When Sue M, a fellow old German timber-frame homeowner, suggested I pick up a copy of The Backyard Homestead (available at Amazon.com and Amazon.de) (edited by Carleen Madigan and published by Storey Publishing, LLC), I quickly hopped on over to Amazon and placed my order. She was raving about how fantastic the book is, especially for those who don’t have acres and acres of land to turn into a farm. And although we have a decent amount of land here, we also could stand to use it a lot more efficiently! Because efficient use often becomes less work in the long run.

The book’s mission is to tell you how you can produce the following on just a quarter acre of land:

• 1,400 eggs
• 50 pounds of wheat
• 60 pounds of fruit
• 2,000 pounds of vegetables
• 280 pounds of pork
• 75 pounds of nuts

It may sound crazy, but with efficient use of your backyard, you can raise all this and more (provided you live in the right zone and have favorable weather conditions). Bees, meat rabbits, herbs and other products are not included on the list above but you’d also have sufficient space to include them. Suggestions are also given for a 1/10th of an acre farm which would include 6 chickens, 2 bee hives, meat rabbits, an herb and vegetable garden, and fruit trees.

Chapters include:

• The Home Vegetable Garden
• Backyard Fruits and Nuts
• Easy, Fragrant Herbs
• Home-Grown Grains
• Poultry for Eggs and Meat
• Meat and Dairy
• Food from the Wild

The fruit and vegetable gardening chapters are fairly thorough and covers most of the basic produce your family would consume. A few pages on luscious edible landscaping (p. 115-124) are also included for those who would like to consider planting their front yard with pretty yet edible plants which won’t make their yard look like a garden plot. Information about preserving and preparing various fruits and vegetables are also sprinkled within the pages.

The herb chapter includes a list of 32 essential herbs for culinary and medical uses as well as ways to dry and prepare herbs for teas, tinctures, vinegars, etc.

Grains are discussed over 40 pages and the primary focus is on wheat and corn. Harvesting and cooking grains, bread baking and beer and barley malt making are also covered.

Chickens get about 20 pages devoted to them, including simple plans for a chicken coop. You will also find a reference chart (p. 349-352) in the back which lists regulations for keeping chickens in most major U.S. cities. Turkeys, geese and ducks also have sections devoted to them which discuss breeds, special needs and culling techniques.

Goats, sheep and cows are considered for meat and milk productions. Goats get the primary focus, including goat milk recipes, because they are generally easier to raise and do not need nearly as much space as cattle. Pigs are also discussed for meat purposes and a few pages on sausages, packaging, processing and smoking meats are included. Diagrams of each animal are provided which show the cuts of the animals for butchering. Rabbits for meat and fur are discussed on 2 pages which barely even scratches the surface (look at Raising Rabbits to Survive! if you’re interested in this subject). Topics like making cheese, yogurt and butter are all discussed in this chapter as well.

Food from the wild is covered in about 15 pages and includes bees, foraging and making maple syrup. There’s only a very brief mention of collecting wild mushrooms in the chapter overview but no discussion about growing your own.

The book is a wealth of information and while it does cover a majority of subjects needed to become a self-sufficient homesteader, there are some topics which are just not covered deeply enough. I suspect that one of the goals of the book is to sell more Storey publications considering that there are MANY of them which cover every homesteading practice you can think of. Page 354 of The Backyard Homestead indicates that many of the sections are excerpts from other Storey titles which would explain why there is no author of this book; only an editor.

I will not overlook the fact that it is very hard to be an authority on everything in just one book. Especially a 368-page publication with large typesetting and lots of illustrations. If you ARE looking for the ultimate resource on homesteading, I recommend The Encyclopedia of Country Living (available at Amazon.com and Amazon.de) and/or The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It by John Seymour (available at Amazon.com and Amazon.de).  Both books provide a lot more information in just one volume and leave very few things to be further researched.

Overall, I think The Backyard Homestead (available at Amazon.com and Amazon.de) is a really great resource for those who want to get started with the ideas of homesteading but feel overwhelmed by all there is to know and read. Carleen Madigan really stresses the importance of not taking on a huge project at the beginning but first starting small with hopes of growing when you have a better understanding of how things work. Unfortunately, that is a problem that we frequently suffer from in this house because we always want to go the full mile, even when we barely have time for a 1/4 mile sprint. If you start too big, you will almost certainly fail and the bad taste left in your mouth could keep you from ever trying again.

I definitely recommend this book to any new homesteader and those who are dying to start providing a clean and healthy food source for their families in suburbia. It’s easy to read and understand; the illustrations, charts and diagrams are fantastic; and the book really promotes an enthusiastic excitement about homesteading.