B2B Book Reviews 1: Homesteading, Herbal Medicine, and Homeschooling

When I was a senior in high school I took an aptitude test. I scored highest in music and home economics, lowest in police work and sales! As you can imagine, that means that trying to promote anything (most especially my own books) is truly difficult for me. The Back To Basics Living Bundle folks put together a really nice marketing package for their affiliates, but instead of presenting you with a more typical sales appeal, I’m going to do what feels comfortable for me, i.e. a series of book reviews from this year’s bundle. So from one book lover to another, here are some of the B2B books that I really enjoyed.

Homesteading

There are many homesteading resources in the bundle, and for those who are looking to get started, this one by Carmen Nuland is a really great little book. 8 Steps to Homestead Beginnings: How to defeat overwhelm when starting a homestead talks about the reasons for homesteading and then helps you develop a vision for your future homestead. It takes you through evaluating your resources, planning, goal setting, getting started, identifying obstacles, tracking expenses and income, and review. It includes all the things that need to be thought through in order to create a plan and take the first steps toward success.

Herbal Medicine

For those of you interested herbs and natural healing, Kami McBride’s How To Make Healing Herbal Oils is a really nice addition to the bundle. In it she introduces the benefits of using herbal oils, and then teaches you how to make your own. It starts with the basics of making infused oils with either fresh or dried herbs, then shows you how to make two useful oils from lavender and comfrey. She details her seven favorite herbs for infused oils, plus gives recipes for making a variety of healing blends: Aches and Pains, Bumps and Bruises, Relaxation, Scrapes and Scratches, Headache Oil, Healing Bath Oil Blend, Luxury and Massage Oil Blend. She also includes a chapter on preserving your oils, plus a list of resources.

Homeschooling

One of the homeschooling resources is a set of five unit studies from Carol J. Alexander’s Lessons from the Homestead series. She has included:

• Lessons from the Bee Hive
• Lessons from the Garden
• Lessons from the Hen House
• Lessons from the Seed Catalog
• Lessons from the Tree House

These parent guides help you adapt your own homestead resources to a variety of grade levels and subjects: math, science, geography, language arts, art, home economics. Each booklet includes a vocabulary list and resources.

My favorite in the series is Lessons from the Tree House. It uses the unschooling approach which is such a natural fit with homesteading. In her introduction, Carol cites a work which states that American children typically only get 30 minutes per week in unstructured outdoor time, whereas they spend over 30 hours each week in front of some kind of electronic screen. She writes, “Those sobering statistics compelled me to go outside and take pictures of their fort for future scrapbooks. While out admiring their work, I couldn’t help but think of all they learned while working on this project.”

Divided into The Design Phase, The Building Phase, and The Enjoyment Phase, this little eBook helps parents develop both academic as well as life skills in their children. I only wish it was available when I was homeschooling my kids!

The Back To Basics Living Bundle will be available through January 22 and includes 73 homesteading, self-reliance, natural living, and preparedness resources for $29.97.

BONUS: If you buy the bundle through my blog, I’ll gift you with your choice of one eVolume from my The Little Series of Homestead How-Tos. After you place your order simply email me at 5acresandadream @ mail. com, and let me know which one you’d like. I’ll send you a link to download a free copy.

Tomorrow I’ll review three really good books from the bundle that deal with food preservation and storage.