Reclaiming Simplicity
Written: Apr 04 '08
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Organization, lots of information
Cons: None
The Bottom Line: This is a highly useful book designed to help anyone get back to basics
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| pambo's Full Review: Abigail R. Gehring - Back to Basics: A Complete Gu... |
There's something for almost everyone in "Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills."
It's about going green and simplifying your lifestyle but at a basic level. Here are a few of the things you can learn about from this well-illustrated and thoroughly detailed book:
Buying and working land; generating your own energy; raising livestock; enjoying your harvest; household skills and crafts.
There's just a ton of information in this relatively short (464 pages), book. You can take and use as much of it as you need in a quest to get back to the land or you can skim and pick off a few ideas.
You'll get advice on how to buy the right land for what you want to do; finding, if not building, a home suited for the weather and geography; how to pick up clues from nature on available water in drier climates; using natural and available materials for building and so on.
From basic land advice, we move on to tapping into providing our own energy, using wood, water, wind and sun. Advice includes ways to make a house energy efficient, such as using trees to block wind, facing sunlight and positioning a home to collect the most sun.
Then it's on to raising vegetables, fruit and livestock, with details about fish farming, beekeeping, and pest control. There are recipes here; my personal favorite involves pickling, partly because we have a pickle festival near us every year. Here’s one recipe I intend to try soon:
Watermelon pickles
6 lb. Watermelon rind with green rind and pink meat removed
¾ cup of salt
3 ¾ qt. Water
2 trays of ice cubs
9 cups sugar
3 cups white vinegar
1 tbsp. Whole cloves
6 l-inch cinnamon sticks
1 lemon, sliced thin
Cut rinds into 1-inch squares. Dissolve salt in 3 qt. Of water, add ice cubes and pour over watermelon rind. Allow to stand five to six hours. Drain rind and rinse in cold water. Cover with cold water and cook until fork tender. Drain. Combine sugar, vinegar, and remaining 3 cups water; then add a spice bag filled with clove sand cinnamon sticks. Boil five minutes and pour over rind. Add lemon slices and marinate overnight. Boil rind in syrup until rind is translucent. Pack boiling pickles into hot, sterilized pint jars. Remove cinnamon sticks from bag and divide among jars. Cover with boiling syrup, leaving 2/3 inch headroom. Process in boiling water bath for 20 minutes. Makes 6 pints.
A section on enjoying the harvest includes information on preserving produce, meat and fish, making cheese, maple sugaring, baking bread, regional cooking and cooking with wood.
Some of the home crafts described here include:
Dyeing cloth, shearing sheep, spinning wool, tanning leather, scrimshaw, metalworking, stenciling, soapmaking, candlemaking and basketry.
Lest it seem as there's nothing but work to be done, the final chapter, we can learn how to craft a dulcimer, celebrating holidays,fishing and playing such old-fashioned games as jacks, marbles and making bubbles.
And many more skills Americans used to know how to do but no longer do. Hundreds of projects are explained here, often with step-by-step illustrations or photographs. The essence of this book is simple living, consuming little or nothing beyond what we can produce and getting the most out of life from our own labor.
You don't have to move to a mountainside to enjoy this book and walk away fired up to change how you do things. There are so many possibilities that you can pick something simple, such as planting a small garden, or going off to find that mountainside and shun the rest of the world, or anything in between.
Recommended:
Yes
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pambo
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Member: Pam
Location: Long Island
Reviews written: 445
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