Those of us wanting to practice self-sufficiency, to grow our own food, and generally live a low-tech lifestyle, will find Practical Projects for Self-Sufficiency a good guidebook. This is a book that’s not only chock full of ideas for living a low-tech self-sufficient lifestyle, growing your own food and all the rest, but it shows you how to build tools for that lifestyle.
The book has 25 chapters, each showing you how to make one object meant to help you live more self-sufficiently. Some projects are chicken coop construction, herb drying trays, composting bins, potato growing bins, solar ovens, and bee hives.
Each project has well written text, and abundant clear pictures, guiding you through the construction. Along the way you learn woodworking techniques, as each project is built from scratch out of sturdily thick wood.
Most of the projects are practical and well thought out, while a couple are done differently than what we have in our household. An example is the project to build a “manual clotheswasher”. The idea is instead of a washing machine, you would put clothes, soap and water into a bucket, and pump the clothes by hand. In our household we have a simple bucket, and a plunger to pump the clothes. The project in the book is more elaborate, with a long lever presumably so your arm doesn’t get tired pumping the clothes.
In other words, while we disagree with some of the solutions in the book, each of the projects does solve the problem being presented. Each project has the seed of a great solution, and you learn exactly how to construct the solution. Learning the woodworking techniques shown here will be very valuable down the road, as you try to build other projects.
- Amazon investing in Rivian, GM possibly to follow - February 15, 2019
- Pres. Trump selling Paradise to coal baron who donated money to his campaign - February 13, 2019
- GM, Amazon, looking to invest in Rivian, no sign of GM/Tesla EV truck joint venture - February 12, 2019
- Tesla’s goals may require rumored joint venture with GM on electric pickup truck - February 12, 2019
- Green New Deal outline proposed in US Congress - February 7, 2019
- Nissan delays 60 kiloWatt-hour Leaf, but moves forward with EV energy ecosystem plans - November 28, 2018
- Rivian unveils an all-electric pickup truck for the “adventure vehicle” market - November 27, 2018
- GM cancels Chevy Volt production while Tesla Model 3 sales go through the roof - November 26, 2018
- American climate refugees living in tents and cars after Paradise destroyed by fire - November 21, 2018
- Ghosn to be kicked out of Nissan, arrested for securities/compensation fraud - November 19, 2018
