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Discover the fun and satisfaction of spinning your own yarn! This step-by-step guide shows you how to create 80 distinctive yarns, from classics such as mohair boucle to novelty features like supercoils. Lush photographs illustrate the process of turning fleece into yarn, reveal the unique architecture of each yarn, and show exactly how to manipulate and combine fibers to get the results you want. With this must-have reference, you can create any yarn you desire.

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Order your copy, signed by authors Oscar H. Will III and Karen K. Will, today! Fueled by a failing economy and a passionate desire for a return to simpler times, a new wave of homesteaders is seeking the good life, and the kind of true satisfaction that can only be built, not bought. Many of these modern pioneers are cash poor, but rich in energy and creativity. Plowing with Pigs and Other Creative, Low-Budget Homesteading Solutions offers them a set of fresh ideas for achieving independence through sweat equity and the use of unconventional resources.

This highly readable and entertaining guide brings together answers to common problems faced by homesteaders young and old, urban, suburban, and rural. Traditional knowledge is combined with MacGyver-style ingenuity to create projects that maximize available resources, including:

• Animal management strategies for the yard, garden, and field
• Pole building and construction techniques from woodlot materials
• Replacing farm machinery with homemade hand tools and implements
• Leveraging increased self-sufficiency into a home-based business

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Backyard chickens meet contemporary design! Matthew Wolpe and Kevin McElroy give you 14 complete building plans for chicken coops that range from the purely functional to the outrageously fabulous. One features a water-capturing roof, another pays homage to mid-Modern architecture, and still another sports a built-in composting system. Some designs suit beginning builders, while others are challenging enough for experts. Full-color photographs and detailed construction illustrations accompany the step-by-step building plans.

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Cob (an old English word for lump) is old-fashioned concrete, made out of a mixture of clay, sand, and straw. Becky Bee's manual is a friendly guide to making your own earth structure, with chapters on design, foundations, floors, windows and doors, finishes, and of course, making glorious cob.

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This beginner's guide clearly explains everything you need to know to keep bees successfully, from getting your first bees to harvesting your first crop of honey. Spectacular macro photography by Mars Vilaubi brings the inner workings of the hive to life, while the playful text by Alethea Morrison gives you the information you need to make it through your first year. Everything is addressed here, from hive structure, colony hierarchy and bee behavior to allergies, permits and restrictions, and how to deal with the neighbors.

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Sepp Holzer is known around the world for bringing deserted landscapes back to life using his unique methods of creating water-retention basins. In Desert or Paradise, he applies his core philosophy - for increasing food production, promoting the earth's health and reconnecting mankind with nature - to reforestation and water conservation across the world. He urges us to look beyond failed solutions to drought by learning from his lengthy catalog of successes in arid, rainfall-dependent regions such as Greece, Turkey, Spain and Portugal.

You'll find here a wealth of information for the gardener, homesteader, permaculture designer and sustainable farmer. Yet the book's greatest value lies in the attitudes it teaches - and in its demonstration that the simple principles found in nature and used to create Holzer's productive systems can be applied anywhere.

Holzer also outlines his 10 points of sustainable self-reliance and how these methods can help feed the world. They include recognizing the need to:

• Regulate water usage
• Eliminate factory livestock farming
• Bring more fallow or unused land into production
• Enlarge crop areas by using terracing and Holzer-style raised beds
• Engage in community building
• … And much more

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When it comes to survival, one size definitely does not fit all. That's exactly what author F. J. Bohan discovered when he and his family set out on a quest for self-sufficiency, a journey that has lasted more than 17 years.

Living on the Edge describes why Bohan and his wife made the decision to pull their four sons from public school in the East and set off in a converted school bus to the American Southwest. On a very limited budget, the Bohans began their new life in a tent pitched on public campgrounds. As soon as they could, they purchased remote ranchland, where they built a rustic cabin from the ground up. It grew as they could afford to add on, and they also homeschooled the boys so well that all four received scholarships to the schools of their choice. On their journey, the Bohans learned a lot about living off the land and off the grid, mostly through trial and error. In this book, the author graciously shares valuable lessons on the following:

• Keeping a wife, four boys, two dogs and two cats happy in a tent for 18 months
• Creating power for a tent or cabin through a combination of solar panels, car batteries, generators and oil
• Heating and cooking on wood stoves
• Finding creative ways to earn money in an insular, impoverished rural area
• Securing enough water in the desert for a family of six, plus animals, to live on
• Erecting fences—literal and figurative ones—for privacy and security
• Raising chickens, goats and ducks for food, while avoiding bears, bobcats, skunks and other country critters

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The sprawl of suburbia, destruction of wildlife areas, overregulation of game animals, and reduced popularity of hunting and fishing have resulted in more people coming into direct contact with wild animals on a regular basis. In this invaluable do-it-yourself guide, veteran outdoorsman Larry Grupp gives readers a comprehensive toolbox of specific devices and strategies to deal safely, legally and effectively with more than 30 common North American pests, including deer, bears, raccoons, rabbits, beavers, porcupines, skunks, foxes, coyotes, rats, squirrels, bats, birds, fish and reptiles.

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If you've ever dreamed of building a rustic log cabin to use as a weekend hideaway, hunting lodge or even an emergency retreat, this book tells you how to make it a reality. This step-by-step guide is chock-full of tips and advice culled from author Michael Mulligan's decades of experience. Specializing in do-it-yourself projects that use improvised materials and avoid bureaucratic hassles, Mulligan first shares invaluable insight on finding your land and negotiating the shark-filled waters of real estate deals. Then, in straightforward terms that even a novice can follow easily, he walks you through the construction process, from selecting and preparing the logs to erecting and chinking the walls to building the roof and finishing the interior. He also includes a chapter on dispensing with public utilities in meeting your water, sewage, heating, cooking, lighting, power and refrigeration needs. Finally, for those who wish to tackle a scaled-up version of Mulligan's basic design, he presents the formulas necessary for calculating the parameters and selecting the proper material.