The reader's edition
The Encyclopedia of Country Living: The Original Manual for Living Off the Land & Doing It Yourself: the summary
Carla Emery grew up on a Montana sheep ranch and raised seven children on a farm near Kendrick, Idaho. In 1970 she advertised a book of old-fashioned country know-how and then mailed it to subscribers chapter by chapter, printed on a mimeograph, finishing the first edition in 1974. She kept revising it for more than thirty years, and it is still in print in a 50th anniversary edition from Sasquatch Books. The book moves from plants to animals: soil and seeds, grains, garden vegetables, herbs, fruit trees and firewood, food preservation, then poultry, milk animals, bees, rabbits, sheep and pigs, with recipes all the way through. Emery writes like a neighbour at the kitchen table rather than an expert, mixing instructions with stories from her own garden, kitchen and family. Read a chapter at a time, with a printable action book at the end.
- Carla Emery
- 1974
- 4 chapters
- 5 min read
- 9 takeaways
This is HourLife's reading of The Encyclopedia of Country Living: The Original Manual for Living Off the Land & Doing It Yourself, in our own words. It is not a substitute for the book.
Chapter 01
Before you start
The book in a minute
Tap a paragraph to highlight it. Turn pages with the arrows, the arrow keys, or a swipe.
Carla Emery grew up on a Montana sheep ranch and raised seven children on a farm near Kendrick, Idaho. In 1970 she advertised a book of old-fashioned country know-how and then mailed it to subscribers chapter by chapter, printed on a mimeograph, finishing the first edition in 1974. She kept revising it for more than thirty years, and it is still in print in a 50th anniversary edition from Sasquatch Books. The book moves from plants to animals: soil and seeds, grains, garden vegetables, herbs, fruit trees and firewood, food preservation, then poultry, milk animals, bees, rabbits, sheep and pigs, with recipes all the way through. Emery writes like a neighbour at the kitchen table rather than an expert, mixing instructions with stories from her own garden, kitchen and family.
Below are the 9 ideas HourLife readers vote up most, each in our words with a note on what it asks of you, and then the steps that put them to work.
Chapter 02
What readers keep
The takeaways
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1
HourLife takeaway
Country living is not one big skill but hundreds of small ones, learned a season at a time.
The book is huge because the life is: grain, goats, jam, soap, firewood, bees. Emery never expects anyone to do it all at once. Treat it as a reference you open when the season hands you a new job, not a course you have to finish.
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2
HourLife takeaway
Grow what your household will actually eat, then grow a little more to put by.
A bed full of vegetables nobody cooks is just weeding. Garden Vegetables is the longest chapter in the book, and it reads best from the kitchen backwards: start with the meals you make, then choose the plants.
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3
HourLife takeaway
Preserving is how a glut in August becomes dinner in February.
Emery covers canning, drying, freezing and root cellars, and the right one depends on what you grow and where you can store it. Home canning advice has changed over the decades, so check processing times against a current tested guide.
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4
HourLife takeaway
An animal is a daily promise, not a weekend project.
Before the chapters on poultry, milk animals, bees and pigs, the book has a whole chapter on the basics: choosing stock, barns, fences and what happens at the end. Pick animals for the time you really have, twice a day, in every kind of weather.
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5
HourLife takeaway
Grain is not only for big farms; a small patch can still end up as bread.
The Grasses, Grains & Canes chapter treats wheat, corn, barley, amaranth and their cousins at household scale, from growing them to cooking with them. Even if you never sow a row of wheat, knowing how it is grown and milled changes how you bake.
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6
HourLife takeaway
Use the whole of what you raise, so each part feeds another.
The chapters keep handing work to each other. Fat becomes soap, hides can be tanned, kitchen scraps feed the hens and manure feeds the garden. The loop is the point: less waste, and less to buy.
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7
HourLife takeaway
Write it down, because memory makes a poor almanac.
The book itself began as a mimeographed recipe book and was revised edition after edition for more than thirty years. Keep your own record of sowing dates, yields and mistakes, and it becomes the most useful book on your shelf.
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8
HourLife takeaway
A setback on the land is information for next year, not proof you chose wrong.
Emery's own path had hard turns. In 1976 a flood and mudslide wrecked the school of country living she had opened in Idaho, and she kept revising the book for decades afterwards. A lost crop or a bad winter tells you what to change.
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9
HourLife takeaway
You do not need a farm to take up an old skill.
Baking bread, drying herbs and putting up one jar of jam all work in a city flat. The book even has an appendix on reading antique cookbooks. Take the skills that fit your life now and leave the rest on the shelf for later.
Chapter 03
Put it to work
Your action book
Do the setup steps once, then keep the habits going. The setup changes your week; the habits keep it changed after the first good one.
The download puts this whole reading and a printable action book in one PDF: the setup checklist, then a page of real calendar days for each habit, starting on the day you choose.
Set up once
Find your frost dates
Look up the average last spring frost and first autumn frost for where you live, from a local extension service or weather records. Write both on the inside cover of a notebook.
Choose one project for this year
Pick one new skill, such as a vegetable bed, three hens or a shelf of preserves. Write the others on a list for later years.
Start a homestead notebook
Set up a ring binder with a page for each month and a tab for each project. Record what you plant, when, and what happens.
Check the rules before you buy animals
Read your local rules on poultry, bees and livestock, including limits on roosters and distances from neighbours. Then talk to the neighbours.
Get a current canning guide
Before you can anything, get a recent tested guide, such as the USDA's or the National Center for Home Food Preservation's, and use its processing times.
Keep it up
Bake one loaf from scratch each week
Choose one plain recipe and bake it every week for a month. Change one thing at a time: the flour, the water or the rise.
Walk the garden for ten minutes a day
Go out with a cup of coffee and look. Pull a few weeds, check for pests and note what is nearly ready.
Put up one batch while it is in season
When something is cheap and plentiful, preserve one batch that week: a jar of jam, a tray of dried herbs or a bag of frozen beans.
Chapter 04
The last word
Before you go
Pick one step from the action book and do it today. An idea from a book starts to count once it changes what one ordinary day looks like.
Learn one skill this season, write down what happened, and let next year's notebook start where this one ends.
That is the end of our reading. Where to go from here, or go back to the full The Encyclopedia of Country Living: The Original Manual for Living Off the Land & Doing It Yourself page.
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