I am working on a fantabulous collection of back to the land, homesteading and natural living skills books. SO far I have a nice starter assortment. I am really working on getting more.

What is nice is that old books - from early last century - contain GREAT information. In fact, they often have info that you can't get in the new books, from skills that are dying out. So i can often find these old books cheaply at thrift stores and on Amazon.

I have books on livestock, organic gardening, heirloom seed storing, drying foods, root cellars, energy efficient houses, passive solar energy, the FoxFire books, house fixing, composting and mulching, self sufficiency and urban homesteading.

What books do you recommend? What books do you want?

I've just begun to accumulate a few myself. I've been visiting archive.org for many of the really old ones.

oooh - archive.org - what is that?

Public domain books. I have found a treasure trove of information that makes my mouth water. I even found a picture of my grandfather on there. You can find almost anything with new things added all the time from other organizations that want to preserve these books.

Also, not just books. There is other media, too.

are these books online, or are they to buy in printed format?

They are online for you to download. They are scanned copies of the actual books. There is no charge for them at all.

Really? How incredible is that? I can put them on my iphone and also print out the best ones. Any to recommend for me?

I've found various old cookbooks and books on herbs. There are so many. All you have to do is type in the subject that you are looking for. Putting in homesteading will not give you much and the results you get will not be what you are looking for. Type in vegetable garden and you will get material from the 1800's. I've found some that focus on garden insects, old English gardens, and how to grow vegetables. Worm farming only brings up videos and no books. You really have to play around with your words to get exactly what someone a hundred years ago or more would have used. You can find recipes from the 1700's.

That is really good advice. I am reading a book i found there about composting. I think i will look for something about food preservation next. That is likely a better search phrase.

Thank you for introducing me to the site!

Most welcome. I love it and there are new ones added regularly.

Old copies of Mother Earth News are good. I think the newer ones don't have as much useful info for living out in the middle of nowhere, trying to go off grid, or being frugal.
Books on alternative home construction are cool - I haven't tried any of them. Rob Roy's ideas for cordwood houses really appeals to me. The University here had him come up and do some workshops this last summer, so I must not be alone.

You can get a lot of back issues of Mother Earth news by ordering their DVD. I have actually put that on my Christmas and Yule gift wish list this year since I bought a very useful copy of the magazine in Orlando back in 2008

Cool! I didn't know they put out a DVD! I know what I am askin' Santa for!

I've ordered a few cheap ebooks on preserving foods/using wild foods from my Kindle app on my iphone. I am going to see if i can print some of those out. There's some good stuff in there. One book all about cooking with dandelions for example. Cool.

That's sounds interesting. Yes, let us know how they are.