The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency: review
Search Amazon for self sufficiency, and this is the first book in the list. And with good reason. John Seymour’s hefty tome is beautiful, indispensable and one of the first and finest works on the subject.
Running to an impressive 312 board-bound pages, it’s a book that’s built to last, and it covers everything from conserving water and growing your own vegetables to brewing beer and slaughtering your livestock.
A lot of it won’t be relevant to the back-yard self-sufficientist, which perhaps explains the subheading, ‘the classic guide for realists and dreamers’, but even those parts that don’t immediately relate to your own particular set-up are an interesting read, illustrated using simple woodcuts in rich earthy tones.
The book, first published in 1976, is now over 30 years old, but in its third edition has lost none of its relevance, and has become, in words of Seymour’s obituary in The Guardian, ‘a vital resource for disillusioned city dwellers seeking a more wholesome existence in the countryside’.
To buy this book alone - and nothing else - would be to make a good start on your library, but you’d find some obvious holes. Seymour’s aim was to promote the idea of breaking away from the rapidly consumerist industrialisation of society (he started work on it not long after the 1973 oil crisis), but to cover so broad a subject in anything less than several volumes is an ambitious, and ultimately impossible task.
As such, this book presents the reader with an excellent primer on the subject, and would be enough to help you assess whether the idea of self-sufficiency, to some degree, is for you. It should be considered a leaping-off point, and an inspiration for further research and reading that will flesh out the interest it will undoubtedly spark.
Price £20
ISBN 0-751364-42-8
Author John Seymour
Pros Well-written, wide-ranging and beautifully produced.
Cons In covering such a wide subject area it’s been necessary to provide only a brief overview in some sections.
Verdict This classic book is as relevant as ever, and it’s sure to be an inspiration to any who read it. Make it the start of a growing self-sufficiency library, though, rather than relying on it as your only source work.
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Our various salad crops are approaching readiness, and with 23 tomato plants of four different varieties to choose from we’re hoping for plenty to eat, and even more left over for another batch of chutney to see us through the winter.
An early morning picking session bagged us a bumper crop of beans, taking our total for the year so far well beyond what we produced in the whole of last summer, and it appears there are still more to come.
This is what the 15 jars of our finished apple jelly looked like. They’re much darker than crab apple jelly, which is a light pink. The rich red brown of this batch is most likely down to the variety of apple we picked.
Self sufficiency doesn’t all have to be about growing your own vegetables, keeping chickens in the garden or screwing a solar panel to your roof. Sometimes it’s the smallest things that make the biggest difference.
We had our first proper harvest at the weekend. Three types of beans: French, runner and broad. Not a huge amount of any variety, but enough to cook ourselves a three-bean risotto for dinner.
The elderflower champagne is too dangerous to keep in a cupboard. So far we’ve had 18 explosions, which come with such force that they are shredding the seals on our bottles. As such we’ve come to the conclusion - reluctantly - that it’s time to start again, from scratch.
May 1st, 2008 at 12:32 pm
There’s now a ‘concise’ updated version available which is specifically aimed at those with smaller plots of land (including small urban gardens) which is certainly helpful for my little plot.