This week I’ll be part of a 5 Days of Summer Series and I’m talking about 5 Days of Summer Reading. Each post comes with recommendations for how to choose good books, tips to encourage a love of books, and ideas for how to enjoy reading as a whole family–as well as a book list, so be sure to check them all out!
MONDAY: 5 Days of Summer Reading {For the Homestead}
TUESDAY: 5 Days of Summer Reading {For the Boys}
WEDNESDAY: 5 Days of Summer Reading {For the Girls}
THURSDAY: 5 Days of Summer Reading {For the Reluctant Reader}
FRIDAY: 5 Days of Summer Reading {For the Family}
I just love books–can I say that? I save up all my Swagbucks and turn them into Amazon gift cards and buy books. Hunting in thrift stores, and book sales, the library’s little corner sale, and musty antique store shelves…because you just never know what treasure you’re going find. I saw this wonderful Pin the other day about girls who are much more enthralled by the library in Beauty and the Beast than the Prince, and that would be me!
Our homestead library is ever-growing (and scattered through the house!), but we have a couple of main “sections” that sort of match up with our homesteading journey.
Children’s Books for Your Homesteading Books List
This is probably the hardest because the more you become involved in farming and homesteading the more disillusioned you become with basic barnyard books for kids. Seriously, most of them are lullaby-lame! Cute, but not much meat for kids that know a daily homesteading life. So if you’ve got ideas here please, please share!
But when you want your children to be an active, involved part of the farm, you need to feed that love early! While the kiddos love to leaf through our big farm books, a few favorite stories around here are…
- Floss. There are just no words for how amazingly authentic Kim Lewis’ illustrations are–these are treasured in our library! We have all her farm life books!
- The Shepard Boy. Also by Kim Lewis–this one is the Cowboy’s absolute favorite farm book.
- My First Little House Books. While we love the original Little House books for family reading, this picture book adaption is great for younger readers too!
- The Year at Maple Hill Farm. Very true-to-life, but easy for munchkins to enjoy!
- Meet the Dogs of Bedlam Farm. Jon Katz got into farming because he got into Border Collies and now has quite the menagerie of sheep and donkeys and all sorts of critters. We love the Bedlam farm books–stories are good, but the pictures are great!
Exploring-the-Idea Books
So…you think the idea of a homestead is awesome and you just can’t stop dreaming about a backyard chicken coop and raising your own food and making your kiddos into super-responsible adults because they had to fill water buckets every day. Ok, that wasn’t part of the dream right at first… These are the books that we were reading before we had a farm. The ones that convinced us we could do this–and that we go back to for an overview if things get wonky around here (meaning we want to throw in the towel!) or we’re thinking about trying something new.
{P.S. These are also great resources for homeschooling if you really want to dive into the idea of living systems, food systems, and real-life farming!}
A few we always go back to…
- Barnyard in Your Backyard. This one is a must if you think you want to homestead–it covers every. single. barnyard. animal. We just pulled our copy out, again, for our duck adventure!
- Small Scale Livestock Farming. In our early years, Carol Ekarius was my hero! {smile} This little book has everything you need to know to think your way through getting started if you want your homestead to be grass-based and have livestock. We go back to this one constantly for farm planning help.
- Making Your Small Farm Profitable. This was the first book I ever checked out of the library on farming–renewed it 3 times. It’s not just about having a homestead for your own food production. This book is about making money, real profit, with your little farm–and you can’t beat advice from someone as successful as Ron Macher.
- You Can Farm. We own every book by Joel Salatin. Straight up encouraging, but completely practical too. You might not agree with everything he says, but it’s all worth reading and thinking about! I probably re-read this one once a year.
- Grass-Fed Cattle. This is a great book for anyone that’s thinking about pasturing any animals. Grass management is foundational to a small livestock farm and this gives a great overview of the whole system. If you imagine your farm being green–you want this book.
- Farms with a Future. This is a new one to me that we’re checking out now and looks very promising–very practical. Homesteaders tend to be great with hands-on stuff, not so much with paperwork and business plans (I know we are!).
- Starting and Running Your Own Small Farm Business. A workbook to help you walk through the process of an actual business plan for your farm including marketing and the dreaded “T” word (taxes).
- Legal Guide to Direct Farm Marketing. This book is probably a little out of date now, but it was a big help for us to start understanding the ramifications of selling right at the farm. (Buy used, this one is hard to come by and prices are crazy!) Insurance issues, liability issues, USDA inspection, labeling, certification language…it’s unfortunate that no one has updated this little book, but it’s a good overview to give you a feel for what you’re getting in to.
- Keeping Livestock Healthy. The reason this book is on the conceptual list instead of the technical lists is because it does a great job of explaining that a healthy SYSTEM will avoid illnesses and save you the need for technical treatments later on. I talk about this more in our post about Understanding Health and Wellness.
- 5 Acres and Independence. A classic. We found ours in a dirty box of books in the back of an antique shop for $0.10. What a crime! One man’s trash is another man’s treasure!
Technical Resources for Your Homesteading Books List
Ok, you’ve jumped into this and now you’ve actually got animals on your land and you’ve discovered that it costs, like, $27 billion dollars to call the vet every five minutes and you don’t even know what you don’t know to ask questions.
Here are some great on-the-ground books we go to before we ever call the vet and some technical building help if you’d don’t have a full-fledged Mr. Fix-It of your own. A couple of these just sit on the shelf at our house from a time before I fully embraced Mr. Fix-It’s inherent mechanical genius and need to do it himself–he doesn’t mind reinventing the wheel sometimes!
- Storey’s Guides. Whatever animal you have, get the Storey’s guide for that animal. These books cover everything you need to know on a daily basis. If it’s not in here, you probably need to call your vet. We have the one on sheep, pigs, chickens, beef cows, and now ducks. These are perfect for 4-Hers too!
- Veterinary Book for Sheep Farmers. This book is intense, but it covers anything that’s not covered by our Storey Guide. If you have sheep–particularly if your vet’s not particularly experienced with sheep!–you’re going to want to have a copy of this book around.
- Natural Sheep/Cattle Care. These books by Pat Coleby are an excellent introduction to holistic and herbal animal care–especially for herbal newbies like ourselves! Also gave me the info I needed to help confer with our vet on alternative treatment ideas because most if it was new to them as well.
- How to Build Animal Housing. I told you I love Carol Ekarius. I also love that she understands holistic animal welfare and the idea of small farm profitability. This book is very practical and looks at good management as a way to avoid health issues, instead of treating them.
- Basic Butchering of Livestock and Game. Even if you don’t do this yourself, you should read this book and understand how it all works. This is a critical part of homesteading. This will help you communicate with your customers better as well.
- Quality Pasture. Growing grass for livestock to eat is so much more complicated than you’d think. There are tons of books on rotational grazing these days. I happen to like this one after the books listed in the section above because we weren’t rejuvenating old pasture, we were starting from scratch on worn-out row crop farm land and we needed the detailed help.
- Pastured Poultry Profits. This book is both technical about the farming aspect, and covers all the processing and marketing aspects of selling your own chicken. Same with Salad Bar Beef. A complete rundown of their system from start to finish. And if you’re not all about books (like Mr. Fix-It!) you can also see everything on YouTube! {Salatins processing video}
- Weed Control without Poison. We use chemical herbicides sometimes. We’re not organic. But we try to keep it to a minimum and use systematic management to reduce the weed load year by year. This book helps you identify the weeds you have and the environmental conditions that are letting them flourish to give you a strategic plan of attack without just spraying every year. Worth the read if you’re looking for a healthy and sustainable farm.
Homesteading Skills
Now that you’ve produced your food and fiber–how do you go about using it for your home or to create a marketable product? I have to admit that the farming and direct marketing itself is so intense that we have found ourselves 3rd partying out a lot of the final production. But I’ve been reading up so that as the crew gets older and needs less supervision, I can pick up some more skills.
Here are some great learning resources that are on our shelves…
- Keeping the Harvest. This book covers more than just canning. Since I’ve preferred freezing and drying to canning over the busy years it’s been a big help to me.
- The Ball Blue Book of Canning. The ultimate canning source. There are a ton of versions and revisions and I’ve managed to put my hands on most of them for our shelves. If you don’t find a used one, I would just go with the newest one.
- The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook. I don’t spin, so this one I go to over and over to talk wool with spinners interested in our products.
- The Knitter’s Book of Wool. Again, since I’m not a super-star knitter, this book helps me understand and communicate with our customers. (And one day I will be a superstar hand spinner and knitter, you watch!)
- A Weavers Garden. Growing herbs and then natural dying of fiber…it’s the ultimate multi-purpose production!
- Complete Book of Butchering, Smoking, Curing, and Sausage Making Title says it all.
- Storey’s Country Wisdom These little volumes from our favorite country living publisher cover everything from cheese to soap to root cellars to candles.
- The Backyard Beekeeper and the Honey Handbook These two are sitting on my shelf right now for me to tackle before next spring!
Wow–this post is way more words than I usually have! But I can’t stand book lists that don’t tell you anything about the books! And this is just the start of what’s on our shelves–homesteading and farming are just a never-ending learning process! For more great resources, follow my Farm and Homestead Pinterest board–I’m always adding something to follow up on later!
Be sure to stop by tomorrow for tips and ideas on choosing good books and reading with busy boys!