The Practical Homestead
by Paul Heiney
Published by DK Books
www.dk.com
The Practical Homestead by Paul Heiney, Published by DK Books is probably the worst volume I have ever seen by anybody in the Homesteading, Prep/Survivalist genre. It is nicely done as all DK books are, with lots of pictures and glossy type pages in its 192 page softcover bindings.
So if it looks so nice and is well presented, where does it go wrong? Starting on the front cover. It states that it is the “The backyard handbook for growing food, raising animals & nurturing your land.” If a person used this book as a handbook for creating a homestead, I would imagine all the animals would die and the person would starve. Similar books by this publisher are ok overview books. They also tend to be European based as all the pictures tend to look to be from across the Atlantic.
Upon further review, I found that this book was previously sold twelve years previous as Country Life. This is a much more suitable title. I can see that they wanted to jump on the Homestead bandwagon and sell a freshened up book but this misleads a potential buyer that this book is something that it is not. Country Life explains the book a lot better. It is a nice overview of a small/family farming operation. It has very little to do with a backyard, unless you live on acres of land and even then, is not the handbook it says it is.
The only thing keeping this from being a total failure for those who might be reading my blog is that it is nicely done. I suggest only picking it up at a library as it will not be a huge help on the homestead.
Prepping on the Cheap Grade: D-
