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You don't need to live in the country or own a large farm in order to be self-sufficient. You can practice many basic country skills in a small town, the suburbs and even in the city! The Mother Earth News Guide to Country Skills has the information you need to be more self-reliant, from ideas to implement in your home, to stories from those who have made a successful homestead for themselves.

Read about a woman who lives on a "renter's homestead" where she cans, gardens and keeps livestock. There is also the story of a couple who moved to the country, started a market garden and built their home by hand.

This Guide includes instructions for several DIY projects, including:

• Easy Bread
• Building a passive solar water heater
• Canning fruit, meat and vegetables

You'll also find tips for buying land, choosing the right homestead vehicle and more.

Start your dream of becoming more self-sufficient, with Mother Earth News Guide to Country Skills.

INSTANT DELIVERY ITEM: When you order this e-book* we will provide you with a link for the e-book on the confirmation page. Simply click on the link and save the file to your computer — no more waiting for delivery or paying expensive shipping and handling fees.

*E-Books are Eco-friendly! By supporting digital products like this one you help conserve resources and energy that comes with printing standard books. Order your downloadable E-book and start reading today!

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This book gives you all the information you need to start your own local foods business. You'll get plain-English advice from a self-proclaimed farm-girl-turned-entrepreneur on:

• Trends in niche agriculture and local foods
• Creating a business plan for a small-scale or hobby venture
• Assessing your home marketplace and uncovering niches not yet served
• Financing options, especially grants and cost-sharing programs
• Free or low-cost marketing ideas
• Basic strategies for surviving the first year in business
• And more

About the author

Sarah Beth Aubrey was born into a family of farmers and was raised to believe, like Scarlett O'Hara, that it is land that sustains after all else. In addition to operating her company, Aubrey's Natural Meats, Aubrey writes and speaks extensively on agriculture, the rural lifestyle and small farm development.

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CLEARANCE ITEM. PREVIOUS RETAIL PRICE WAS $24.95.

IMPORTANT NOTICE ABOUT THIS PRODUCT: The software on this version of Mother Earth News Practical 101 DIY Projects CD, Vol. 2, triggers a security breech when updating to version 7 or higher of Java. While an internet connection is not required to access the content on this CD, it does require an internet browser with Java for viewing the files. As a result of the security breech, the files on this CD cannot be viewed once Java has been updated to version 7 or higher.

This second collection of Mother Earth News' most popular DIY articles provides enough fun, rewarding projects to keep you and your family busy all year long. Made available to you in an easy-to-use CD-ROM format, just like our popular Mother Earth News Archive on CD-ROM.

Selected from nearly 40 years of material, this collection provides 147 articles for enough fun, rewarding projects to keep you busy every single weekend for a full year!

You can learn how to:

• build a rabbit hutch
• make your own tiles
• build a log cabin
• build a solar water heater
• build a natural swimming pool
• make a kite from recycled materials
• And more!!!

• With an IBM-compatible computer: Microsoft® Windows 98 SE (Second Edition) or newer; with Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5 or newer. You also will need Java Virtual Machine (VM) version 1.3 (free download from www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp) or newer browser plug-in with Java enabled on your browser and computer.
• With an Apple Computer: Mac OS X with Safari 3.2.525.27.1 or newer and Java. Use the Software Update feature (available on the Apple menu) to check that you have the most up-to-date version of Java for your Mac.
• For Mac OS 9.2.2, this CD must be run in Netscape 7.0.2 with Apple MRJ 2.2.5. (Both available free from www.versiontracker.com.)
• A CD-ROM drive (auto-start should be enabled).

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Residential consumption represents nearly one quarter of North America's total energy use, and the average homeowner spends thousands of dollars a year on power bills. To help alleviate this problem, Energy-Wise Landscape Design presents hundreds of practical ways everyone can save money, time and effort while making their landscapes more environmentally healthy, ecologically rich and energy efficient.
Combining general guidelines with tips, techniques and actions, this fully illustrated guide explains the many opportunities our landscapes provide for conserving energy. Readers will learn how to:

• lower a home's heating and cooling costs
• minimize fuel used in landscape construction, maintenance and everyday use
• choose landscape products and materials with lower embedded energy costs
• make a positive difference without a major investment or change in lifestyle.

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More and more people are recognizing the need for nutritious, local, sustainable food, but organic options can be costly, and the produce sections of most supermarkets are packed with fruits and vegetables that have racked up more frequent flier miles than a rock band on world tour. How can urban dwellers without ready access to fertile land enjoy the benefits of traditional gardening? And for those with a yard, how do you maximize the harvest of fresh, healthy edibles?

In From Container to Kitchen, author D.J. Herda shows that there is a way. Written for the novice home gardener as well as the seasoned pro, this fully illustrated, comprehensive guide will show you how to save up to 70% on your produce bill by growing fruits and vegetables in pots. Topics include:

• Selecting the right container size and location
• Optimizing soil composition and nutrients
• Managing light, water and humidity
• Choosing the best fruits and vegetables for container gardening
• Eliminating pests and plant diseases naturally
• Extending the harvest.

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CLEARANCE ITEM. PREVIOUS RETAIL PRICE WAS $16.95. AVAILABLE ONLY WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!

This humorous yet practical gardening guide will help you get "down to earth." Packed with whimsical illustrations and overflowing with useful suggestions, Gardening for the Faint of Heart is ideal for the novice gardener. Learn about everything from planning a garden and getting started to pruning, managing pests, seeding and breeding, greenhouse and container gardening and more. A perfect rainy day read, this book never loses sight of the fact that above all, gardening should be fun.

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Rather than cover hundreds of plants in abbreviated accounts like the typical field guide, author Samuel Thayer has chosen a smaller selection of species to discuss in exhaustive detail, including only those plants he has eaten 50 times or more. This book contains as many as 10 high-quality color photographs of each plant. These have been painstakingly selected to facilitate identification and depict the plant parts at exactly the stage of growth in which they should be harvested. The accompanying text is accurate and thorough, giving readers of any experience level the confidence to harvest wild plants for food. Botanically, the text is accurate — yet it remains accessible to the layperson by using technical terms only when necessary.

The Forager’s Harvest has many unique features that will appeal to naturalists, hikers, campers, survivalists, homesteaders, gardeners, chefs, Native Americans and whole-food enthusiasts. The book contains a calendar of harvest times for wild produce, a step-by-step protocol for positive identification, an illustrated glossary tailored to the needs of foragers, a recommended reading list, plus special sections on conservation, safety, nutrition, harvest techniques, preparation methods and storage. While The Forager’s Harvest is not a regional guide, it will prove most useful to readers in the eastern US and Canada, the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Northwest.

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In this groundbreaking resource, two school garden pioneers offer parents, teachers and school administrators everything they need to know to build school gardens and to develop the programs that support them.

Today, both schools and parents have a unique opportunity — and an increasing responsibility — to cultivate an awareness of our finite resources, to reinforce values of environmental stewardship, to help students understand concepts of nutrition and health, and to connect children to the natural world. What better way to do this than by engaging young people, their families and teachers in the wondrous outdoor classroom that is their very own school garden?

It's all here: developing the concept, planning, fundraising, organizing, designing the space, preparing the site, working with parents and schools, teaching in the garden, planting, harvesting, and even cooking, with kid-friendly recipes and year-round activities. Packed with strategies, to-do lists, sample letters, detailed lesson plans and tricks of the trade from decades of experience developing school garden programs for grades K–8, this hands-on approach will make school garden projects accessible, inexpensive and sustainable.

Reclaiming a piece of neglected play yard and transforming it into an ecologically rich school garden is among the most beneficial activities that parents, teachers and children can undertake together. This book provides all the tools that the school community needs to build a productive and engaging school garden that will continue to inspire and nurture students and families for years to come.

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This definitive month-by-month guide brings gardeners into the delicious world of edible landscaping and helps take a load off the planet as we achieve greater food security. Full of illustrative color photos and step-by-step instructions, The Zero-Mile Diet shares wisdom gleaned from 30 years of food growing and seed saving with comprehensive advice on:

• Growing organic food year-round
• The small fruit orchard and backyard berries
• Superb yet simple seasonal recipes
• Preserving your harvest
• Seed saving and plant propagation
• Dirt-cheap ways to nourish your soil
• Backyard poultry — it's less time-consuming than you think
• Growing vegetables in the easiest way possible
• A-Z guide to growing the best vegetables and herbs

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The Herb Companion Guide to Healing Herbs is packed with valuable and illuminating information on more than 136 favorite herbs for growing, cooking and healing.

A 100-page guide is filled with articles on herbs that help you save money and help you stay healthy throughout the year. Articles cover everything from skin-soothing herbs to herbs that help with cold and flu.

Other articles include:

• Don't Break the Bank: Discover 15 herbs that will save you money on medical bills
• Beat Winter Colds: Treat and prevent winter colds with natural remedies
• Lower Your Blood Pressure: Help correct hypertension with four effective herbs
• Soothe Psoriasis: Control this skin condition with natural remedies