Deborah Niemann - Homegrown & Homemade: A Practical Guide to More Self-reliant Living

Praise for
Homegrown & Handmade

Budding homesteaders who want to live simpler, healthier, and more self-sufficient lives will treasure this updated edition of Niemanns encyclopedic reference. The additional material on operating a home-based business is worth the price of admission alone. Dreaming of a mindful life? Niemanns advice on gardening, cooking, orcharding, raising livestock, and much more demonstrates that its possible to begin the journey in your own backyard.

Rebecca Martin, Managing Editor, Mother Earth News

buy this book, read it and then go do something.
You are not alone. Mentors to help you along the way are out here.

Joel Salatin, from the Foreword

Our beautiful world would be such a healthier and happier place if every home treasured a well-thumbed edition of this book! Whether the desire is to simply grow a few veggies or to fulfill the much grander vision of producing meats and dairy products, fruits, preserves and natural fibre products, Deborah has shared her vast extent of knowledge and experience in a way that is instantly accessible. Whether it be growing pigs or pumpkins, making cheese or felting wool, I can find out all I need to know with the turn of a page. Simply I love this book!

Jenni Blackmore, author,
Permaculture for the Rest of Us and The Food Lovers Garden

I am so impressed with this new edition of Homegrown and Handmade. Deborah Niemann has shown once again not just her wide range of skills and experience, but also her curiosity and ongoing willingness to learn. Having grown up with a mom who cooked from scratch, I deeply appreciate Deborahs emphasis on cooking for ourselves, as well as the numerous recipes included. Not everyone has the room or the time to raise their own food crops or meat or dairy animals, but everyone does have choices about what and how they eat. Wherever you are on your journey toward a more self-reliant lifestyle, Homegrown and Handmade provides practical guidance and gentle encouragement to help you make the choices that work best for you.

Victoria Redhed Miller, author, Pure Poultry and Craft Distilling

Deborah Niemann is the real homesteading deal. She walks the talk and practices what she preaches, all of which authentically and vividly comes through in the engaging pages of Homegrown and Handmade. A treasure-trove of seasoned advice and resources, this book will serve as idea fuel for your homesteading journey.

Lisa Kivirist, author of Soil Sisters: A Toolkit for Women Farmers and Homemade for Sale

Copyright 2017 by Deborah Niemann.

First edition 2011 by Deborah Niemann.

All rights reserved.

Cover design by Diane McIntosh.

Cover images Deborah Niemann, except for soap iStock

Interoir images Deborah Niemann.

Printed in Canada. First printing May 2017.

Inquiries regarding requests to reprint all or part of Homegrown & Handmade should be addressed to New Society Publishers at the address below. To order directly from the publishers, please call toll-free (North America) 1-800-567-6772, or order online at www.newsociety.com

Any other inquiries can be directed by mail to:

New Society Publishers

P.O. Box 189, Gabriola Island, BC V0R 1X0, Canada

(250) 247-9737

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Niemann, Deborah, author

Homegrown & handmade : a practical guide to more self-reliant living / Deborah Niemann. -- Revised and expanded 2nd edition.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-0-86571-846-3 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-55092-641-5

(PDF).--ISBN 978-1-77142-236-9 (EPUB)

1. Self-reliant living. 2. Sustainable living. I. Title.
II. Title: Homegrown and handmade.

New Society Publishers mission is to publish books that contribute in fundamental ways to building an ecologically sustainable and just society, and to do so with the least possible impact on the environment, in a manner that models this vision.

In memory of my mother,
who always told me that I could do anything.

T oday, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, Mother Earth News is recommending select New Society Publishers books to its readers. For more than 30 years, Mother Earth has been North Americas Original Guide to Living Wisely, creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature. Across the countryside and in our cities, New Society Publishers and Mother Earth are leading the way to a wiser, more sustainable world. For more information, please visit MotherEarthNews.com

By Joel Salatin

W HAT CAN I DO? The question encompasses both the angst and hope of people touched by personal gravitas in a dysfunctional world. Its perhaps the most common request I receive in my interaction with people, and its certainly demographically eclectic.

From the wide-eyed college sophomore majoring in environmental studies to the remorseful retired executive wanting to invest in some positive chits for the planet before he checks out, the question represents a yearning for anchors and integrity in a time that seems to have neither. Todays lifestyle pendulum correction that reflects how we interact with resources, relationships, and responsibilities began with the back-to-the-land movement of the early 1970s.

With the beaded, bearded, braless hippie movement came La Leche League, Mother Earth News (MEN) magazine, Woodstock and the cultural seeds of a new path. I always felt like our family was a generation or two ahead of its time. My grandfather (Dads dad) was a charter subscriber to Rodales Organic Gardening and Farming Magazine when it first came out in 1949, promoting compost over chemicals and the home garden over Jolly Green Giant. He had a massive backyard garden with chickens, honeybees, bramble fruits and vegetables.

My dad, in turn, grabbed onto MEN magazine when it first came out; I was a teenager during the Vietnam war days. I knew our farm and family were different with our portable cow shelters, compost piles, and penchant toward marketing to neighbors. The idea that TV dinners, squeezable cheese, and Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations fed the world rammed up against Adelle Davis and Scott and Helen Nearing in our house, even though we were a libertarian, conservative, Christian household. We had no TV did I mention that?

Did I say I felt like our family was always ahead of the time? It was natural, then, when Teresa and I married in 1980 that we fixed up the farmhouse attic for cheap living quarters, drove a $50 clunker car, had no TV (still dont), milked a couple of Guernsey cows (by hand), canned and froze nearly all our own food, and stayed warm by a wood stove. Living on $300 a month when everyone else required $2,000 made a statement of lifestyle value and creation stewardship that has carried us well into our senior days.