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Self-Sufficiency: A Complete Guide To Baking, Carpentry, Crafts, Organic Gardening, Preserving Your Harvest, Raising Animals, And More! (2010)

by Abigail R. Gehring(Favorite Author)

3.14 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1602399999 (ISBN13: 9781602399990)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Skyhorse Publishing

review 1: I gave this three stars because I didn't pick it up intending to learn a great deal of new information, or to use the information to make any changes in my life or in the way we live here on our quarter acre in suburbia...indeed, this book is not the end-all-be-all how-to manual that it advertises it self to be.Instead, I enjoyed this book as a mediocre intro to one of my new favorite genres of books: coffe table books that make me feel like doing something. Soooooo much better than pinterest and so much less addicting or time-consuming, but, I would argue, at least as productive, if not more...Call me old fashioned...I still like letters, I still like the hand-written "laughter journal" that I share with another mama friend, stuff pasted and scribbled inside...and I love ... morecoffee table books for inspiration. (but it is fun to type about this all on my iPad! ;)
review 2: You know what this book is? It's bullshit, that's what it is!You see the title? It's a "COMPLETE guide to baking, carpentry, crafts, organic gardening, preserving your harvest, raising animals and more!"....more?! we don't need "more". We need less. A LOT LESS. I don't know if the rest of you out there are experiencing this but in the lovely city of Portland Oregon it's perfectly normal to forage side walk weeds for your dinner, have chickens walking around your front yard and bees humming in your back. It's practically passe' to knit your hat unless you've also dyed and carded the wool yourself. And if you're And don't get me wrong, I am in favor of any one (or a few) of these things but it's this incessant drive to one-up ourselves in our "self-sufficiency" that drives me crazy. Do we really need to do eeeeeeverything from scratch? Can't we still be a creative, socially responsible, environmentally friendly person if we get our beer from a neighborhood brewery instead of the hops in our own backyard?The other day as I was driving to school I was arguing with the imaginary person in my head and getting all worked up about why I don't want to raise chickens. This might sound crazy to you (and the part about the imaginary person might actually be crazy) but it's a legitimate topic that has come up more than once. People telling me how great chicken raising is and why I should do it. But I'm not gonna do it! And I think people need to relax a little and feel okay about not doing EVERYTHING! Let your neighbor do it, head to farmers market, buy from your local grocery whatever - it's okay, you're not a bad person.One of the worst outcomes of this whole "self-sufficiency" thing is all that shit that's out there as a result. The pottery that weighs two tons, the collapsing chicken coops, the under cooked bread, the weed covered patches of earth that were intended to be gardens. I read a blog once stating how ridiculous it was to "buy pizza" because making pizza dough is so great and so easy and tastes so much better and blah, blah, blah.bullshit.Making home-made pizza is not so easy and it doesn't always taste better. It's nearly, if not completely impossible to get home ovens to temperatures high enough to yield certain crust consistencies. Which is a great excuse to head over to Ken's Artisan Bakery and let them roar up their ovens and serve up a slice of pizza that you could never duplicate at home.It's time we stop buying into the propaganda that we can "do it all" and just get good at one or two things that we really enjoy. The idea that one could open a book and in mere chapter on animals learn to breed horses properly is ridiculous! Give Horse breeders some credit people - I'm sure that shit is complicated! And the pottery section - WHATEVER!!! I lived through the 70's, my mom had a kick wheel, and an electric wheel, and a kiln. We had pottery bowls, mugs, toothbrush holders, etc, etc, etc, and I can say with confidence that you're not going to, as this book suggests, dig up some clay in your yard, follow the tidy little directions and come out at the end of the day with anything other than another crappy lopsided, two ton bowl for your pocket lint and change. DUMB!I know it's not reasonable of me to get this worked-up and maybe it's due to my own bitterness at coming to the realization that I'm mostly bad at a lot of stuff and only good at a few things that makes me want to impose that on other people, but really at the end of the day, I just think this kind of stuff is as bourgeoisie bullshit as it gets.raise your bee'sor collect your eggsor breed your horsesor braid your rag rugor dip your candlesbut for the love of god, do you really need to try and do ALL that? less

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