Book Talk Tuesday - A Peek into my Library

You still have time to enter the giveaway...it closes tonight and winner will be announced tomorrow morning.

On Food Storage Friday, I said I would do a post on some of my favorite books that I keep in my library on preparedness.  Oh dear!  I went and checked and took so many photos.  I hope that the few I picked out will give you a good place to start.  (I have more...)

I thought I would go through some of them and tell you WHY I picked these ones to show you, and WHY I keep them in my library, even though it is bursting at the seams.

OK, Gardening.  This had to be my first part because gardening holds a special passion and place in my heart.  When I was a young girl, my Mom would let us plant our own place in the large family garden.  I loved to tend my little plot to see what came up.  When I was older, I went to school and came away with a degree in Landscape Horticultural Management.  When we bought our first house (and our second) my DH knew that I needed a large yard and a garden plot. 

The books below are some of the very best for basic gardening. 

• We love to see the birds that visit our yard.  It is great for my boys to be able to identify them. 
• It is also wonderful for the boys (and Dh, who is a scout leader) to be able to identify the plants we can eat that grow wild.
• The Hole family are talented in the gardening dept.  The books below are invaluable resources.
• The last book in the series there is one of my text books from school.  We called it the "Green Bible".  It literally has every tree, how to grow it, what it is good for, and varieties of it that are propagated. 

 I call the next 5 books my "Go to" for Homesteading.

• The first book I found after many years of looking (for $5! at a second hand store) I finally acquired one for my personal library.  It is chock full of little tips, recipes, how-to's and more.
• The Back to Basics and Homesteading books below are similar, but have different things to them.  I especially like the plans to build the log cabin in the homesteading book.

•  The Wisdom series is amazing.  They are HUGE books.  I know you can't tell from the photo, but they are at least double the length of a regular book, and nice and fat.  The printing is small, the books are CHOCK FULL of stuff to explore.  For instance, the Country book tells things like how to slaughter a chicken, then it also tells how to raise bees and have a garden.  How to preserve your cow, and your produce.  How to make Lye from your ashes, and how to turn that into soap.  How to render tallow and make candles and soap from it.  Stuffed full of little tidbits, these books might be my favorite things.  :)

 I call a section of my library my "Tools" section.

• There is a beautifully illustrated book on tools that were used "way back when".  It is to show you what they look like, but the plans are so detailed you could make your own in a pinch.
• I have been interested in alternate ways of building a home for a while now and the next two books are good ones to help you achieve that.

 Finally, my Misc Section.

• I firmly believe that we need to raise our own animals.  There are a few series that are better than others for raising animals, and I love to read them.  This book is one of my favorite for the friendly way it just works its way through the information.
• Although the title is blunt, the Hell book is one of my very favorite preparedness books ever!  There are tips on how to purify water with just your tools on hand, how to build emergency places to dispose of human waste (in the city that is a bit tricky).  How to eat if you have no food (his grasshoppers and mice don't look appetizing at all!), how to use your rations wisely and prepare for any event.  It really is a total book. 
• I personally think that every library should have a Scout Handbook.  Then there are a few books I would also buy to go along with it.  Knots are important.  We use them all the time in survival (or even just tying a load down on a truck!).  There are also books similar to the Scout Handbook that are fun like, "The Boys Handy Book".  Old and out of print ones seem to be my favorite as they have skills in them that seem to be lost.

So, I hope you enjoyed your tour through some of my library.

How about you, what are your favorite books to keep in your preparedness section of your library?  I really want to know...I can always use some more....!

Cheers