construit et c'est très facile à réaliser), fabrication de tapis, technique de conservation de la viande. Il faudrait une encyclopédie en plusieurs volumes pour tout apprendre sur l'autarcie, mais pour les personnes désireuses de faire pousser leurs légumes, de fabriquer un fumoir, de faire la mise en conserve ou de s'essayer à la construction d'un abri en bois rond, je vous recommande chaudement ce livre.

À mettre entre les mains de tout bon gentleman-farmer désireux de posséder son lopin de terre et de vivre des produits de la terre.

2 people found this helpful

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David Nunn

Great book - learn something new every day

Reviewed in Canada on July 29, 2021

Verified Purchase

Great book from starting a settlement to hobbies and cooking. Great stuff - came a bit beat up. Bit sure if that was because it was second hand or just rough handling by the post... But the book itself is great

MBELL

Interesting book

Reviewed in Canada on December 2, 2020

Verified Purchase

Very interesting to read, I bought this for my boyfriend because he is really into going hiking and camping. I enjoyed reading it for the herbal teas/medicines. I would purchase again for a gift.

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