Philip Nelson

Book Find: Back to the Basics

Half Price Books in San Antonio was having a Memorial Day 20% sale today and it was my duty to check out their stock and expand my EVER GROWING book collection. Picked up two books for my 2009 “Read a Fiction per Month Challenge” but the find of the night was a book published by Readers Digest in 1981 called “Back to the Basics: How to Learn and Enjoy Traditional American Skills”.

I’m an “info nerd”.. I love to know how things work, how things are made and how they did it in the “olden days” and this book is a exhaustive reference of how to do just about anything that doesn’t require electricity.

Here is a chapter list
1. Land: Buying It – Building It.
2. Energy From Wood, Water, Wind, and Sun
3. Raising Your Own Vegetables, Fruit, And Livestock
4. Enjoying Your Harvest The Year Round
5. Skills and Crafts for House And Homestead
6. Recreation at Home And in the Wild

Preserving food, cutting your own lumber, raising livestock, making cheese, shaping rocks for a stone wall, cooking on an open flame and MUCH more are in this amazing book.

Can’t wait to try my hand at Cheese Making.. 🙂

Note: The book is now in it’s 3rd edition and is available from Amazon.com