One of my recent reads, The Do It Yourself Homestead, recommended holding a monthly book club to increase community, help one another learn new skills and share ideas gleaned from books. I personally love this idea and have a few friends who are interested in doing so with me. However ours will be more as a group message instead of an in person experience due to being separated by several states. I’d love to start something local as well so that we could get together for some hands on skills but I’m so excited to start regardless!
The book I mentioned above includes a suggested monthly book for 1 full year of book club with an activity that ties along with each book. I love this idea for the in-person book club, but for our case I just created a list of those I wanted to read most. Since we are starting in May instead of January I will include suggestions from the selection I’ve already read for the first 4 months of the year.
January: Welcome to the Farm, by Shaye Elliot
February: The Backyard Homestead, edited by Carleen Madigan
March: The Backyard Homestead Seasonal Planner, by Ann Larkin Hansen
April: The Backyard Homestead Guide to Raising Farm Animals, edited by Gail Damerow
May: Gaia’s Garden, by Toby Hemenway
June: Root Cellaring, by Mike and Nancy Bubel
July: The Homemade Pantry, by Alana Chernila
August: Wild Fermentation, by Sandor Ellix Katz
September: The Organic Canner, by Daisy Luther and C. Morgan
October: Beyond Basics with Yeast, by Melissa Richardson
November: The Week-by-Week Vegetable Gardener’s Handbook, by Jennifer Kujawski and Ron Kujawski
December: The Art of Natural Cheesemaking, by David Asher and Sandor Ellix Katz
I, personally, am going to aim to read more than one a month as there are a LOT of books I’d like to read before we get our own farmhouse and outbuildings built, as well as before we start adding to our farm animals and food production. For those I do get read, I will be more than happy to share some information on and provide you with a link!
I may be the biggest nerd in the planet, but I find reading these books to be addictive. In fact, the more material I read, the more reading suggestions I’m given on various topics. I will probably never get all the information read that there is out there, especially before our home is built. But you better bet I’m going to keep striving for it.
