Contents

Preface
Introduction

Part 1
GETTING THE MOST FROM FRESH FOOD

1. Setting Up the Homestead Kitchen
2. Fresh Vegetables: Harvesting, Handling, Cooking
3. Fresh Fruit: Harvesting, Handling, Cooking
4. Grains and Beans
5. Homemade Sweeteners: Honey, Maple Syrup, and Apple Cider Syrup
6. Eggs, Birds, and Rabbits
7. Fresh Milk
8. Meat: Goat, Lamb, Pork, and Beef

1. Cold Storage
2. Freezing
3. Canning: Boiling-Water-Bath and Pressure Canning
4. Drying
5. Pickling
6. Making Fruit Preserves
7. Culturing Milk and Making Cheese
8. Curing Meats and Making Simple Sausage

1. Breakfast and Egg Dishes
2. Vegetable, Cheese, and Bean Dishes
3. Poultry and Meat Dishes
4. Desserts and Baked Goods

Before becoming an editor at Storey Publishing, Carleen Madigan was managing editor of Horticulture magazine and lived on an organic farm outside Boston, Massachusetts, where she learned the homesteading skills contained in The Backyard Homestead. She enjoys gardening, hiking, foraging, baking, spinning wool, and knitting.

From a quarter of an acre, you can harvest 1400 eggs, 50 pounds of wheat, 60 pounds of fruit, 2000 pounds of vegetables, 280 pounds of pork, and 75 pounds of nuts.

Put your backyard to work. Enjoy fresher, organic, better-tasting food all the time. The solution is as close as your own backyard. Grow the vegetables and fruits your family loves; keep bees; raise chickens, goats, or even a cow. The Backyard Homestead shows you how it's done. And when the harvest is in, you'll learn how to cook, preserve, cure, brew, or pickle the fruits of your labor.

The indispensable guide to food self-sufficiency: learn how to milk a goat, prune a fruit tree, dry herbs, make dandelion wine, bake whole-grain bread, tap a maple tree, make fresh mozzarella, brew beer, mill grains for flour, save seeds for next season, and a whole lot more.