Reddit mentions: The best sustainable living books

Book list:

Nature and the Human Soul by Bill Plotkin. The author discusses this same theme of The Great Turning. Argues that people in modern western society are pathologically orientated towards adolescent things, and among our main problems is that few of us mature fully, and few of us can ever be considered elders who guide each other towards a wise way of life. He also argues that we historically have developed equally in both nature and culture, but modern people spend their lives solely in culture, and lack understanding of the natural world.

Future Primal by Louis Herman. The author lays out a big picture view of human history and how the solutions for the future we face can be found in the past among primitive cultures. He links his own personal struggles to the planetary struggles we face, and shows that it is true that the personal and planetary are linked.

The Ascent of Humanity by Charles Eisenstein. Lays out huamn history, and "how the illusion of a seperate self has led to our modern crisises".

Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein. Looks at how primitive economies differed from our own, and how we can come to a different understanding of economics and wealth in our own society.

The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible by Charles Eisenstein. Lays out a vision for what the world could be and how we could organize ourselves in a wiser way.

Limited Wants, Unlimited Means an analysis of the economics of hunter-gatherer societies by an actual Economist. Very in depth look at the different foundational beliefs and practices. This is the most scientific and in depth book I've ever come across on this subject.

Eaarth by Bill McKibben. Goes into great detail on the the stark reality of the effects that climate change have already had and will likely have over the next decades and century. Finsihes by making reccommendations for how to make a life on a rough new planet.

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. A look at the deep history of our species. This book presents an understanding about what humans are and where we've come from that I think is hard to get anywhere else, really great work.

Blessed Unrest by Paul Hawken. Very similar to the theme of my above post, the author explains how this new movement is much larger than you might think, and could soon become one of the largest cultural movements in all of human history.

Active Hope by Joanna Macy. On "how to deal with the mess we are in without going crazy".

Greening of the Self by Joanna Macy. An exploration into the idea that we are interdependent with the ecology around us.

Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawken and others. A look at how we can start a green industrial revolution.

The Green Collar Economy by Van Jones. Lays out the idea that one solution- work on constructing a sustainable infrastructure- can fix our two biggest problems: the ecological crisis, and the rampant poverty and inequality in our society.

Spiritual Ecology: the cry of the Earth by Thich Nhat Hanh, Joanna Macy, and others. Outlines a spiritual perspective of what is happening to the world, and how we can remedy it, rooted in Buddhist thought.

Changes in the Land by William Cronon. A look at how the ecology of New England has been altered since Europeans first set foot there.

A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold. This is one of the classics of nature writing by a great naturalist. I include it here because I think it fits, and shows how much of this in not new thinking. Leopold talks about his experiences in nature and from living off the land, and lays out his own 'land ethic' for how best to coexist in nature.

The Evolving Self: a psychology for the third millennium by Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi. Explains the authors view of psychology and how to find meaning in the modern world. Talks about playing an active role in the evolutionary processes of life, and linking that up with your own personal evolution.

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimerer. Brings together scientific understanding, indigenous wisdom, and respect for nature and for plants, in a very poetic book.

The Future of Life by E. O. Wilson. Wilson is one of the greatest biologists of our time, and gave us many of the foundational concepts that we use today, such as popularizing the idea of "biodiversity" and the desire to preserve it. Here he talks about the future of life and the challenges we face in preserving the Earths biodiversity.

Half Earth by E.O. Wilson. Here Wilson lays out his strategy for saving the biodiversity of the Earth and preserving it through the hard times it will face in the future, by devoting fully half of the surface of the Earth to wildlife habitats. This book just came out so you might not be able to order a copy yet.

If you know of any other books or media in this sort of genre feel free to post it.

The ability to build my own hive was a big draw for me as well. I've seen photos of hives made from old plastic drums. I have no idea how successful they are, but if they worked well it seems like it would be very affordable. My first question/concern is how well they overwinter. My guess is that wood is a better insulator than plastic. Dunno for sure...

Ensuring straight comb is the primary concern when starting a top bar hive from scratch. In Les Crowder's book, he talks about checking them every couple of days to make sure they are off to a proper start. With an observation window, I was able to check them often without disturbing them.

When starting a package in a new hive, it's also a good idea to feed them. Since I did not have any honey known to be treatment-free, I fed them a 1:1 sugar/water syrup. Once they had capped honey, I removed the sugar syrup. This was 18 days after installation.

I used a false back until the middle of June. I used Phil Chandler's hive plans, and Phil calls it a follower board. I'm not entirely sure what the best practice is with follower boards. I think the main idea is that a smaller space is easier for them to keep warm in early spring. Phil's plans call for an entrance in the middle of the hive, and I believe he uses two follower boards to start the hive with a smaller space in the middle. Christy Hemenway's book has great illustrations of how to manage a top bar hive with a middle entrance and two follower boards. I borrowed the entrance design from Les Crowder (A horizontal slit on one end), and only used one follower board.

Most beekeepers don't harvest any honey the first year, because you need to leave them enough to survive the winter. My colony seems to be doing really well, though, so harvesting some may be a possibility.

I would just use knotty pine (cheapest). I sealed it with raw linseed oil. If you buy the plans it calls for a stupid thickness you would have to special order (7/8" thick) for a lot of the boards because of the 'weight' of a fully loaded hive, but 1/8" of thickness doesnt really make any significant difference and you'll have a much easier time finding 1" nominal thickness (3/4" actual thickness) boards rather than 1 1/8" thickness.

At a minimum you need:

• chop/miter saw (you can get a hand powered one but that wouldn't be fun)
  
• table saw
  
• band saw (not required but it would make the top bars WAY easier to make, I used a table saw for this)
  
• drill
  
• impact driver (it makes it easier to drive fasteners in)
  
• pocket screw jig
  
• drill press
  
• Finish nailing gun would help a lot
  
• The plans call for the use of biscuit dowels to join the hive body panels but that's pretty advanced wood working and a lot of finesse work with either purchasing the biscuit dowels or making them yourself and it adds the need of a router to the mix. So, I just drilled angled holes and used screws or pocket screws/jig
  
• other misc. tools like measuring tapes, pencils, etc.
  
  ​
  
  The hardest part was making the top bars (cutting, drilling, etc.) and getting them straight and not warped. They are really expensive from backyardhive.com compared to the time and material required to do it yourself but, it's moderately advanced work getting that right or at least knowing how to fib things to make it work like I did.
  
  ​
  
  Like I said before, if I were to make them again, I would use 2" nominal thickness boards for the hive body because it would reduce some of the difficulty of making the top bars work because of the ridge that you make to rest the bars on makes the following board pretty difficult to fabricate if your cuts aren't 'just so'. This would also help with insulation (both in hot and cold climates). I would also not mess with an end entrance/landing board that are in the plans. It adds unnecessary complexity to the project. I would rather do a combined approach from the cathedral hive and what you will find in Les Crowder's book: Top-Bar Beekeeping: Organic Practices for Honeybee Health. He has found that the bees prefer and entrance on the side of the top bar hive, towards the bottom board, about half a foot back from the front of the hive that is about 3/8" tall by 6" long (these numbers are from memory so they could be inaccurate).

I didn't read it as you condescending. Sorry about your loss. We have a similar setup and I hope to leave it to one of my kids too. I look forward to the long version of your story. You may not have had an easy childhood, but you learned at a young age to work hard and you got a lot more character from that farm than you ever would have going to church.

I have a few things I want to share with you since I was raised on a farm too, but have recently learned of better ways to do things. Watch Back to Eden for a different way to garden and orchard. We're doing it and it works great. Gaia's Garden is a great book about companion planting, particularly in orchards. Sorry it's a book that you would have to order, but it's worth the read. It's not your guys fault you lost your trees, but with these techniques they might have survived. The American Corporate Aggriculture Monoculture is about the most unhealthy and unatural way to farm. Polycultures promotes healthy organisms; both vegitative and animal. While many people like Joel Salatin's Polyface Farms, I enjoyed implementing the animal polyculture I learned reading Harvey Ussery's The Small Scale Poultry Flock. Anyway, I really enjoyed learning about all this stuff and if you have the time to look into these references I'm sure you will too.

Glad you had a good hunt - the damned things are all over where I live. I compete with wolves, bears, and big cats, though, so maybe next year's numbers will be lower.

You can totally do ethical chicken/poultry if you have at least a half acre of land (house included). It might be a stretch to get a meat poultry operation going, but you can definitely end up drowning in eggs with six or ten birds - remember that each lays an egg a day. If you're interested in a healthy, ethical source of protein, you'd be very hard pressed to do better than home-raised eggs.

There are some great books about this that can help:

The Backyard Homestead

The Backyard Homestead Guide to Raising Farm Animals

Back to Basics

The first book is kind of "general backyard gardens and farms", the second one focuses on animals in particular, and the third is an older book that has information about gardens and livestock, but also loads of cool information on how to preserve foods, build traditional crafts/furniture/construction, etc. - way broader scope than the first two. I definitely recommend all three, though.

You're welcome. It seemed that my own choices/experience lined up with the kind of place you were already picturing.

There is other stuff too -- but most of that is more in the form of "generic" home buying advice (i.e. make certain you get a REALLY GOOD home inspection done before signing, ideally you should be there WITH the guy as he inspects the place).

And in addition to the basics of "inspection" {blatant of big existing problems} you also want to checking for {and at least know about} things like what construction/material choices went into the place {watch out for particle board [bad] or OSB/chipboard [not so great] or plywood [better] or actual boards [best]; and look for PVC/CPVC [acceptable] or copper [best] supply line plumbing rather than Galvanized [bad] or blue Polybutylene [BAD] or even PEX [trendy/debtable], etc -- Cf http://plumbing.about.com/od/basics/tp/Types-Of-Pipe.htm -- Oh and note that copper has other advantages {antimicrobial, etc} that often aren't talked about, and that the other types of pipe lack; plus while PEX is "fast" and cheap to install, it's durability over decades is questionable {tends to get brittle is exposed to UV -- and not all vendors properly store their PEX out of sunlight -- tubing installed might work fine for 10 years, then become brittle and something triggers a break and suddenly start flooding the walls, and unlike copper, "patching" a section of pipe isn't really possible}).

Or other things like making certain the house ISN'T in some recently land-filled or the low-lying area (not just some "flood plain", but you want to avoid too much settling or shifting, not to mention seasonal "muck") -- ideally you should rather want the house itself to be located up a bit higher than much of the surrounding land, enough so that natural drainage will prevent "wet/damp basement" problems, and so on.

Also... especially if you're looking for exurban/rural "country" home & land... make certain you learn a bit about private wells, and private septic systems. Both so that you know what "inspections" should be done, as well as how to "live with" a small residential septic system -- people moving out from cities where they are used to city water/sewer, tend to NOT understand that a private well and private septic are DIFFERENT critters; for example, you don't use the toilet as a "garbage disposal" the way many city folk use their sewer system (at least not unless you want to have to rip out and replace your entire septic leech bed). Think about picking up one of the following (or similar):

• http://www.amazon.com/Septic-System-Owners-Manual/dp/0936070404/
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Country-Plumbing-Living-Septic-System/dp/0911469346/
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Septic-Systems-Slickers-Nancy-Martin/dp/0992367700/
  
  I'd do some additional reading (books or online) about building -- even if you're planning on buying something already existing rather than building your own place -- but keep in mind that a LOT of crap is focused on what is "trendy" and aesthetically appealing (i.e. resale "value" and/or spec home crap designed to get WOMEN to "fall in love" with "dream homes" and etc) rather than solid advice on livability/durability. Plus of course, most everything in the industry is aimed at "families" rather than single people (especially single MEN).. who are considered an unimportant/irrelevant and trivial market niche.

Time out; Why are you so angry in each of your replies? There's zero reason to put the burden of proof on me, here. And you're not denying that disastrous climate change is happening, but you're clearly not on board with changing our habits to help mitigate the damage. You either have your head in the sand or you're selfishly too invested in your current, wasteful lifestyle and don't have loved ones or children you care about that this is even an issue to you.

> Reduce your standard of living to third world poverty levels and then I'll believe you.

This is 100% not necessary. I encourage you to read Bill McKibben's Eaarth where he describes societies today using sustainable practices to have fresh food, waste disposal, electricity, fresh water, transit, and more. Solar, wind, hydro and geothermal energy are a lot more powerful than people give credit for, and with advances like concentrated solar globes (they also come in mini-form for powering smaller things like smart phones), we can learn to harvest as much as we need and more, just like we continued to refine the internal combustion engine and car/factory/appliance designs over the years to be more efficient.

We put a gawd damned human being on the Moon, for fuck's sake. I refuse to accept that humanity is incapable of discovering how to harness the free energy of the sun (or water, or algae, or anything else) to do damned near anything. As always, monied interests are the primary thing holding us back.

> You want environmental regulations that will reduce economic growth and therefore keep people in poverty who would have otherwise been able to work themselves out of poverty.

I'd put the burden of proof on you for this one. To throw our hands up and just give up on trying to wean ourselves off oil doesn't solve this issue, either. Long-term, when enough drinking water has been contaminated and land has been torn up to frack or harvest tar sands from whatever economic growth occurred won't mean shit for whomever's left. But if that's too extreme a scenario for you, consider the fact that employment in the solar sector in the US, not just in Europe and elsewhere, is on the rise all over the country, and projects like coastal wind turbines would also generate jobs and provide other benefits to costal communities like lowering energy prices.

No one is saying it's easy or an overnight change, but it's beyond time to invest in clean energy and the technology behind it.

That's our goal, too. We have offered grass hay, but they've never been too interested in it. Their favorite forage (in the summer) were areas of clover, but they really loved pasture grasses.

In the winter, we've been giving them all of our windfall fruit, squashes, root crops as they become less optimal, etc. But, they still love the grasses, too, and have rooted it all up. Which is a big bonus for us! See book Plowing with Pigs

If you just use The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding as a reference, it is good. I also liked What to Expect. I kinda split the difference between crunchy SAHM and epidural-loving working mom, though.

My husband LOVED the daddy book I got him called Be Prepared. He ended up bringing it to the hospital with him, and eventually even I read the whole thing.

My friend who is really into nutrition of her babies just recommended Super Baby Food to me, but I can't vouch for it. Also seems to have mixed reviews on Amazon. I was given a book called The Best Homemade Baby Food on the Planet that I haven't really looked at yet, but might now that we're starting solids.

The only cloth diapering book I read was Changing Diapers by Kelly Wels. It was okay, but I did better just by internetting.

And if you're a frugal momma, pick up the most recent edition of Baby Bargains. I've only heard good things.

Honestly? Get ready for a lot of work and a lot of heartbreak.

Beekeeping ain't what it used to be, and is fraught with things that can go wrong / need active and regular management (especially Varroa mites).

You'll get stung, you'll be frustrated, there's a laundry list of things to check and things that can go wrong, the bees often don't give a single shit about your plans, you'll lose hives, but at the end of the day they're fascinating creatures, it's rewarding / interesting, and honestly they're p cute.

If that doesn't discourage you, pick up The Backyard Beekeeper and read it cover-to-cover - will help you understand what goes into beekeeping and is very approachable.

I personally like Barred Rocks better than any other heritage layer, but I wouldn't say they're exactly flashy. Really, to me, hens aren't that flashy in general. Flash is the rooster's realm of expertise. Might try grabbing a Silkie or a Polish if you want something more exotic, but they aren't the greatest layers in the world. If you're doing an urban flock and you want something docile that lays well, get a production breed (don't know any off the top of my head; anyone want to chime in on good production breeds?). I free range, so I like heritage breeds which are better at fending for themselves and running from predators.

To me, THE definitive resource to look at is The Small Scale Poultry Flock by Harvey Ussery.

Great post. I don't have the answers but I struggle with the same questions. Here are some books and links I've found to be helpful:

Buycott app - vote with your wallet and stop giving your money to TPTB

Radical Homemaker - " empowerment, transformation, happiness, and casting aside the pressures of a consumer culture to live in a world where money loses its power to relationships, independent thought, and creativity"

Mr Money Mustache - terrific blog written by a man who retired at 30, teaches others how to earn, save, and live with true freedom

The key is SELF-SUFFICIENCY. Understand that, the system is the way it is today because people have become dependent on food, dependent on materials, dependent on consumption, and dependent on jobs. The only way to free yourself is to drop the dependency and learn self-reliance in all areas of life.

I'd say that I occasionally got paranoid about leaving my van for extended periods of time. I got used to it, though.
I totally suggest taking an extended trip living in a car. It's an awesome experience.

If you're up to it, here's a list of books that you might find useful on the subject. :)

How to Live in a Car, Van or RV

The VanDweller's Guide

Van Living: The Freedom of the Road

The Tiniest Mansion

Live In a Van, Truck, Trailer, or Motorhome

Living in a Van Down By The River

My House Has Wheels

The Simple RV Life

So, You Want to Be an RVer?

Retire To an RV


Here's one just for fun, though you may glean something from it.
Walden On Wheels

I also suggest /r/gorving and /r/vagabond.

I would strongly recommend you pick up a copy of Insulate and Weatherize by Bruce Harley. I got a copy from my local library.

I just finished reading through it, and even though I probably need to read it twice more, it's a great introduction to how insulation works and an awesome whole-house how-to guide on insulating and sealing.

Like other said, seal the attic before you insulate! Stopping airflow is more important than insulating, and insulation does not stop airflow.

If you have the time, Robert Gorden's book, "The Rise and Fall of American Growth" is pretty eye-opening. [1] He also talks about inequality as a major headwind to growth, and makes a compelling argument that the data show that biggest transformation – unmatched even by the personal computer and IT revolution – was bringing electricity and plumbing into the home.

Then there's the Princeton study that shows money can make people happier, but that the effect levels off at around $75k a year.

I think it was while reading Bill McKibben's book "Eaarth" [3] that I was surprised to discover that back in the 1970s, polling showed that Americans were actually pretty open to a different economic model – one more about sustainability and well-being than growth.

​

1: https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-American-Growth-Princeton/dp/153661825X

2: https://www.princeton.edu/~deaton/downloads/deaton_kahneman_high_income_improves_evaluation_August2010.pdf

3: https://www.amazon.com/Eaarth-Making-Life-Tough-Planet/dp/0312541198

Well, the people I know aren't cashing in on public aid. But if you need health care, I think taking advantage of health care subsidies is probably just fine considering the overall state of health care in this country. And, frankly, health care is one of the major issues that keeps people from voluntarily living a more modest lifestyle.

If you want to learn more, this book lays it all out. It's really simple. Trade work for food, trade work for a place to live. You can do just one, by (for example) trading work for a plus-sized meat/milk/veggie CSA share with a local farm.

I know someone who is setting up a multi-year part time labor trade for a plot of property to build a house. He doesn't have any money, but wants to own land and knows a couple of people who are willing to help him build a small house. So you can do it even if land ownership is your eventual goal.

The mechanics of it is quite simple, but there are a few seemingly minor steps that you need to take in order to avoid problems long-term. In the end, I bought this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Greywater-Green-Landscape-Water-Saving-Irrigation/dp/1612128394

And followed its step-by-step instructions for a laundry-to-landscape (L2L) system.

I did the installation myself, and I think anyone who can dig a trench and deal with roots along the way can assemble it. It's basically a plastic hose in the ground with 5-7 smaller hoses that branch off to irrigation boxes. Each of those boxes is in a ~10 foot trench I filled with mulch to provide more disbursement of the water. You could have the line outfall into the trench on the surface but 1) that doesn't look as cool and 2) for some reason that's illegal in my state.

I had the advantage of having my washing machine hookups on an exterior wall, and having the area I want to landscape slightly downhill from my washing machine. So this meant that I could rely on the pump in the washing machine to push the greywater through the system.

I set aside two weekends to do the job, but my mulch delivery had to be scheduled later, so it ended up heading into a third weekend. In retrospect, that was a gift. Trenching was the most effort and took the most time, but I did it by hand. I was trying to minimize distance and turns, so I ended up encountering quite a few roots that I needed to cut out or feed the line under. It's not a big deal but it's tiring and time consuming. I gave myself a day to do the indoor plumbing just in case I encountered problems, but it went rather smoothly.

One lesson learned is that you might be better off just buying the amount of coarse mulch that you need for your trenches. My local government offers free mulch delivery, so I ordered "half a truck" which was the smallest option. But "truck" means dump truck, so I ended up with a massive pile of mulch on my driveway. I filled my trenches, remulched every inch that wasn't lawn, and offered free mulch delivery to my neighbors just to get my driveway clean. A 30-minute job ended up taking all day. My kids did enjoy climbing mulch mountain and "helping" fill the wheelbarrow. But in retrospect, I could have just spent $100 on coarse mulch bags and been done in an hour.

You shouldn't be surprised to discover that you aren't the first to think of this. It also shouldn't surprise you to discover that not everyone likes this idea.

The fundamental problem you will face is that the credo of the United States, of Japan, of China, of Korea, and of many other economies is "work hard, get ahead." Whenever you see the word "individualism" substitute the phrase "me against the world." In a "me against the world" society, creating an infrastructure in which "work hard, get ahead" is actively thwarted is fundamentally impossible. Nick Reding argues compellingly in Methland that speed is the most uniquely American drug because only amphetamines actually make you work harder rather than chilling out and enjoying the high. He further argues that the rise of methamphetamine and consolidation of the drug market parallels the rise of agribusiness and consolidation of food production - in both cases, wealth is concentrated at the top.

Robert Reich lists several studies in Aftershock that demonstrate that taxing production and taxing the rich buoys the economy exactly as you suggest. He also points out that taxing the upper brackets is always met with fierce resistance, and with wealth concentrated at the top in ways unseen since the Gilded Age, reversing trends at this point is going to take some doing.

But, fundamentally, you're talking about lowering productivity. "Productivity" is the one metric that has gone up through the recession, through 911, through pretty much every economic hiccup since the invention of automation. Voluntarily choosing lower productivity would represent a fundamental shift in society and unfortunately, society seldom does such things smoothly and without protest. This transitional period, its impetus, and possible outcomes are well-explored in Bill McKibben's book Eaarth which, based on your questions and hypotheses, is likely to be something you'd enjoy reading. I only caution you to slug it out through the first half; for some reason, Mr. McKibben felt the need to establish the case for anthropocentric global warming beyond a reasonable doubt, despite the fact that 99.9% of his audience is likely to take anthropocentric global warming as a given.

I read Backyard Beekeeper and thought it was a very helpful and informative book. I also recommend The Bush Bee Man on YouTube. Good balance of humorous and educational.

I found this cool book on amazon, restore. recycle. repurpose. : create a beautiful home.

hope your home reno goes smoothly!

If you have decided this is a real chance of this happening, there are apparently good books on training oxen.

I rarely buy into end of the world ideas, but I have long considered collecting books on subjects I would want to know if civilization collapsed and I somehow survived. That would be a good one to add to have as a subsistence farmer.

These aren't under $5, but definitely worth getting and HAVING. I've been increasingly interested in surivalism (as a result of hanging out with my paranoid dad), so definitely get these books:

• Basic survival..........
  
  
  http://www.amazon.com/SAS-Survival-Handbook-Revised-Situation/dp/0061733199/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363171748&sr=1-1&keywords=wilderness+survival
  
  http://www.amazon.com/98-6-Degrees-Keeping-Your-Alive/dp/1586852345/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363172088&sr=1-1&keywords=98.6+degrees+the+art+of+keeping+your+as+-+cody+lundin
  
  
  http://www.amazon.com/Stay-Alive-John-D-McCann/dp/1440218307/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363172163&sr=1-1-spell&keywords=stayalive
  
  
• Bug out bag.....
  
  http://www.amazon.com/Build-Perfect-Bug-Out-Bag/dp/1440318743/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363172312&sr=1-1&keywords=bug+out+bag
  
  
• Prepping.....
  
  http://www.amazon.com/Preppers-Instruction-Manual-Disaster-ebook/dp/B008OXF0BY/ref=dp_kinw_strp_1
  http://www.amazon.com/31-Days-Survival-Emergency-Preparedness/dp/161004648X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363172535&sr=1-1&keywords=31+days+to+survival
  
  
• Urban.....
  
  http://www.amazon.com/Surviving-Doomsday-Guide-Disaster-ebook/dp/B00B020FKC/ref=dp_kinw_strp_1
  
  
• Novel......
  
  http://www.amazon.com/One-Second-After-William-Forstchen/dp/0765356864/ref=la_B000APZ9N8_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363173072&sr=1-1

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

amazon.in

amazon.com.mx

amazon.de

amazon.it

amazon.es

amazon.com.br

amazon.nl

Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.

Here is a book that I really need/want.

What makes me happy? spending time with friends and family, my FurBabies, and being able to stay home instead of the hospital.

There are roughly two ways to go.

1. Large scale industrial farming. I don't know much about this. Get a degree in agriculture and work your way up.
   
2. Small scale organic farming. For this, start out small and plan to not be profitable for a while. Then when you grow your operation plan to be marginally profitable for a while. That's likely where you'll top out. Consider getting a small flock of pet chickens first then get a larger flock, expand into ducks or goats or pigs, etc. If and when you're ready to sell your farm goods sell local at a farmers market or to local restaurants or a local co-op and charge extra because you're humanly raising the animals.
   
   This book helped a lot.
   
   
   tl;dr Remember, software is one of the more profitable fields so be prepared to lose money or, at the very least, make way less.

I admittedly haven't followed their progress, but have a look at the concept of the Global Village Construction Set. The idea was "open [source] blueprints for the building blocks of civilization."

The Transition Handbook is also an excellent read with lots of concrete information and instructions on just the sorts of things you're looking for.

edit: I accidentally confused The Transition Handbook with the Toolbox for Sustainable City Living. Both are good, but the latter is definitely the hands-on, nitty-gritty book I was thinking of!

I enjoyed this guy who does top bar beekeeping

Video
and book.

Get this book, Insulate and Weatherize (my library has a copy, check if yours does too if you don't want to buy it) and read about air-sealing. It is a good book for beginners and gives tips on where to focus your efforts.

I am in the process of air-sealing leaks in the basement (closed-cell spray foam) and ductwork (with duct mastic) based on what I learned from the book and instructional videos on Youtube and it is making a huge difference. In the spring I will focus on the attic.

You'll love it! I actually need to get the companion book, Guide to Raising Farm Animals. I think it goes more in depth into butchering, processing, but I'm not sure.

Which is why you should start to prepare for climate change.

Read "Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet" by Bill McKibben.

He's an actual climate scientist, environmentalist, protester and activist.

I know you're joking but Bill McKibben, a fellow Vermonter, is leading the charge against climate change with 350.org, the biggest such activist group on the planet.

And in his recent book, Eaarth, recommended by /u/Unidan, he describes how Vermont is gonna get even worse torrential downpours.