These are our favorite web resources on various topics, and books which you’ll find on our bookshelves:
General Home Ec/Appropriate Tech/DIY Living
- Mother Earth News
- How to Homestead
- AfriGadget
- The Urban Homestead
- Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World
- Radical Homemakers
- The Integral Urban House
- Made by Hand
- Farm City
- The Natural Kitchen
- Country Wisdom and Know-How
- Wendell Berry’s essays
- John Seymore’s many books
Beekeeping
- Honey Love
- Backwards Beekeepers
- Kirk’s Urban Bees
- Principles of Backwards Beekeeping
- Backyard Ecosystem
- Idiot’s Guide to Beekeeping
Biking
- Urban Velo
- Streetsblog LA
- Mikey Wally
- Westside BIKEside!
- Bike Snob NYC
- Bike Tech Info
- No whip
- Illuminate LA
- Bicycle Kitchen
- Soap Box LA
Chickens
Composting/Soil
- The Humanure Handbook (This is our favorite composting book–no matter what material we’re composting.)
- Humanure Handbook in free pdfs
- Rodale Book of Composting
- Worms Eat My Garbage
- Culture and Horticulture
- Teaming with Microbes
- NRCS Soil Biology Primer by Elaine Ingham
DIY Solar
Earthen Construction/Adobe/Cob
- Kurt Gardella–our adobe teacher
- Build Your Own Earth Oven by Kiko Denzer
- The Cob Cottage Company
Gardening
- We use John Jeavon’s classic gardening manual: How to Grow More Vegetables.
There are other classics, but we find his methods work best for us. - Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques
Gardening for people who live in the Western US, especially California, and Mediterranean climates:
- The New Western Garden Book
- Pat Welsh’s Southern California Organic Gardening
- The Digital Seed’s SoCal Vegetable Planting Schedule
Greywater/Rainwater
Herbal Medicine
(We’re missing some classic titles here, but these books are on our shelves and we like them.)
- Backyard Medicine
- Herbal Antibiotics
- Medicinal Plants of the Pacific West
- Healing with Medicinal Plants of the West
Permaculture
Rocket Stoves
- Rocket Mass Heaters by Ianto Evans and Leslie Jackson
- Paul Wheaton article
- Larry Winiarski’s Rocket Stove Principles
- Our own 5-Gallon bucket stove
Seed Sources:
- Garden Edibles–Heirloom Italian Seeds
- Seed Starter’s Handbook (pdf)
- Seeds From Italy
- Peaceful Valley
- Native Seeds
Self Irrigating Planters