The Zeiger Family Homestead

Book, Music and Movie List
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On this page you'll find links to books and movies that we have found useful on the homestead, for practical knowledge, theory, philosophy, inspiration and entertainment. The links lead to Amazon.com. If one purchases the item by following the link from our pages, a percentage of the purchase price is credited to us at no additional cost to the buyer. In fact, if you go to Amazon.com from this page, a percentage of anything you buy there will bring in a small percentage for us, whether it's listed on our page or not. This is a "trickle income," one of many that we're trying to establish to support our off-the-grid lifestyle.

The links are categorized when possible. We try to add titles as they become available or prove useful. We appreciate everyone who purchases from these links, as it's a great help to us!

Music

Visit our neighbor, Burl Sheldon's Web site for his CDs. Besides great music of pertinent political and humorous import, he sings a lot about life here in The Wild.

Alternative Living: Controling Money, Simple Living, Frugal Living, Survival:

Plenty, Alisa Smith, J.B. Makinnon. This young urban couple proves that you don't have to live out in the woods to eat locally. As a bonus, they live in Vancouver, BC, so their experience is very close to living in our part of the world.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Barbara Kingsolver. How to be a locovore. Mark picked this up because he thought he should read it, then read it out loud to the family because it was so entertaining!

The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, Richard Heinberg. This book spells out why we need to learn and practice alternative life-skills NOW! This ought to be required reading for all school children, and anyone seeking public office.

The World Without Us, Alan Weisberg. Extremely informative and thought-provoking book on how the earth will recover from the changes we've made here.

Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship With Money and Achieving Financial Independence, Joe Dominguez, Vicki Robin. Your path to freedom starts HERE!

The Complete Tightwad Gazette, Amy Dacyczyn. Amy's compiled newsletter on frugal living has saved us thousands of dollars in just a few years.

Sailing the Farm, Ken Neumeyer. Your boat is your world! Very intriguing practical advice for boaters or anyone trying to live in a small space.

Where There Is No Doctor, David Werner et. al. A guide for third world countries that helps when you can't call 911.

Pain Free, Pete Egoscue. This is a tough life, and injury and pain must be avoided! This is an excellent guide to eliminating pain, plus a super easy exercise regime to keep your body aligned and pain resistant.

The New Complete Self Sufficiency This is the latest version of John Seymour's excellent book on doing it yourself.

Four Season Harvest Cold frames, green houses, extending your growing season throughout the year.

Mushrooms Demystified and its fieldguide companion, All That the Rain Promises, and More . . ., David Aurora. Our forest is full of edible mushrooms, so these are essential sources for us!

Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning: Traditional Techniques Using Salt, Oil, Sugar, Alcohol, Vinegar, Drying, Cold Storage, and Lactic Fermentation It used to be called Keeping Food Fresh. This is how to store up food without freezers and fridges, or sweltering canning sessions.

American Boys Handy Book, American Girls Handy Book, Field and Forest Handy Book These three books, originally written at the turn of the last century, are full of great ideas for simple play for both boys and girls (our daughter owns and uses all these books—gender doesn't really matter anymore) with a lot of ideas for adults, too. They're great resources for doing it yourself.

The Joy of Rhubarb Cookbook, The Joy of Blueberries Cookbook If you have a lot of rhubarb (like we do) or have access to blueberries, these books give you a lot of ideas for how to move beyond the basic recipess.

Solar Living Sourcebook Most of the alternative energy books we use are now out of print. This sourcebook is a great place to start if you're thinking of augmenting your power system or going off grid.

Making the Best of BasicsThis was a very good place to start thinking about reducing our level of consumption. Still a very valuable resource for us.

The Art of Shen Ku This book may be kind of hard to take at times, but it's got a lot of very valuable information in it on almost any subject.

Alaska:

If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name, Heather Lende. This is the best way to catch the flavor of life in Haines. I think she does, by the way.

Exploring the Southeast Alaska: Dixon Entrance to Skagway ; Details to Every Harbor and Cove: Itineraries of the Inside Passage San Juan Islands to Glacier Bay, Don Douglass, Reanne Hemingway-Douglass

Alaska's Southeast, 9th Edition: Touring the Inside Passage, Sarah Eppenbach, Michelle Gurney

Discover Southeast Alaska With Pack & Paddle, Margaret Piggott

Discovering Wild Plants If you're an Alaskan, this is a book you should own. Foods and medicines are all around us for the gathering.

Guide to East Pacific Rockfishes and Guide to Northast Pacific Flat Fishes. There's more to eat out there than salmon and halibut. This book helps you figure out what it is you've just caught!

Birds of Alaska

Cooking Alaskan Recipes by and for real Alaskans.

Tracking Animals in Snow This has been a very helpful resource for us, identifying who's around, either in the snow or the mud.

Field Guide to Mammal Tracking in North America. Many people agree this is the best tracking book.

Movies:

Other Topics (a very small sampling) We Find Interesting:
Benjamin Franklin We can't recommend this one highly enough. Excellent overview of the greatest American, with excellent actors bringing his writings and correspondence to life.

Walking with Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Beasts We love dinosaurs, and this series is the closest you'll get to seeing the real thing. The computer animation is incredible! We bought all of these individually before they combined them into this set. Wish we'd waited, but then, how could we?

When Dinosaurs Roamed America The animation's not as good as the Walking With . . . series, but the program's great.

The Future is Wild So, what might animals look like when the ones we know are as dead as the dinosaurs? This is a very intriguing series.

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