Building a homestead

Early on in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie there is an astonishing passage. After days of traveling with the family over barely differentiated prairie, Pa stops the wagon in a spot that looks like any other spot (it isn't, of course) and says, "Here we are, Caroline! Right here we'll build our house." Directly the wagon is unloaded, soon afterwards Pa has fetched a load of logs from the creek bottom, and by the end of the day he has made a good start on their new cabin. This is a far cry from shopping model homes in a subdivision.

The job of creating and sustaining a homestead involves a large and varied set of skills that we moderns in our wisdom have turned into a thousand separate career paths. It's difficult for us to imagine that a man such as Pa Ingalls, competent but not extraordinarily so, could carve a life for his family out of the wilderness using only what tools he could carry in a wagon, what knowledge he could fit in his head and hands, and what character his own family had worked to build in him. Admirable, perhaps even something to yearn for —but realistic in this day and age, when so much of it has been lost to us?

No doubt the tools and knowledge and character of a homesteader rested more easily on Pa's shoulders than they ever will for us, since he lived and breathed those things all his life. But for those of us who are nevertheless moved to try and reclaim such a state of being, much of the knowledge and some of the wisdom has been preserved for us here and there in various books. Here we've collected those we think are the best. The selection isn't comprehensive, because we have yet to find worthwhile books on many important topics. But for those who decide to pursue homesteading, these books will prove to be invaluable reference works.

• Back to Basics: How to Learn and Enjoy Traditional Skills. Provides a solid and comprehensive overview of how to provide for basic needs—building a home and furnishing it, raising food and preserving it, generating energy and using it. We almost always start here when we decide to tackle another aspect of homesteading.
• The Encyclopedia of Country Living. Similar to Back to Basics, not quite as comprehensive but much more detailed on the topics it covers. This book is mostly about food—how to grow it, how to prepare it, and how to preserve it. It is big (8 1/2 by 11 inches) and it is thick (885 pages), and it is as definitive as a book of this size can be on such a broad topic. But it is also very personal, a thirty-year labor of love.
• The Foxfire Series. This series of books, twelve in all, is a treasure trove of information about Appalachian folklore, history, and traditional skills. Best of all, the approach is direct and unpretentious, being the result of a forty-year-long project which has high school students approaching their parents and grandparents, collecting their wisdom, and setting it down in writing.
• You Can Farm. While Joel Salatin is not exactly a homesteader, much of his operation exemplifies the homestead ideal, and he has inspired many folks to get started down the path. This book is a hands-on explanation of how Salatin thinks a farm should work; his own works this way, and it is very successful. Even if you don't adopt his model wholesale (and you probably won't), he shows you how to think clearly about managing the many interacting elements of a working farm.
• The Contrary Farmer. Gene Logsdon is a treasure, because without neglecting the specifics he provides the reader with a comprehensive overview of the life of a small-scale farmer—the requirements, the challenges, the joys, the tangible benefits, and the connectedness to creation and to community. His approach is also more relaxed than many, recognizing that it is not only necessary but rewarding to pace oneself, to take time out along the way to enjoy both the fruits of your work and the unearned blessings that God bestows on us.
• Five Acres and Independence. Written in 1935 and extensively revised in 1940, this classic work provides another approach to building a self-sufficient small farm. Way too focused on making the farm a paying proposition, but chock full of farm facts that were well known seventy years ago but are fast slipping away at this point. The model is not likely to be one you will adopt, but as an example of thinking through all the issues that arise in small scale farming, it is a valuable resource.
• The Septic System Owner's Manual. If you live in the country, you will almost certainly have to plumb the mysteries of septic systems. This helpful book explains how they work and what you can do to maintain one.