I recently re-picked this book up from my library (I picked it up once before but had to return it before I finished). The book Made from Scratch by Jenna Wogenrich is subtitled "Discovering the pleasures of a handmade life." This isn't an intense DIY kind of book--if that isn't really your thing. This book is more of a memoir of a young woman who decides to rent a farm to live on when she moves to Idaho for her IT job rather than renting an apartment. This book chronicles her experiences and the pleasures she finds in doing so.
The book is not chronological but based on subject. On chapter will be about keeping chickens, one will be on beekeeping, one on gardening, one on mountain music. Each chapter begins with the author talking about her personal introduction to that aspect of homemade living, and her experiences with it. She had some great successes and epic failures and shares them all alike. She makes some good friends as well, learning how much handmade living involves community. The second half of each chapter is a toe-dip of beginner's information to get started in that venture yourself. As a long-time homemaker and city homesteader most of the "instructional information" was below my own level of expertise. This was fine because I could easily skip to the beginning of the next chapter and bypass the how-to section.
The one chapter that totally captured my attention (I even read the how-to part of the chapter) was her chapter on work-dogs. At the beginning of the chapter she writes about taking her two sled dogs out on fresh snow, sledding--in the Yukon definition of the word- on her property. I read with fascination the process of training dogs to carry packs and pull sleds. And I have to say, that for the first time (to Jeremy's great joy) I could actually see us getting a dog once we had some property. One of my big arguments has always been that they don't provide me anything--like wool or eggs. But I would love having an animal that could help out with work like that. You know. . . if we lived somewhere that had work to do.
This book was really fun to read since each chapter was on a different subject. That made it easy to pick up and put down as well. I would also say that because of the chapter layout (where the first half is her personal story and the second half is the how-to) that is is even good for people that aren't interested in the how to, but are interested in reading a clever retelling of the ups and downs of learning to live made from scratch.
