Editors of Cool Springs Press - Step-by-step projects for self-sufficiency: grow edibles, raise animals, live off the grid, do it yourself

Hard or soft , apple or pear, homemade cider is pure goodness. But you just cant make it efficiently without a cider press. See for an easy, DIY press you can make.

Why aspire to self-sufficiency? Because the pace of modern life can be overwhelming. All too often, the amazing technology that was supposed to free us and make life better and better instead becomes a drain on our money, time, and joy. As weve tried to improve our lives through progress and efficiency, we have ironically moved further and further from many of the things that make life healthy, rewarding, and fulfilling. Its just a matter of cause and effect. Medical advances that allow for gene therapy are used to create GMO foods of unproven safety. An ever-ready energy supply has ensured that our lives are more comfortable and convenient than ever before; but our environment pays for that convenience in the fallout from fracking, the pollution of coal-fired power plants, and the occasional devastating oil spill. All the while, modern life seems to demand that we move faster, do more, make more, and consume more. Along the way, weve become less able to do for ourselves, and more in the habit of buying everything we need regardless of the environmental and personal consequences.

And make no mistake, there are consequences. As we continue to fill landfills at an alarming rate, see our water tables and well water increasingly become contaminated, and learn more about how corporate farming is creating a less diverse food-supply chain, the global and environmental benefits of whats come to be known as self-sufficient living become more relevant and more apparent. By saving water, raising food that doesnt involve long-distance transport (and all the fuel and pollution that transportation entails), and finding new ways to create what we need using only the energy in our bodies, were not only helping ourselves, were helping the world.

Those upsides are attracting growing numbers of people to the self-sufficient lifestyle. The fact that youre reading this book means that, chances are, youre one of those people.

Slowly but surely, were learning that quantity, speed, and convenience are not always equal to quality, wholesomeness, and satisfaction. People across the country are realizing that highly processed food, produced and packaged on an industrial level, is often not as truly good tasting or as good for you as simpler food grown in your own backyard. People are reconnecting with animal husbandry, from raising two or three chickens to a small herd of goats. They are finding the pleasure in working with living things that create resources, such as food and fertilizer, and rediscovering the simple joy of hand-woven textiles made on a loom they built themselves. They are realizing that there is a way to live that is gentler on the ecosystems of which we are so much a part. On a more pragmatic level, they are saving money with what they grow and produce and what they no longer need to buy.