Customer Reviews

Self Sufficient Life And How To Live It Updated And Expanded

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a family that has abandoned the city and suburbs for the countryside, the very presence of a book like John Seymour's "The Self-sufficient Life and How to Live It" is enough to inspire fits of joy. A perfect companion to works like Hemenway's "Gaia's Garden" and Mollison's "Permaculture: A Designer's Manual," this book is a must for would-be urbanites fleeing the cities. Covering every topic relevant to self-sufficient, sustainable living and farm life, Seymour's classic provides a great way to start a different life. An update from the venerable mid-Seventies edition of the book, this 2002 release is a fine improvement.

The book has quite a bit going for it:

1. Beautifully made, illustrated and laid-out, this book is meant to last and be used readily and often. Typical Dorling Kindersley quality.

2. An eye-friendly typeface and bright, semi-gloss pages make this easy reading.

3. The shear breadth of the information here is outstanding. Packed into 306 letter-sized pages are the following chapters:
*The Meaning of Self-Sufficiency
*Food from the Garden
*Food from Animals
*Food from the Fields
*Food from the Wild
*In the Dairy
*In the Kitchen
*Brewing & Wine-making
*Energy & Waste
*Crafts & Skills
*Things You Need to Know

4. Good specifics on all the categories of info listed above. You should be able to get started on your way to being people of the soil. Need to know how to kill, gut, and prepare your cattle? It's in here. Got a hankering to get off the electrical grid altogether? Helpful windmill buying advice is here. Can't tell rye from barley? You will after reading this book.

5. A helpful list of contacts and companies that can get you started on your dream are included.

But there are issues amid all this helpful advice:

1. The book makes some references to US-specific qualifiers on info, but it is quintessentially British. Some of the very helpful info simply does not apply to American would-be farmers.

2. There's a lot of the "green" credo here. Some of it is a bit condescending to anyone who doesn't share the author's opinions of life outside the farm. How well the reader handles this is up to the reader.

3. While the book is certainly comprehensive, considering how complex a shift from urban to rural living can be, it could have gone even deeper. (I know that I still had questions.) The book probably could have been twice its length and would still be a bargain.

4. Much of the advice here comes from a lone methodology for approaching self-sufficiency. Despite the update, there are some more cutting edge permaculture methods that can be more satisfying than what we find in Seymour's book.

All in all, despite the cons, this is a fine primer on self-sufficiency. Anyone looking to escape the rat race could hardly do better than to pick up a copy of "The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It."

I came across this book in the library. Great pictures. Author John Seymour did his homework, he must have read "The Blank Slate" by Steven Pinker - lots of those great calendar pictures that humans universally love. Farmland and field, birdie and squirrel, makes you feel good; all warm and fuzzy inside.

Mr. Seymour is far too politicaly correct for my taste. He seems to enjoy lecturing us on how wonderful his self-sufficient life is and how deficient a life we city-dwellers lead.

This book will teach you how to kill and gut your chicken, and if you can handle that, read on to learn how to kill and dress your lamb. It is much easier learning how to make your own soap - that is far easier, did you know, than coming across that bottle of maple syrup. (That's one unintended message that comes across in this book: Thank God for the modern city-life and the supermarket).

There is information on Dyeing and Weaving, Curing and Tanning, Making Bricks and Tiles. There is information on 101 things we take for granted in our everday city-world. It is thus my kind of book, and the book for every Renaissance man and woman.

Seymour's work is a signature type; a bible that belongs in every home. It is pleasing to page through, and informative in a way that connects us to the majesty of life. As a practical matter, this would be the book to have when the lights go out and civilization needs to reinvent maple syrup.

It is a dreamers book, and a book for those interested in how their ancestor lived. Finally, this is a book we who take much for granted, for the P.C. lecture that takes is the one showing how truly dependent modern-man has become.

This would be the one! Not only is the book packed with priceless information, it's beautiful to look at. It really does cover most aspects of the skills you are likely to need as you move toward self sufficiency. It will also humble you. I was shocked by what I didn't even know I didn't know! How could I have made it this far without knowing such simple, logical and essential knowledge!?

I haven't bought my land yet, but I've been trying some of the techniques described in this book. It's just incredible. We have been sold a lie by governments and corporations and this book is an operations manual for undoing that lie and setting things right in the world. I couldn't recommend any book any more emphatically than this one.

As a primer to self-sufficiency, Mr. Seymour's guide is excellent: the book is beautifully published, full of lovely illustration and tables and charts, and the author's voice is distinct and quirky (e.g., "suffer not weeds to grow among your carrots!"). As a life-long city dweller, I know immensely more, after reading the book, about the holistic agrarian lifestyle I am interested in pursuing.

I agree, however, with reviewers who warn that this book is a general overview that could be greatly fleshed out. I could not sell my urban home, purchase land, and expect to survive with the information in this book. Mr. Seymour sketches out broad areas and implicitly expects his reader either to try-and-err until it makes sense, or to learn from a teacher. To me, the most directly helpful section was the first chapter on vegetable gardening, and to a lesser extent, on grain, fodder, and grazing -- the instruction grows increasingly more theoretical thence. Could I make clay bricks from scratch, or butter, or thatch a roof, or saw planks from a log with the one or two pages he devotes to these kinds of complicated tasks? His overly simplistic explanations of these kinds of work makes them seem more daunting than foregoing them entirely.

Some of his contradictions tickle me. For example, he rails against the use of white sugar in one chapter, and proceeds in his section on brewing to list it as the main ingredient in almost every recipe.

I live in the Canadian prairies, where the land is unusable for crops half of the year. This book's model assumes a mild enough climate to have crops in the ground all the way through winter. This wintry climate has been an obstacle in my research in self sufficiency, because every book I have purchased on the topic assumes milder weather and a longer growing season.

I do not mean to criticize the book too much: it was excellent food for thought and my library is the better for it. Only the title is misleading: I am not equipped to live a self-sufficient life after reading this far from complete book.

This is an excellent purchase if your intention is to live
on a farm and survive off the land. The author defines self-
sufficiency and then goes about presenting hundreds of examples
of how to perform every kind of survival task. There is a
section on how to tie knots. The work describes brewing,
power generation from H2 O , as well as the wind. An entire
section describes soil types; such as, heavy clay, loam,
sand, peat and sowing seeds in late spring. This work is perfect
for the city person who knows nothing about basic survival
in the country or the wilderness. The author teaches virtually
every basic skill applicable to living outdoors. The book
is a worthy addition to any personal library.

This is a great book with great illustrations ... Simple yet detailled, practical yet principled. John Seymour has got a great good grasp of the ecological principles that SHOULD inform gardening and farming (what comes out must go back in).

In his other writings, Jonathan Seymour has a streak of anti-urbanism that I don't like--I don't share his view that cities are unnatural, diseased places. But he seems to have overcome it here with a description of urban gardens, limited-scale self-sufficiency and the like. This book lets you pick and choose; if you want to grow wheat on five acres, harrow, harvest, thresh and grind it yourself, that's fine. On the other hand, if you live on a half-acre lot and just want to set up a backyard garden, a compost pile and maybe a beehive, this book will also show you how.

Buy this book --- it's the real deal --- It's the 25 year-old-version updated beautifully. (I had the old one, but lost it along the way) All the fine line drawing are here, plus many colored faux wood-block illustrations.
Contents are as follows --- Foreword. Introduction.
Chapter 1 -The Meaning of Self-Sufficiency. Chapter 2 - Food from the Garden. Chapter 3 - Food From Animals. Chapter 4- Food From The Fields. Chapter 5 - Food From the Wild. Chapter 6 - In The Dairy. Chapter 7 - In The Kitchen. Chapter 8 - Brewing & Wine-Making. Chapter 9 - Energy & Waste. Chapter 10 - Crafts & Skills. Chapter 11- Things You Need To Know. Contacts & References. (many of these) Glossary. Index.
John Seymour also passes along much new wisdom, such as finding and working with other like-minded persons and urban gardening information. It's an absolutely excellent book, all 312 pages of it. It's a positive and uplifting expression of self-sufficiency that the world sorely needs.

THe title is ambitious -- but the reality is there is not enough details provided in this book to live up to the implied promis in the title. What it does do sucessfully is hightlight and identify the many elements to the self suffcient life, and give a teaser amount of info on most of them. But if you really want to live the life, you need to do a lot more reading, or find someone with skills to share. If you feel you already have a good handle on the issues and challenges in a self sufficient life and looking to ramp up to another level, I advise looking for info targeted specificaly to the issue you are working on. If you are looking to simply explore and understand at a general level what living a self sustainable life might entail, than this book might be for you.

a very concise detailed and informative book that you will refer to over and over again and always fine something new in it regardless of how many times you have read it from cover to back. just a excellent all around book. if you are going back to the land this would be the only book you would need or if your desire is to stay in the city and do urban self sufficiency its the bookSelf Sufficient Life And How To Live It Updated And Expanded

Overall a good book, however some parts (plant descriptions) will be skipped over if you live in the Canadian North, Still it's informative book about self sufficient living with some really good ideas.