One Acre and Security: How to Live Off the Earth Without Ruining It

Obviously this guy knows what he is talking about. The writing style is quite entertaining as well. I think this book is great motivation if someone is serious about moving to a more "self-sufficient" lifestyle. A lot of the technical aspects of the projects in here are left out. This is not a "how to" book but more of a planner. I would recommend this as a entertaining read as well as a good reference.

While this book has some outdated statistics and methods -- which the publisher freely admits in the intro (original was published in the 70's after all) -- it does still give you some good general information and a pretty good idea what life on the farm is going to be like. Even gives some tips on side-income (like raising worms under your rabbit hutches). However, the exploitative/utlitarian perspective from the 70's may offend some of today's modern homesteaders who are more concerned with eco-responsibility and full-cycle sustainability. Also, some of the methods advocated in this book are just the sort of methods that new homesteaders are trying to correct to improve their eco-footprints. If you're able to step back from the details and look at the rhythm of farm life he illustrates, the information he provides is still relevant today. I was somewhat disappointed that there was no mention of distilling your homemade wines into vinegars, or how to make mead (considering he spent oodles of time discussing the wonders of bees!). Very little was mentioned about preserving summer's bounty from your garden... although he did spend a great deal of time explaining everything you might ever want to know about herb gardens. Very little about trees and other fruits in here at all (except a smattering of wild berries). Not much info on "free-ranging" anything either... but then again, that concept wasn't really around when he wrote the book.

While this book was very thorough and had a lot of good info, there was a lot of emphasis on keeping animals for food or slaughter. This is fine for some folks, it just wasn't something that I was interested in. There was also mention of keeping rabbits and guinea pigs to sell to laboratories, which probably isn't something a lot of today's earth loving folk would be interested in. The book does have some good information about getting started gardening, as well as how to get started keeping a variety of animals along with bees, fish, frogs, and earthworms. All in all though, I think it is sort of more of a book to give you general ideas than anything else. If you wanted to really get into gardening or bee keeping, etc., I would opt to get a book specifically about such a topic. If you just want some ideas about what you might do and/or how to get started, then this book would be a good match for you.

Bradford Angier's One Acre & Security provides a classic on how to live in the country and off the land without ruining it.It first appeared in 1972 and was one of the forerunners of the back-to-earth movement: here it returns to offer new audiences discussions on organic gardening, how to build a house and keep animals, and how to live in the country.