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10 Best Homesteading Books (2026)

The best homesteading books range from thick country-skills references to narrow manuals on hens or canning, and the right first one depends on your land. A town lot with room for four raised beds needs a different shelf than ten acres with a barn, so size up the ground before you buy.

The Encyclopedia of Country Living is the one book to own if you plan to do a bit of everything, from cheese to wood-stove baking to goats. If your homestead is a suburban yard and you want a plan for this season, Mini Farming gives you beds, rotations and yields on a single quarter acre.

Most first-year homesteaders face the same question: learn broadly from one big reference, or go deep on the skill that pays off first, usually vegetables, eggs or food storage. The books below cover both routes, plus one for designing a whole property over decades.

1.The Encyclopedia of Country Living, 50th Anniversary Edition: The Original Manual for Living Off the Land & Doing It Yourself - by Carla Emery

The Encyclopedia of Country Living, 50th Anniversary Edition: The Original Manual for Living Off the Land & Doing It Yourself
Carla Emery's encyclopedia runs past 900 pages and jumps from 20-minute cheese to wood-stove baking, beekeeping and keeping pigs, all in the voice of someone who did the work herself. The tone is chatty and practical rather than polished. Keep it on the kitchen counter: it is the book you will open most often in your first five years on the land.
$21.99$29.95-27%
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2.The Backyard Homestead: Produce All the Food You Need on Just a Quarter Acre!

The Backyard Homestead: Produce All the Food You Need on Just a Quarter Acre!
Grains, vegetables, dairy animals, laying hens and honey bees all fit inside the quarter-acre plan of The Backyard Homestead, which turns each project into a short illustrated how-to. Where Emery's encyclopedia rambles, this Storey title stays tightly organized by task. It works best for someone with a modest yard who wants to see how many food projects can share one lot.
$13.99$14.99-7%
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3.Backyard Homesteading, Second Revised Edition: A Back-To-Basics Guide for Self-Sufficiency - by David Toht

Backyard Homesteading, Second Revised Edition: A Back-To-Basics Guide for Self-Sufficiency
Written with a typical suburban lot in mind, David Toht's Backyard Homesteading takes you from fruit and milk to soap, beer and wine, and this revised second edition adds pollinators and a longer chickens chapter. Toht worked for years as a contractor before writing about homes. Choose it when the building side of a backyard homestead worries you more than the growing side.
$17.99$24.99-28%
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4.The Resilient Farm and Homestead, Revised and Expanded Edition: 20 Years of Permaculture and Whole Systems Design - by Ben Falk

The Resilient Farm and Homestead, Revised and Expanded Edition: 20 Years of Permaculture and Whole Systems Design
A degraded Vermont hillside is the test plot for Ben Falk's The Resilient Farm and Homestead, which follows two decades of turning cold, poor ground into a working, food-producing property. Falk thinks in water flow, slope and soil before crops, and this revised edition expands that design approach. It suits a buyer with real acreage and a long horizon far better than someone planning their first raised bed.
$32.99$44.95-27%
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5.Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre - by Brett L. Markham

Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre
Brett Markham's system in Mini Farming aims to grow most of a family's food on a quarter acre through raised beds, careful crop rotation, seed saving and steady composting. The full-color charts and tables make the yield math easy to follow. If The Backyard Homestead shows what fits on that quarter acre, this one shows how to make it produce, which suits a gardener ready to treat beds like a small business.
$13.99$18.95-26%
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6.Homesteading for Beginners: All the Tools You Need to Thrive Long Term - by Lisa Lombardo

Homesteading for Beginners: All the Tools You Need to Thrive Long Term
Homesteading for Beginners, Lisa Lombardo's 2026 starter guide, breaks the homestead into separate projects, from fruit trees to bees and chickens, and helps you test each one against your budget, space and time. Planning templates, checklists and planting schedules fill much of the book. It is the gentlest start on the list for someone who has never grown a tomato.
$12.99$16.99-24%
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7.The Self-Sufficiency Garden: Feed Your Family and Save Money: The #1 Sunday Times Bestseller - by Huw Richards, Sam Cooper

The Self-Sufficiency Garden: Feed Your Family and Save Money: The #1 Sunday Times Bestseller
The Self-Sufficiency Garden grew out of a single plot that Huw Richards and Sam Cooper planned to give a family of four five portions of vegetables a day, with every month of that plan written down. Hot beds and polytunnels stretch the season. Pick it when vegetables are the whole homestead for now, since it says little about animals compared with the Toht or Storey guides.
$15.99$21.99-27%
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8.Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens, 4th Edition: Breed Selection, Facilities, Feeding, Health Care, Managing Layers & Meat Birds - by Gail Damerow

Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens, 4th Edition: Breed Selection, Facilities, Feeding, Health Care, Managing Layers & Meat Birds
Breed choice, coop design, feed, chick care and illness all get full chapters in Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens, and the 4th edition covers meat birds as well as layers. Gail Damerow has kept chickens for over forty years, and it shows in the health sections. Buy it before the chicks arrive, because it answers the flock questions that broad homestead books skip.
$17.99$24.95-28%
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9.The All New Ball Book of Canning and Preserving: Over 350 of the Best Canned, Jammed, Pickled, and Preserved Recipes - by Ball Home Canning Test Kitchen

The All New Ball Book of Canning and Preserving: Over 350 of the Best Canned, Jammed, Pickled, and Preserved Recipes
Water-bath and pressure canning sit beside pickling, fermenting, dehydrating and smoking in the Ball book, organized by method rather than by crop. Every recipe was tested for safety by the brand behind the familiar glass jars. It is the canning manual a first-time preserver can trust when a bushel of tomatoes lands on the counter.
$20.99$27.99-25%
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10.Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables - by Mike Bubel, Nancy Bubel

Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables
Mike and Nancy Bubel cover close to a hundred fruits and vegetables in Root Cellaring, with options that range from a dug cellar to cooler corners of an ordinary house. Storage like this keeps potatoes, carrots and apples through winter without a canner or electricity. Unlike the Ball book, it asks for almost no kitchen time, so it pays off for anyone growing big crops of roots.
$12.99$16.99-24%
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Plan your first homestead season

Start with the book that matches the land you have today, then add skill manuals as the flock, garden and pantry grow. For more practical guides on growing food and living lighter, browse more sustainable living books.

Frequently Asked Questions

Far less than most people think. Mini Farming and The Backyard Homestead both build their plans around a quarter acre, and The Self-Sufficiency Garden plans vegetables for four people on a plot of about 125 square meters. More land only matters once you add grazing animals or an orchard.

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