The Backyard Homestead

Pinch your pennies with The Backyard Homestead, Carleen Madigan's all-purpose guide to living simply and efficiently during any pesky recession.

In an economy such as this, many of us are on the lookout for creative ways to cut back on costs. So how about eighty-sixing the grocery store? Learn the skills The Backyard Homestead has to offer and those fluorescent, overcrowded, overpriced aisles might become a thing of the past. Editor Carleen Madigan combed through more than 25 years of Storey Publishing’s food and farm-based output to put together a sort of best-of compilation for the modern homemaker. The tone is sweet and accessible, and the well-organized chapters cover all the bases, from starting a vegetable garden to raising steer. If you have some land at your disposal, you’ll find a zillion cool ways to turn it into food. With the help of the book’s clear and cute graphs and illustrations, you can build your own chicken coop or learn to plant and harvest grapes to make your own wine (yes, recipes included). But hey, city folk, if all you’ve got is a fire escape and a farmer’s market to work with, don’t despair. As long as you have sun, you can plant tomatoes directly into a sliced-open bag of compost, or you can pot herbs that you can later cook with or turn into delicious tea; if you have access to local milk, you can make homespun mozzarella or yogurt no matter how small that galley kitchen. And heck, if you live in a cardboard box, don’t feel left out either—the last chapter offers helpful hints on foraging the fruits and nuts already growing freely in your neighborhood