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The definition of a chicken tractor has evolved to mean employing your chickens skill-sets in a variety of different tasks that benefit you, your garden and yard. The chickens peck and scratch the soil to clean your beds, eat pest bugs and weed seeds, and fertilize the beds with their manure. Best of all, they provide eggs and meat with that old-fashioned flavor and homegrown goodness.

Expanded, updated and even more detailed. Learn how to raise homestead flocks for eggs, meat and money. Loads of photos and diagrams make important information visual and easy to understand.

Process birds in your backyard with exact, step-by-step explanations. Over 50 processing photos and diagrams—to let you do it right, efficiently and humanely each and every time.

This incredibly popular hands-on book is a grass-roots best seller. It has helped thousands of folks have better gardens and has rekindled an interest in the backyard flocks and heritage breeds of poultry. It has literally, changed the lives of millions of chickens all over the world by taking them out of factory farms, and putting in the gardens where they are happier, more productive and healthier.

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One stormy August night, a lightning bolt struck Mark Warren’s tin-roofed farmhouse and burned everything to the ground. Even his metal tools melted. Friends loaned him a tent, but after just a month it began to break down—which Warren vowed not to do. Instead, he decided to follow a childhood dream and live in a tipi. Excitement stirred in his chest, and so began a two-year adventure of struggle, contemplation, and achievement that brought him even closer to the land that he called home.

More than just the story of one man, Two Winters in a Tipi gives the history and use of the native structure, providing valuable advice, through Warren’s trial and error, about the confrontations that march toward a tipi dweller. It shows, without thumping the drum of environmental doom, how you can go back to the land for two days or two years. The wild plants that Natives harvested for food and medicine still grow nearby. The foods still nourish; the medicines still heal. As Warren beautifully reveals, the wild places of the past still exist in our everyday lives, and living that wilderness is still a possibility. It’s as close as the river running through your city, the woods in your neighborhood, or even the edges of your own backyard.

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Based on the most current research in nutrition and food science, and written for the newly converted and hard-core carnivores alike, Pure Beef will answer readers’ most essential questions: Why eat beef? What kind should I eat? Where can I buy it? How should I cook it?

Americans have a lot to learn about their all-time favorite meat; even devoted beef eaters rarely venture beyond steaks and hamburgers. Because there’s a whole lot more to a cow, Pure Beef will teach readers how to cook every cut, including underappreciated meats from the shoulder, haunch, and belly, not to mention meaty ribs and organ meats. For folks who prefer to stick with steaks and burgers, the new, leaner beef on the market (especially grass-fed) demands a different way of cooking those classic dishes to perfection, and Pure Beef will show home cooks the way.

A balanced approach to beef’s healthfulness, economy, and sustainability lies at the heart of this book. By its very organization, Pure Beef upends the traditional beef hierarchy that promotes 12-ounce portions of big steaks and premium roasts. The background information in Part I will revise health and nutritional information about beef consumption, while the recipes in Part II will revalue the most common beef cuts, starting with ground beef, and adjust serving sizes to match current nutritional recommendations.

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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.