You can just tell that Angela England, the author of Backyard Farming on an Acre (More or Less) is a get-it-done type of person. On a half acre of land she and her husband raise fruit, vegetables, bees, chickens for meat and eggs, goats, and 5 kids of the human variety. They produce 40% of all the food that they eat in a year – quite impressive for such a small piece of land. That’s really encouraging for those of us who don’t own acreage. And in Backyard Farming on an Acre (More or Less), she shows us how we can do it, too. She doesn’t make it sound easy, but she makes it sound doable with lots of hard work and dedication.
Her 414 page book covers a myriad of homesteading topics beginning with why backyard farming is a such a good idea. Topics include finding property and building, gardening, animal husbandry, preserving and preparing the harvest, and some fun things like brewing wine, making goat’s milk soap, and spinning and dyeing fiber. Angela is an encourager and makes us feel as if we, too, can do it. I appreciate the Resource section in the back of the book. If there is a topic she covers that you wish to explore in further depth, she provides sources for that information.
About a fourth of the book is dedicated to gardening, the area that most interests me. I’m pretty opinionated when it comes to gardening, and Angela passes muster – for the most part. I’m a bit of a zealot for no-dig gardening, and Angela does dig and even uses a rototiller once a year, but she is also very diligent to build soil, so I’ll forgive her this one indiscretion.
If you need some encouragement because your property is small, I highly recommend Backyard Farming on an Acre (More or Less) . It’s available here (affiliate link).
