Product Description

Achieving genuine self-sufficiency of the kind described in John Seymour's classic guide is sadly beyond the vast reach of the urban majority today. Few have the space, and for those few there are comprehensive guidebooks. But where do the rest of us look for the answers to questions like how much effort does it really take to grow your own food? Is beekeeping difficult? Is solar power really worth the bother?From a small terraced house in the middle of a big city, Paul Waddington has made it his business to find out, and while trying it himself, has created a practical and absorbing guidebook along the way. It includes easy-to-read lists, tables, personal anecdote, and stunning illustrations, and more importantly demystifies the subject with practical tips that get to the heart of the matter to show you how you can enjoy the fulfilling aspects of the smallholding life without the hassle and expense of 'going all the way'. If you want to go back to the land without leaving home, this is the perfect guide.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #158200 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Nottingham Evening Post
Packed with ideas, it's a book we should all read.

Josh Lacey, Guardian, Gardening section
Wittily written and very inspiring…It's a 21st-century version of John Seymour's Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency

Tom Ireland, The Ecologist
Packed full of green advice...serious food for thought on how you can, and why you should make a difference.

Customer Reviews

A super book!
Paul Waddington's book is a guide to both the pitfalls and many pleasures of being a 21st century smallholder, no matter how small your holding happens to be. Practical, humerous and honest, his book avoids the 'preachy' style and tacit 'you should be feeling guilty about the way you live' attitude that tends to infuse some of the classic titles in the self-sufficiency library. The book does not claim to be an exhaustive 'how to' manual (and has a good bibliography of specific 'how to' titles), but gives a clear oversight of the various possibilities from raising your own fruit and veg or keeping livestock through to providing your own water supply, dealing with your own waste and having a CO2 neutral exsistence. It shows clearly what one can do depending on one's own situation, and how one can go about doing it. Especially useful (and realistic) it gives assessments of items such as cost, skill needed and storage space required for various activities alongside the usual time involved and environmental benefit information. Such aspects are vital to the urban smallholder, who can't just stuff all their bottling and beekeeping equipment in a handy barn or shed!
Even if you don't want to be a smallholder, the book is a good read, and will make you think about things you probably ought to be thinking about, and will most probably lead to a desire to grow something and snatch back a wee bit of control over the food production in your life.
The layout of the book (about A5 in size) is clear, non-glossy and non fussy with very nice illustrations as a background and accompanyment to the text.
Read this book, apply it's suggestions and perhaps Paul's fear that only Ray Mears would survive an energy catastrophe can become a thing of the past!
Highly recommended.

Wonderful summary of producing your own food and energy
This book is a great summary of the many different things you can do to become more self-sufficient. About how you can produce more of the stuff you need to live on, such as food and energy, instead of buying it all in. The style is one of a series of suggestions rather than prescriptions ('you can' rather than 'you must'). The suggestions all build upon each other, so that you can do just one simple thing on its own or a number of them together.

The book itself is mainly explanatory text with a few diagrams and summary tables. This makes a nice change from many other 'how to' books which are full of glossy colour photographs, but short on informative explanations. However the book itself is not bland, as all the pages are decorated with suitable accompanying drawings of one form or another, on thick paper. Paul's text covers the background to each topic, as well as the main information you need about it. This is a quality and well thought out book.

What I liked was that you are walked through the different aspects of self-sufficiency, each being independent of the other. So you start with how to grow your own food, then raise your own food, then energy efficiency and production and waste. Finally some notes on how to try and go completely self sufficient on your own small holding. While you might not do everything, there will be something everyone can do one way or another in this book.

As someone just getting into trying to grow my own vegetables in my back garden, I found the book useful, realistic and optimistic. While I won't be using the other information on keeping chickens or solar heating for some time, it was interesting to read about them in the larger context of being more self-sufficient. The section on growing vegetables was good enough for me, and provided me with a greater understanding of the different types and how to deal with them. He has also planted ideas for me to come back to in the future.

Excellent -
Initially, I was going to slate this book, because it is very short on the 'how to' . But then I re-read it and changed my view.
It is an excellent, inspirational, little book.
It doesn't give you much by way of 'how to', but there are many 'how to' books out there.
It does give you ideas, backed by sound logic of why you should be doing this. It also lays out the likely cost, hassle and expense of any venture you are likely to undertake. Then you can hunt down the 'how to' book and get on with the project.
If you are concerned with what you eat and the current state of the planet, I recommend this book. It will set you on the path to doing something positive about it. And if we all do our bit... there's hope.