Creating a Modern Homestead: Traditional Skills for Real, Everyday Life (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781493090495)

As our modern lives demand more and more from us, many people long for a slower pace of life. While picking up and moving to the country may not be an option for everyone, it is possible to embrace simple living and more traditional skills no matter where you live. Learn the lost art of from-scratch cooking, practice food security by keeping a deep pantry, find out how easy it is to raise backyard chickens, experience the joy of growing your own food (even in a small space), and preserve your own harvest through a variety of methods.

For the last ten years, Victoria Pruett of A Modern Homestead has guided her readers through the process of discovering that they truly can incorporate traditional skills into their everyday routines while they also juggle work, children, and social lives. Though the idea of including traditional skills may conjure images of spending eight hours a day in the kitchen, nothing could be further from the truth. Instead, Victoria teaches you how to deepen your skillset and understanding of self-reliance and how to easily fit simple living into your life in a way that works for you. Chapters cover:

• Cooking from scratch: 126 recipes for breads, main dishes, and desserts
• Building a robust food supply for your family
• Food preservation: water bath canning, pressure canning, freezing, dehydrating, and freeze-drying
• Best practices for backyard chickens
• Customizing your backyard garden--including traditional and Back to Eden methods--for your zone and growing season, companion planting, and natural pest control
• How to make sourdough work for you
• And more!