Book Review: The Self-Sufficiency Handbook
Okay, so it’s finally come down to this for you: You’re tired of the rat race; you’re tired of the pile of bills; you’re tired of the consumption mentality. You want off the corporate wheel, so to speak; you want to live more simply, get back to basics, sustain yourself and your family and tell the gas companies, the electric companies, and the oil companies to go hang! The question is: How? What does it take, and how do you do it?
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Enter Alan & Gill Bridgewater’s new book The Self-Sufficiency Handbook. This new book by Skyhorse Publishing, will provide you a good overview of what is involved in transforming your current life style into one that blends your needs (career, time, money, etc.) and your desire to live a more healthy and sustainable life style.
Now, it’s probably just as important to know what this book is not as what it is. It is not just a book about “greener living” — though it is that. It is also not a “how to book” — though it is that. And, it is not a “gardening book” — thought it is that too.
This is a book that attempts to deal with the practical questions people and even governments are now asking about, as Alan puts it in the introduction: “How do we go off-grid? How can we heat our homes without gas and oil? How can we grow food without using chemicals? How can we maximize our recycling?” In that sense, what Alan & Gill are really doing is exploring the different paths an individual, and therefore society itself, might take on the road to pollution free sustainability. They explore options for the suburban home owner, the rural home owner, and the renaissance folks who want to return to the living style and standards of a hundred years ago.
I found it very interesting that in the the gardening section there’s no mention of draft animals. In fact, Alan & Gill are pretty plain that they not only prefer a tractor, but an old tractor. “The cheapest and most efficient solution for most small set-ups is to get a 1950s-type tractor. These tractors are winners on many counts — they were built to last a lifetime, there are lots of them around…” Strange advice to buy an oil leaky, gas guzzling old tractor rather than a good draft horse! The fact is, if you’re working enough land to need a full on “1950s-type” tractor rather than the walk-behind variety, you’ve got enough land to support a team. They’re much cheaper to operate, and more reliable than an old tractor. And, as folks found out after Hurricane Katrina, they can be mighty handy to have around:
Following Hurricane Katrina, with the phones and power out and the roads strewn with trees and abandoned cars and trucks, the Russels set to work cleaning up their farm with their horses. When they had finished, they helped a neighbor whose truck had gotten stuck.
“When it got dark, we went to bed tired — but a `good’ tired from working the horses,” Kenny Russell says.
—The Old Farmer’s Almanac 2007, p. 216.
But this is a minor quibble in an otherwise excellent and comprehensive overview of the possibilities for living partially or totally not only self-sufficiently, but perhaps with enough surplus to help your neighbor.
Reading through The Self-Sufficiency Handbook will give you the information you need to make a game plan for how you want to implement self-sufficiency. And based on that game plan, you’ll know what books you need to buy and classes you need to attend to expand your knowledge base. For many, many of the subjects covered in this little book are, in and of themselves, the subject of entire books, and people’s careers.
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