Country Living Books and Ideas

Hi to My Readers from Carla!
What a privilege and joy it is to have authored a book read by more than 400,000 persons. For 25 years, I've collected information about family food production and related rural subjects. It feels good at this stage of my life to know that work was well done. My life is now a perpetual speaking tour, helping folks understand what's coming, "How to prepare for Y2K." (I hope for lecture invites also from overseas.) Everywhere I go, I meet old friends whom I've never personally met before. These folks have enjoyed and relied on the how-to-do-it information in the Encyclopedia of Country Living for years. Their beat-up old books tell a beautiful story of hard work and dedication.. Sometimes I've felt foolish for insisting on telling readers things like how to save seeds and how to grow their own feed for farm animals. At times, I've been scorned and berated for trying to keep oldtime skills alive. But as Y2K approaches, inexorably as the clock ticks, this information is becoming mainstream again. I love you, dear readers. You have been a beautiful thing in my life, too. God be with you in the coming years.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

This is a beautiful book that distils the natural comfort and easy charm found in all aspects of French rural life. The first part of the book, The Elements, explores the ingredients that make up the whole, including the sutble colour palette of soft warm greys, cloudy pinks and misty greens, the traditional materials, the furniture and the textiles. The second part, The Spaces, looks at the overall style, beginning in the heart of the French home, the kitchen and dining area, before moving on to explore living rooms, halls and corridors, bedrooms and bathrooms, and outdoor rooms.

Anyone who wants to learn basic living skills - the kind employed by our forefathers - and adapt them for a better life in the twenty-first century need look no further than this eminently useful, full-colour guide. Countless readers have turned to "Back to Basics" for inspiration and instruction, escaping to an era before power saws and fast food restaurants and rediscovering the pleasures and challenges of a healthier, greener, and more self-sufficient lifestyle. Now newly updated, the hundreds of projects, step-by-step sequences, photographs, charts, and illustrations in "Back to Basics" will help you dye your own wool with plant pigments, graft trees, raise chickens, craft a hutch table with hand tools, and make treats such as blueberry peach jam and cheddar cheese. The truly ambitious will find instructions on how to build a log cabin or an adobe brick homestead. More than just practical advice, this is also a book for dreamers - even if you live in a flat in a city you will find your imagination sparked, and there's no reason why you can't, for example, make a loom and weave a rag rug. Complete with tips for old-fashioned fun (including homemade toys and kayaking tips), this may be the most thorough book on voluntary simplicity available.

Interiors expert Judith Miller explores the key elements of country style through the use of colour and natural hues and explains how to design a home interior with a greater understanding of what ambience and impressions colour can bring. Colour is explored throughout the book by means of navigating its use in various palettes, including sections on cool, warm and vibrant colours that explain the reasons for different perceptions of colour from one climate region to another. Whether cool and pale or bright and warm, colour plays a pivotal role in bringing a cosy and comfortable mood to the rooms of an interior decorated in country style, celebrating the charms of rural living while creating a welcome retreat. Each chapter includes carefully selected swatches for paint and fabric with codes that allow you to match available paints from manufacturers such as Benjamin Moore, Fired Earth, Ralph Lauren and Farrow & Ball.