Product Description

Initially self-published 20 years ago, The Encyclopedia of Country Living has become the trusted guidebook to sustainable, self-sufficient living. Filled with memorable anecdotes, crucial advice, and a generous helping of good humor, this compendium provides detailed information about food production — growing, processing, cooking, and preserving — together with hundreds of illustrations and recipes. With updates of over 1,100 mail order sources, including websites and email addresses, this revised edition is the definitive classic text for living off the land.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #171691 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 864 pages

Amazon.com Review
For twenty years people have relied on these hundreds of recipes, instructions, and morsels of invaluable practical advice on all aspects of growing and preparing food. This definitive classic on food, gardening, and self-sufficient living is a complete resource for living off the land with over 800 pages of collected wisdom from country maven, Carla Emery--how to cultivate a garden, buy land, bake bread, raise farm animals, make sausage, milk a goat, grow herbs, churn butter, catch a pig, make soap, work with bees and more. Encyclopedia of Country Living is so basic, so thorough, so reliable, it deserves a place in every home--whether in the country, the city, or somewhere in between.

From Publishers Weekly
The updated ninth edition of this compendium of food production information is the hefty result of over three decades of intelligence-gathering by Emery, whose initial encyclopedia project was designed to help newbies in the "back to the land" movement of the early 70s learn self-sufficiency. Tasks Emery covers run the gamut from the simple to the complex, and from the common to the strange, and include how to: bake bread, make seed milk, sew a cornhusk bed, dry flowers, prune kiwi vines, culture yogurt, plant beans, keep bees, build a fish pond, artificially inseminate a turkey and help a cow who's eaten nails. In chapters such as "Grasses, Grains & Canes," "Food Preservation" and "Goats, Cows & Home Dairying," Emery offers advice, recipes (including many that are vegan), folk wisdom and plenty of hard facts. Though it's definitely not aimed at them, urbanites will find the recipes and resources lists (of herb periodicals, nurseries, organizations dedicated to simple living, etc.) useful, the trivia interesting ("catsup" was originally a thick sauce made from any fruit or vegetable), and Emery's personal reflections ("Once upon a time, in the bad old ways when the Communists and the Western countries were poised on the brink of mutual nuclear annihilation...") compelling. Even readers with no plans to raise sheep, sell homemade cheese or plant millet will find this a fascinating cultural document.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
Carla Emery is certifiably one of the craziest, warmest, (sometimes unintentionally) funniest, wisest, most lovable, and idealistic zanies now walking the face of the earth and we think this old world would be a lot better off if we had a few more people like her. -- Mother Earth News

Carla Emery started this ambitious reference project in 1969 as a complete guide to family food production and now, in its ninth edition, it has grown into an all-encompassing encyclopedia spanning everything from buying land to family farming to raising livestock to barn building to beekeeping to bread baking to making your own yogurt, plus a generous helping of suppliers, catalogers, books and magazines, and organizations. Hundreds of unique down-home recipes fill these pages, along with advice and instructions on all manner of food growing and preparation and a wealth of folk wisdom collected over the years from homesteaders that Carla has met or corresponded with. This book is an absolute gold mine of how-to, where-to information, whether you want to head for the hills or you just want to learn to live more self-sufficiently. -- From The WomanSource Catalog & Review: Tools for Connecting the Community for Women; review by Tara Springer

If you're dreaming about moving "back to the land" someday, or if you're already there and want to live more self-sufficiently (wherever you may be) you'll want a copy of the ninth edition of The Encyclopedia of Country Living...We think you're pretty swell, Carla. -- Organic Gardening

No library is complete without this one-of-a-kind encyclopedia. There isn't a more complete source of step-by-step information about food production, from the garden or barnyard, all the way to the kitchen table. Filled with hundreds of recipes , detailed instructions, and wisdom gleaned from a multitude of readers, The Encyclopedia of Country Living is so basic, thorough, and reliable it deserves a place in every country life collection. With a wealth of practical information, anecdotes, recipes, and personal advice, readers will quickly become devoted fans of growing and processing every kind of food! -- Midwest Book Review

Customer Reviews

This is a one-book country library.
Carla Emery was a national treasure and this book ensures her legacy. This is simply the most informative book ever written on country living, the next best thing to having a live-in grandmother who knows everything there is to getting homegrown food from dreams to dinner plates plus nearly anything else you need to know. Begun as a 12-page table of contents for a recipe book in 1969, the present ninth edition has 858 pages of far more than recipes. Veggies, vines, trees, grains, poultry, goats, cows, bees, rabbits, sheep, pigs. Planning, nurturing, harvesting, preserving, preparing. Flipping pages at random finds starting transplants, breads leavened with eggs and beating, speeding up tomato sauce-making, harvesting herbs, making cider, managing an existing stand of trees, root cellar storage, soap making, brooding chicks, secrets to safe cattle handling, cultured buttermilk, cooking on a wood stove, jams and jellies, making a wool quilt. I use my "Carla book" constantly. If your budget or bookshelf has room for only one book, this is the book to buy. Yes, even before you buy mine.

A Dissenting Opinion
This book appears to have a devoted following so I'm sure I'll arouse some ill will with this, but here goes.

There are several things potential readers need to know about this book. The first is that, as the other reviewers suggest, the author comes across as very friendly and sincere. Another is that it has been around in some form or another for a long time, long before many "hobby farm"-type books were available, and for that reason has many devoted fans, at least some of whom appear to be unaware of more modern reference books that have superceded this one in many respects. The next is that if you have a lot of free time, and you like nine hundred page books whose author is in no rush to get to any of its thousands of points, you'll love it.

The most important, though, is that if you would like the best, easiest to understand advice available on raising sheep, keeping chickens, growing a garden, and all the other fun but challenging aspects of hobby farming, you will be far better served by other books out there. I have a hobby farm on seven acres with fruit trees, vegetable garden, livestock, etc., and own many of the hobby farm books available. We have had the opportunity to consult them as we have learned from direct experience, and have found that there is a wide variety in usefulness.

While The Encyclopedia of Country Living contains good advice, this book has features that I believe the average modern, would-be hobby farmers will be put off by. One is its overwhelming, unnecessary, and frustrating length. It wouldn't be so bad if each paragraph was a sparkling, concise gem of practical wisdom, i.e, if it really were written like an actual encyclopedia, but core information is often clouded with anecdotes, nostalgia, sermonizing, etc. If you are the kind of person who likes reading books about country life, but who doesn't actually live in the country and doesn't plan to, this may be something you enjoy, but it made this book difficult to use for me.

Moreover, the author regularly feels obliged to list the many and disparate views on a particular topic held by her friends, or by people who have written her letters over the years. A number of these printed comments are either pointless or really daft, and are liable to confuse more than enlighten the would-be hobby farmer, especially since the author often does not make clear which ideas have most merit, scientifically or from her own personal experience.

I believe the average person who plans on "country living" or hobby farming will find other books far more useful. The updated and revised "Backyard Livestock", by Steven Thomas, is absolutely brilliant for beginning hobby farmers serious about keeping animals for food, eggs, milk, etc. It is concise while still telling you everything you need to know. For those wishing more detailed information on livestock, the various Storey's guides to raising farm animals are also excellent. If you are interested in fruit or berry cultivation, you will find the Stella Otto books far more valuable than this one. For vegetable gardening, "The Vegetable Gardener's Bible" by Edward C. Smith is the best. I could go on, but my personal experience is this: if you would like to hobby farm, be successful at it, and have fun doing it, you'll need the best information you can get. For most of us, this means a few A-list, reliable, practical, concise, understandable reference books. Despite its length and sometimes charming autobiographical features, there's no reason why you should buy "The Encyclopedia of Country Living" when so many other books on country living now are superior to it.

The most complete and thorough book ever!
When I purchased an 8-acre ranch in 1985 I had a six-month old baby one on the way and had never been off of concrete in my life. Now I had 8-acres, goats, chickens, rabbits, ducks, geese, pigs, 60 fruit and nut trees and an acre garden. I had no clue how or what to do! I learned everything from reading that book. How to harvest, can and cook up your garden & orchard harvest, feed and butcher animals, all kinds of doctoring for kids and animals, crafts, and even how to cut hair. That book is so dog-eared with tape from all of my years of use. I owe my sanity to that book. It has every scenario imaginable. I recommend it to anyone living in the country or on a farm or thinking of it. What I learned from Carla Emery's book will stay with me forever! The knowledge is priceless.