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Fix your septic system with The Septic System Owners Manual. Learn how conventional gravity-fed septic systems work. Read about maintenance and upkeep for your septic system.

There is also basic information on the recent evolution in composting-toilet systems and designs for simple graywater systems.

This is a basic manual for the average homeowner, based on conventional systems and providing practical advice on how to keep these systems up and running.

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 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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Move beyond dried apricots and jerky into an amazing world of healthy and delicious dried foods with Mary T. Bell's Food Drying With an Attitude.

This is the ultimate food drying resource and has something for everyone: vegetarians, natural and raw food enthusiasts, hunters, fishermen, gourmet cooks, gardeners, farmers and hikers. Children will love the yummy fruit roll-ups. Animal lovers will enjoy making treats for dogs, cats and birds. And everyone will be thrilled at how easy it is to preserve fruits, vegetables and herbs without chemicals or preservatives.

With more than 30 years of food drying experience, Bell offers straightforward and practical instructions for drying everything from yogurt to sauerkraut to blue cheese, without ignoring traditional favorites such as jerky, mushrooms and bananas. Readers will also find innovative and delicious recipes for cooking and baking with dried foods.

Throughout, Bell offers nutritional tips and highlights the time-, space- and money-saving benefits of food dehydrating. Also included are descriptions of how various food dehydrators work, to give readers a better understanding of the tools of the craft. Food Drying With an Attitude gives readers the recipes, instructions and inspiration they need to get the most out of their home food dehydrators.

About the Author: Mary T. Bell has been promoting food drying for more than three decades. She is the author of Just Jerky, Jerky People, Mary Bell's Complete Dehydrator Cookbook and Dehydration Made Simple. She strives to minimize the demands made on our planet and to encourage sustainable living.

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 and products to readers. For more than 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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The Mother Earth News editors wholeheartedly offer a big, fat stamp of approval to this incredible cookbook, which proves hands-down that there is enough time in life for baking. You'll be able to create numerous treats by mastering one simple technique. Contains all kinds of troubleshooting tips and many mouthwatering recipes.

There’s nothing like the smell of freshly baked bread to fill a kitchen with warmth, eager appetites and endless praise for the baker who took on such a time-consuming task. Now, you can fill your kitchen with the irresistible aromas of a French bakery every day with just five minutes of active preparation time, and Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day will show you how.

Co-authors Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François prove that bread baking can be easier than a trip to the bakery. Their method is quick and simple, bringing forth scrumptious perfection in each loaf. Delectable creations will emerge straight from your own oven as warm, indulgent masterpieces that you can finally make for yourself. In exchange for a mere five minutes of your time, your breads will rival those of the finest bakers in the world.

With nearly 100 recipes to put this ingenious technique to use, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day will open the eyes of any potential baker who has sworn off homemade bread as simply too much work. Crusty baguettes, mouthwatering pizzas, hearty sandwich loaves and even buttery pastries can easily become part of your own personal menu, and this innovative book will teach you everything you need to know.

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 and products 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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From oats, rice and whole wheat to farro, barley and quinoa, no grain is left unexplored in this compendium of more than 75 healthful recipes. You'll find a tasty dish for every meal of the day: Quick Skillet Flatbreads made with millet or teff for breakfast, or a hearty dinner entree of lamb and rye berries braised in red wine. Even desserts get the whole-grain touch with such sweets as Chocolate-Chunk Buckwheat Cookies.

The source list will help you find the more unusual options, and a glossary describes each grain in detail. The New Whole Grains Cookbook makes it easy to eat your grains and love them, too.

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 and products to readers. For more than 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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No home — whether in the country, city or somewhere in between — should be without this one-of-a-kind, 928-page encyclopedia. For more than 30 years, people have relied on author Carla Emery's practical, step-by-step advice on basic self-sufficiency skills such as how to cultivate a garden, buy land, bake bread, raise farm animals, make sausage, milk a goat, grow herbs, churn butter, build a chicken coop, cook on a wood stove and much, much more.

This updated 10th edition includes expanded and updated mail-order information, including e-mail addresses and websites, while adding more of Emery's personal advice, reflections and anecdotes to ensure that this incredibly detailed, diverse book is as enjoyable as it is useful.

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This book by Mother Earth News contributing editor Dan Chiras will enable you to make wise decisions during the design, purchase and installation of home-based wind energy systems. Written in consultation with two of the most experienced "small wind" experts in the United States, this is the book you need if you are interested in a wind turbine for your home.

Faced with frequent power outages, skyrocketing energy costs, and constant reminders of the impacts of conventional energy sources, homeowners and businesses are beginning to explore ways to use energy more efficiently and to generate their own electricity to reduce fuel bills and their carbon footprint and to achieve greater independence.

Power From the Wind is an easily understandable guide for individuals and businesses interested in installing small wind energy system. Written for the layperson, this practical guide provides an accurate and unbiased view of all aspects of small wind energy systems, including:

• Wind and wind energy systems
• Ways to assess wind resources at your site
• Wind turbines and towers
• Inverters and batteries
• Installation and maintenance of systems
• The costs and benefits of installing a wind system

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With just a quarter acre of land, you can feed a family of four with fresh, organic food year-round. This comprehensive guide to self-sufficiency gives you all the information you need to grow and preserve a variety of vegetables, fruits, herbs, nuts and grains; raise chickens for eggs and meat; raise cows, sheep and goats for meat or milk; raise pigs and rabbits; and keep honeybees. Simple instructions make it easy to enjoy canned, frozen, dried and pickled produce all winter; use your own grains to make bread, pasta and beer; turn fresh milk into delicious homemade yogurt, butter and cheese; make your own wine, cordials and herbal teas; and much, much more. It truly is possible to eat entirely from your backyard.

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 and products to readers. For more than 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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From the best-selling author of The New Organic Grower and Four-Season Harvest comes a revolutionary guide to year-round harvests of fresh, organic produce — with little or no energy inputs.

Choosing locally grown organic food is a sustainable living trend that’s taken hold throughout North America. Celebrated farming expert Eliot Coleman helped start this movement with The New Organic Grower, published 20 years ago. He continues to lead the way, pushing the limits of the harvest season while working his world-renowned organic farm in Harborside, Maine.

Now, with his long-awaited new book, The Winter Harvest Handbook, anyone can have access to his hard-won experience. Gardeners and farmers can use the innovative, highly successful methods Coleman describes in this comprehensive handbook to raise crops throughout the coldest of winters.

Building on the techniques that hundreds of thousands of farmers and gardeners adopted from The New Organic Grower and Four-Season Harvest, this new book focuses on growing produce of unparalleled freshness and quality in customized unheated or, in some cases, minimally heated, movable plastic greenhouses.

Coleman offers clear, concise details on greenhouse construction and maintenance, planting schedules, crop management, harvesting practices and even marketing methods in this complete, meticulous and illustrated guide. Readers have access to all the techniques that have proven to produce higher-quality crops on Coleman’s own farm.

His painstaking research and experimentation with more than 30 different crops will be valuable to small farmers, homesteaders and experienced home gardeners who seek to expand their production seasons.

A passionate advocate for the revival of small-scale sustainable farming, Coleman provides a practical model for supplying fresh, locally grown produce during the winter season, even in climates where conventional wisdom says it “just can’t be done.”

Praise for The Winter Harvest Handbook:

"How do you produce first-rate food all year-round in northern places? This is the big question facing the local food movement, and Eliot Coleman, one of America's most innovative farmers, has come up with excellent answers. ... The Winter Harvest Handbook is an indispensable contribution." Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food

"If we are going to create a good, clean, fair food system, we've got to learn how to grow affordable, local food year-round and make a living at it. Eliot Coleman knows more about this than anyone I've met. Here he gives the detailed information needed to make it work." Josh Viertel, president, Slow Food USA.

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 and products to readers. For more than 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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We're destroying the planet, undermining happiness, and clinging to an unsustainable economy. Our obsessive pursuit of wealth isn't working. But there's another way. Less can be More. Throughout history wise people have argued that we need to live more simply — that only by limiting outer wealth can we have inner wealth.

With Less is More, editors Cecile Andrews and Wanda Urbanska have put together a compelling collection of works by people who have been writing about simplicity for decades, including Bill McKibben, Sarah Susanka, John de Graaf, Bryan Welch and many more.

These thinkers bring us a new vision of less: less stuff, less work, less stress, less debt. A life with less becomes a life with more: more time, more satisfaction, more balance, more security. When we have too much, we savor nothing. When we choose less, we regain our life and can think and feel deeply. Ultimately, a life of less connects us with one true source of happiness: being a part of a caring community.

About the authors:

Cecile Andrews is the author of Circle of Simplicity and Slow is Beautiful and co-founder of Phinney EcoVillage. She has her doctorate in education from Stanford University.

Wanda Urbanska is producer and host of Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska. She is author or co-author of numerous books, including Simple Living and Nothing's Too Small to Make a Difference.

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 and products 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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Grain harvesting can be done in small spaces. With Homegrown Whole Grains, you'll learn how to grow, harvest and cook nine nutritious whole grains. From wheat and rice to heirloom grains, this book covers everything you need for a successful grain harvest.

All you need to start grain harvesting is to convert part of your yard into a field of grain. After the harvest you can enjoy nutritious whole grains, using them whole in delicious recipes or milling them into flour for artisan breads and other baked goods. Barley, quinoa, millet, buckwheat and oats are among the grains you’ll learn to take from yard to plate.

Author Sara Pitzer started this book 30 years ago, when she wrote Wholegrains for the original folks of the back-to-the-land movement. Today, she writes about grain harvesting with a different attitude, one that helps modern homesteaders grow their own food at a smaller, more manageable scale.

For the gardener who is eager to grow more than a variety of vegetables, this grain harvesting book will become a dear resource. Each of the nine grains featured in Homegrown Whole Grains has a different flavor and use. By harvesting them at home, you'll be able to make such varied foods as whole grain pasta, as well as add variety to homegrown food.

About the Author: Sara Pitzer has learned and written about grains in Pennsylvania's Amish country, California, the American Southeast, Thailand and Peru. She is the author of more than a dozen cookbooks and travel guides.

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.