[.ca] Storey's Basic Country Skills: A Practical Guide to ... (ISBN 1580172024)

The bible (small-b) of rural living:
We bought this tome just a few weeks before moving from the city where we'd lived our entire lives to a 20-acre rural country place miles and miles from any city limits. For the first year especially, we kept this book out. You would be astonished at its contents. It describes the pros and cons of water wells, reusing dirt, planning land for gardens and barns, chicken problems, keeping goats, arranging around weather, tanning leather, insect control, tree problems to watch out for and their solutions, energy in places where the lines don't run, getting water from point A to B, storing grains and other foods, and... you NAME IT! This made our lives so much better. We didn't even use all the advice we read simply because one family can only do so much the first year they move into the country for the first time but this book was our comfort book in knowing that if we had problems, we'd find the solutions here.

By no means a complete guide to living in the country!:
This book is interesting to look through. It contains a fair amount of information, some interesting quotes, lots of good tips, and many high-quality black and white illustrations. But is is by no means a complete guide to living in the country. Those dreaming of living in the country, or perhaps planning to move to the country, will find this book an interesting starting point as it contains loads of ideas. And it also mentions probably hundreds of other books on various topics--and it is to those books that you will have to go to get enough information to complete country projects. For exaple, the book gives lists of herbs that you can grow to give your herb garden a different theme. One of the ideas is a Cold and Flu herb garden, containing only herbs known for their medicinal properties. But that's all you get. There is no specific information on growing each of the listed herbs, and certainly no information on harvesting them or actually using them for medecine! Further on in the book is a list of herbs you can use to make tea to spray on your garden to repel insects. But no information is given as to which insects are repelled by which herbs, nor are you told how these different teas might affect the plants being sprayed. In both cases, the book gives a good idea, but you'd need to buy a more in-depth book to properly carry through that idea. The book does have a few good recipes, including a good white bread recipe, but in all there are only about 2 dozen recipes, hardly a complete collection. The Storeys do have a separate book of country recipes though, which I would recommend. Fortunately within the text, and listed at the end, the Storeys give the names of several hundred in-depth instructional books for every imaginable topic, from baking to growing potatoes to raising goats. That is probably the most useful feature of this book. In this way it is a good stepping stone. So read this book if you're looking for ideas on how to set up your country homestead, but don't expect to become an expert on anything from this book.

UGH!:
I was very disappointed in this book. It does not give practical information on any country skills. It appears to be a compilation of the many great Storey books out there so if your interested in something specific like chickens or goats, just buy Storey's guide to chickens or goats. I learned nothing new from this book. Since it was published in 1999 it would appear they were jumping on the bandwagon for the Y2K hysteria.

Super book!:
Not only is there a bounty of excellent and easily accessible information in this book but it is enjoyable to read. This book is a good place to start if you're thinking of rural living.

A please buy all our books:
This is a good book if you want a starting point. I found it was a lot of advertising for the rest of their line of books. It didn't go into a lot of detail on any one subject. On the flip side they more than likly took the best of all their books to put into this.