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This is the key reference to living off the land. Packed with practical information and tried-and-tested tips, author John Seymour's visionary handbook explains how to reap the harvest, respect the land, stay healthy and waste nothing.

The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It teaches all the skills needed to live independently: harnessing natural forms of energy, raising crops and keeping livestock, preserving foodstuffs, making beer and wine, basketry, carpentry, weaving, and much more.

This new expanded edition includes 150 new full-color illustrations and a special section in which Seymour, the father of the back-to-basics movement, explains the philosophy of self-sufficiency and its power to transform lives and create communities. More relevant than ever in our high-tech world, The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It is the ultimate practical guide for realists and dreamers alike.

Recommended Product for Wiser Living: Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, MOTHER EARTH NEWS is recommending books to readers. For 40 years, MOTHER EARTH NEWS has been North America’s “Original Guide to Living Wisely,” creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature.

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Acquire herbal healing wisdom with this guide to gathering, drying, storing, and blending 25 common herbs. Create your own all-natural home medicine cabinet filled with teas, tinctures, salves, syrups and lozenges.

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Simple step-by-step instructions guide you through the process of drying and storing more than 100 kinds of fruits, vegetables, grains, meats and herbs. There are even complete plans for building your own food dryer. As seen in the Seed Savers Exchange catalog.

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This complete guide presents everything you need to know to enhance your health, beauty and emotional well-being through the practice of aromatherapy. Kathi Keville and Mindy Green, who are masters in the fields of herbalism and aromatherapy, offer a fresh perspective on the most fragrant of the healing arts and discuss such topics as:

• The history and theory of fragrance.
• Therapeutic uses of aromatherapy for circulation, digestion, respiration, immunity, and more.
• Instructions for creating personal beauty and skin-care products.
• Techniques for the home distillation and blending of essential oils.
• A materia medica listing the origins and uses of commonly available essential oils.

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Cob cottages are the ultimate expression of ecological design. Made of earth, clay, sand, straw and water, they are their surroundings, literally rising up from the earth. These houses are light, energy-efficient and cozy, with curved walls and built-in whimsical touches.

The Hand-Sculpted House is theoretical and philosophical, but intensely practical as well. You will get all the how-to information to undertake an earth and straw building project. As the modern world rediscovers the importance of living in sustainable harmony with the environment, this book is a bible of radical simplicity.

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The Backyard Beekeeper, now revised and expanded, makes the time-honored and complex tradition of beekeeping an enjoyable and accessible backyard pastime that will appeal to gardeners, crafters, and cooks everywhere. This expanded edition gives you even more information on "greening" your beekeeping with sustainable practices, pesticide-resistant bees, and urban and suburban beekeeping. More than a guide to beekeeping, it is a handbook for harvesting the products of a beehive and a honey cookbook--all in one lively, beautifully illustrated reference. This complete honey bee resource contains general information on bees; a how-to guide to the art of beekeeping and how to set up, care for, and harvest honey from your own colonies; as well as tons of bee-related facts and projects. You'll learn the best place to locate your new bee colonies for their safety and yours, and you'll study the best organic and nontoxic ways to care for your bees, from providing fresh water and protection from the elements to keeping them healthy, happy, and productive. Recipes of delicious treats and instructions on how to use honey and beeswax to make candles and beauty treatments are also included.

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If you're considering a solar or wind system for your home or business, this solar power guide is a valuable resource. In Got Sun? Go Solar, the authors explain how installing a solar or wind system is an economically attractive and environmentally responsible option.

From Vermont to California, homeowners are plugging in to a hot new idea — reducing or eliminating their electric bills by using free energy from the sun and wind. In this straight-talking new solar power guide, authors Rex Ewing and Doug Pratt tell other grid-connected homeowners how to capture alternative energy and put it to use in their home.

Renewable energy is going mainstream, thanks to affordable new technologies with rebates and incentives from many states. Today more and more homeowners believe that installing a home RE system is the economically-attractive and environmentally-responsible thing to do. Whether they install a solar/wind system to benefit their checkbooks or to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, they also enjoy the added independence of a more self-sufficient lifestyle.

This solar power guide covers battery backup versus non-battery systems, as well as equipment needed and installation considerations. Other topics include legal and safety issues, incentives/rebates, and permits and paperwork. An extensive appendix of resources, state energy offices, system sizing worksheets, and much more turns this 160-page book (filled with more than 120 photos and illustrations) into a must-have book for anyone interested in exploring their power options.

Contents:

• Why invest in renewable energy for your home?
• Is it legal and safe?
• How solar electricity works
• Batteries or not?
• Sizing your system
• Got Wind?
• What does it cost?
• Any financial help out there?
• Permits and Paperwork
• The Nuts and Bolts: what to look for, what to avoid
• Who does the installation?
• Appendix: manufacturers, web resources, state energy offices, sizing worksheets, glossary and more

About the authors:

The authors of this solar power guide know firsthand how these systems work. Rex Ewing, author of Power With Nature has lived off-the-grid in the Colorado Rockies since 1999. Doug Pratt, the former technical editor of the Solar Living Sourcebook, lives in a grid-tied home in northern California, and has been on the front lines of the renewable energy revolution since 1985.

Recommended product for Wiser Living: Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, Mother Earth News is recommending books to its readers. For nearly 40 years, Mother Earth News has been North America's "Original Guide to Living Wisely," creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature.

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This newly revised second edition contains more than 250 simple, but remarkably effective recipes for cleansers and scrubs, toners and skin refreshers, creams, lotions, shampoos, conditioners, and nail and lip-care treatments.

Beauty in modern America is a multibillion-dollar industry, and consumers spend hundreds of dollars on beauty products only to discover that they aren't satisfactory or effective. In this new edition, author Janice Cox has refined more than 20 years' worth of simple and self-indulgent recipes for body and soul.

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If it concerns houseplants, you'll find it here. Mother Earth News contributing editor and garden expert Barbara Pleasant's full-color photographs and complete care guidelines put growing instructions for 160 blooming and foliage houseplants at your fingertips.