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Whether you're looking to start a backyard chicken flock; need information on bee-hive management; or need instructions on how to brew your first homemade beer this stunning 3-book set has all the answers you need and more. The Homesteading Resource Set are three 160-page books, including The Chicken Handbook, The Beekeeping Handbook, and Home Brewing.

The Chicken Handbook
This handbook covers everything you need to know about this satisfying and rewarding hobby, from choosing your breed and preparing your chicken house to establishing your flock and reaping the benefits of fresh produce. Illustrated throughout, this indispensable guide offers the advice you need to ensure that your birds stay happy, healthy, and thriving.

The Beekeeping Handbook
A clear and comprehensive guide, this book is for any would-be beekeeper that includes a detailed look into the history of bees and beekeeping, and offers practical advice on how to buy colonies, keep detailed records, manage a hive, and, of course, deal with stings. Fully illustrated, this book is invaluable in helping you fully understand your bees and the best way to keep them happy.

Home Brewing
With many labor- and money-saving tips throughout, this is the perfect starter's guide to home brewing. Covering kits, ingredients, equipment, techniques, and the all-important recipes, this comprehensive manual offers all the know-how required to start your brew from scratch, as well as offering tips on how best to adapt the ingredients to suit your personal taste.

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William Cobbett wrote Cottage Economy, published in 1821, with a twofold aim. First, to promote his personal philosophy of self-sufficiency, which he viewed as the foundation of family happiness. And second, to "instruct country laborers in the arts of brewing beer, making bread, keeping cows, pigs, bees, ewes, poultry, rabbits, and other matters." The book has enjoyed classic status ever since.

Though more than 180 years old, Cottage Economy has lost none of its relevance or inspiration for anyone in search of what Cobbett called "a good living." Written with Cobbett's typical wit - and bulldog curmudgeonliness - it deserves its reputation as the founding bible of self-sufficiency and one of the greatest rural reads in the English language.

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A truly lush, radiant enthusiast's guide, The Backyard Beekeeper's Honey Handbook goes beyond the scope of a cookbook to introduce to readers the literal cornucopia of honey varieties available. An intuitive follow-up to The Backyard Beekeeper, this book will presume beekeeping experience but reintroduce the basics. It is an insight into the practical, back-to-the-earth beekeeping lifestyle and well as the artisan cultivation of honey varieties.

Supplementary support for this book lay in the fact that interest in tapping honey's holistic and whole-health potential dovetails nicely into the natural health and green movements. Also, honey as natural, lower-calorie sweetener has garnered positive PR by those working against the obesity epidemic.

Want to read more? Preview this book: Producing and Selling Honey for the Backyard Beekeeper or Calculating Growing Degree Days.

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In 1999, Marina Marchese fell in love with bees during a tour of a neighbor's honeybee hives. She quit her job, acquired her own bees, built her own hives, harvested honey and earned a certificate in apitherapy (the medicinal use of honey, pollen, and bee venom). She studied wine tasting-to transfer those skills to honey tasting-eventually opened her own honey business, and today her Red Bee® Honey sells artisanal honey and honey-related products to shops and restaurants all over the country.

More than an inspiring story of one woman's transformative relationship with honeybees (some of nature's most fascinating creatures), Honeybee is also bursting with information about all aspects of bees, beekeeping and honey-including life inside the hive; the role of the queen, workers and drones; pollination and its importance to sustaining all life; the culinary pleasures of honey; hiving and keeping honeybees; the ancient practice of apitherapy; and much more.

Recipes for food and personal care products appear throughout. Also included is an excellent, one-of-a-kind appendix that lists 75 honey varietals, with information on provenance, tasting notes, and food-and-wine pairings.

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What's the buzz about the growing popularity of backyard beekeeping? Providing habitat for bees, pollinating your garden and producing honey for your family are some of the compelling reasons for taking up this exciting hobby. But conventional beekeeping requires a significant investment and has a steep learning curve. The alternative? Consider beekeeping outside the box.

The Thinking Beekeeper is the definitive do-it-yourself guide to natural beekeeping in top bar hives. Based on the concept of understanding and working with bees' natural systems as opposed to trying to subvert them, the advantages of this approach include:

• simplicity, sustainability and cost-effectiveness
• increased safety, because of less heavy lifting and hive manipulation
• chemical-free colonies and healthy hives

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Did you know that preparing great venison recipes starts well before you turn on the stove or fire up the grill? It's true. The quality of the dish you put on the table begins back with the shooting and cleaning your deer. How was the meat processed? Did you select the right cuts of meat? How about pairing those cuts with the correct cooking methods and recipe? Follow the right steps, and your family and friends will request your venison recipes again and again.

In What's for Dinner ... Deer?, Matt Wilkinson takes you through all of these details-from the field to the table. Along the way, you'll learn tips and techniques that you can apply to any venison recipe, not just the mouthwatering dishes Wilkinson prepares onscreen.

Not a hunter but married to one? This DVD shows you how to cook venison, providing great recipes. If you've had disappointing results with venison recipes in the past, this disc is for you. Now you can team up with your spouse even if you don't both go into the field. One of you can shoot the deer and handle the deer meat processing, and the other can turn that meat into delicious meals.

The What's for Dinner ... Deer? DVD is one you'll refer to again and again, as each hunting season rolls around. Unlock the secrets of preparing and cooking great venison recipes today.

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Other books tell us how to live the good life … but you might have to win the lottery to do it. Making Home is about improving life with the real people around us and the resources we already have. While encouraging us to be more resilient in the face of hard times, author Sharon Astyk also points out the beauty, grace and elegance that result, because getting the most out of everything we use is a way of transforming our lives into something much more fulfilling.

Written from the perspective of a family who has already made this transition, Making Home shows readers how to turn the challenge of living with less into settling for more: more happiness, more security and more peace of mind. Learn simple but effective strategies to:

• Save money on everything from heating and cooling to refrigeration, laundry, water, sanitation, cooking and cleaning
• Create a stronger, more resilient family
• Preserve more for future generations

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A guide to raising chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys, with 27 recipes

Backyard poultry have gained popularity in recent years as some municipalities loosen regulations to allow homeowners to keep coops. Raising poultry is a sustainable activity, which in relatively little space produces fresh eggs and meat.

Eggs and Poultry is organized in five sections. The first four cover everything needed to successfully keep the most popular types of poultry: chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys. It discusses the pros and cons of each and provides all the information needed to start out, including building a shelter, planning runs and ponds, dealing with pests and problems, laying and breeding, incubating and hatching, slaughter, and plucking and drawing. Butcher skills are also illustrated.

The 80-page recipe section features 27 delicious dishes and explains the essentials of cooking with eggs and poultry, from deboning a chicken and other butcher skills to cooking methods such as coddling eggs. Recipes include Eggs Benedict, Smoked Eggs with Halloumi, Turkey Pie, Crispy Duck with Pancakes, Southwestern Fried Chicken, Confit Duck with Caramelized Orange and Fennel Salad, Lemon Pepper Chicken Nuggets, The Ultimate Turkey Burger and Goose Livers with Cider.

Eggs and Poultry is aimed directly at an audience who dream of, or are actually enjoying, the authors' made-at-home lifestyle. It is a beautiful and practical addition to the cookbook shelf.

About the Made at Home book series

A new series for living the good life!

Father-and-son team Dick and James Strawbridge have long lived the good life on their small acreage, and now they’re sharing their years of knowledge and experience with readers via their Made at Home series of books. This exciting collection draws on the invaluable wisdom they’ve gleaned while producing an abundance of good things to eat and drink: organic fruits and vegetables grown, juiced, fermented, and preserved; pigs smoked for ham, sausages, salamis, and bacon; a mixed flock of birds used for eggs and eating; and bees raised for honey. It's an enviable lifestyle driven by a desire to eat well every day.

And it doesn’t require a lot of space. Made at Home contains numerous adaptations to urban and suburban life. Plants are grown in small lots and pots, chickens are kept in backyard pens, and meat items are smoked in the backyard. It’s proof positive that anyone can live the good life.

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People have always grown food in urban spaces—on windowsills and sidewalks, and in backyards and neighborhood parks—but today, urban farmers are leading an environmental and social movement that transforms our national food system. To explore this agricultural renaissance, brothers David and Michael Hanson and urban farmer Edwin Marty document 12 successful urban farm programs, including an alternative school for girls in Detroit, a backyard food swap in New Orleans and a restaurant supply garden on a rooftop in Brooklyn. Each beautifully illustrated essay offers practical advice for budding farmers, such as guidance on composting and keeping livestock in the city, decontaminating toxic soil, and even changing zoning laws.

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Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without - our grandmothers knew the importance of responsible, thrifty choices. But somewhere along the way we succumbed to the belief that we can get everything for next to nothing, have it shipped halfway around the world and then, more often than not, just throw it away.

This consumer binge is taking its toll. Diet and lifestyle-related illnesses are epidemic, our environment is awash in a sea of plastic, our climate is changing, and the cost of everything is skyrocketing with the price of oil. Are we doomed? No. We can make greener, healthier choices, and we can do it while saving money.

Where to start? Ecothrifty is packed with simple, practical ideas and recipes to help you:

• Make homemade products for cleaning and skin care
• Grow your own food and cook more from scratch
• Raise your family without lowering your standards