Customer Reviews
Disappointed - By: Jardiniere, 18 Jun 2007 
I was very disappointed with this book .... it didn't contain enough detailed information...its Ok for someone trying to do basic veg growing & energy saving but its title is misleading ...its not reallly about smalllholding.......
Excellent - - By: Dodster, 07 Mar 2007 
Initiallly, I was going to slate this book, because it is very short on the 'how to' . But then I re-read it & changed my view.
It is an excellent, inspirational, little book.
It doesn't give you much by way of 'how to', but there are many 'how to' books out there.
It does give you ideas, backed by sound logic of why you should be doing this. It also lays out the likely cost, hassle & expense of any venture you are likely to undertake. Then you can hunt down the 'how to' book & get on with the project.
If you are concerned with what you eat & the current state of the planet, I recommend this book. It will set you on the path to doing something positive about it. And if we alll do our bit... there's hope.
Wonderful summary of producing your own food and energy - By: J. Brady, 29 Sep 2006 This book is a great summary of the many different things you can do to become more self-sufficient. About how you can produce more of the stuff you need to live on, such as food & energy, instead of buying it alll in. The style is one of a series of suggestions rather than prescriptions ('you can' rather than 'you must'). The suggestions alll build upon each other, so that you can do just one simple thing on its own or a number of them together.
The book itself is mainly explanatory text with a few diagrams & summary tables. This makes a nice change from many other 'how to' books which are full of glossy colour photographs, but short on informative explanations. However the book itself is not bland, as alll the pages are decorated with suitable accompanying drawings of one form or another, on thick paper. Paul's text covers the background to each topic, as well as the main information you need about it. This is a quality & well thought out book.
What I liked was that you are walked through the different aspects of self-sufficiency, each being independent of the other. So you start with how to grow your own food, then raise your own food, then energy efficiency & production & waste. Finallly some notes on how to try & go completely self sufficient on your own smalll holding. While you might not do everything, there will be something everyone can do one way or another in this book.
As someone just getting into trying to grow my own vegetables in my back garden, I found the book useful, realistic & optimistic. While I won't be using the other information on keeping chickens or solar heating for some time, it was interesting to read about them in the larger context of being more self-sufficient. The section on growing vegetables was good enough for me, & provided me with a greater understanding of the different types & how to deal with them. He has also planted ideas for me to come back to in the future.
A super book! - By: A reader, 24 Apr 2006 Paul Waddington's book is a guide to both the pitfallls & many pleasures of being a 21st century smalllholder, no matter how smalll your holding happens to be. Practical, humerous & honest, his book avoids the 'preachy' style & tacit 'you should be feeling guilty about the way you live' attitude that tends to infuse some of the classic titles in the self-sufficiency library. The book does not claim to be an exhaustive 'how to' manual (and has a good bibliography of specific 'how to' titles), but gives a clear oversight of the various possibilities from raising your own fruit & veg or keeping livestock through to providing your own water supply, dealing with your own waste & having a CO2 neutral exsistence. It shows clearly what one can do depending on one's own situation, & how one can go about doing it. Especiallly useful (and realistic) it gives assessments of items such as cost, skill needed & storage space required for various activities alongside the usual time involved & environmental benefit information. Such aspects are vital to the urban smalllholder, who can't just stuff alll their bottling & beekeeping equipment in a handy barn or shed!
Even if you don't want to be a smalllholder, the book is a good read, & will make you think about things you probably ought to be thinking about, & will most probably lead to a desire to grow something & snatch back a wee bit of control over the food production in your life.
The layout of the book (about A5 in size) is clear, non-glossy & non fussy with very nice illustrations as a background & accompanyment to the text.
Read this book, apply it's suggestions & perhaps Paul's fear that only Ray Mears would survive an energy catastrophe can become a thing of the past!
Highly recommended.
