We love curating helpful reading material for country living enthusiasts!
If you are looking for a variety of useful books on everything from starting a farming enterprise to planting crops to drawing horses, we highly recommend the Homestead Bookshelf as the place to find what you’re looking for. We have collected public domain classics, modern paperbacks, free extension service PDFs, and even a few books published by Homestead on the Range to help you learn important facts and skills.
New to our site? Allow us to recommend some of the books our readers purchase or download after visiting.
10. Vegetable Garden Planting Guide
Free PDF from Kansas State University. A wealth of information in four short pages! Includes vegetable yield estimates, planting information chart, a planting calendar, a troubleshooting guide, and tips for successful gardening.
9. The Weather Wizard’s 5-Year Weather Diary
Unfortunately, this diary appears to be out of print. We now recommend The Old Farmer’s Almanac Weather Notebook, a beautiful, sturdy four-year journal in full color. The Weather Notebook has room for recording current conditions, temperature, precipitation, wind speed, barometric pressure, humidity, and special weather or personal events. It also includes amazing photography, fascinating information on how weather works, and a daily dose of weather folklore.
8. 50 Tunes for Fiddle
While we don’t recommend limiting yourself to the songs that you can learn from sheet music, the excellent arrangements on the online audio that comes with this series make it a worthwhile tool for beginners.
7. Eastern Red-Cedar: Positives, Negatives and Management
Free PDF from the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation. Starts with a history of cedar expansion in the Great Plains, then proceeds with a description of the tree, including its range, life cycle, and pests. Positives and negatives of red cedars are explored next, followed by a discussion of management techniques.
6. 50 Tunes for Banjo
Like the fiddle book, this title includes pleasing instrumental arrangements of 50 bluegrass standards along with audio downloads.
5. Nutrient Requirements of Sheep and Goats
Free PDF from the Alabama Cooperative Extension System. Introductory material covers energy, protein, vitamins, minerals, and water. The rest of the download consists of tables comparing the daily nutritional requirements of sheep and goats in most stages of growth and reproduction.
4. 50 Tunes for Mandolin
Another title in the five-book 50 Tunes series. Like the others, this book of standards covers a variety of skill levels. Access to a free download of the audio is included.
3. Choosing a Breed of Cattle
Published by Homestead on the Range. Ready to take the confusion out of selecting the right cattle breed for your family? This book will walk you through the process of defining your expectations and then arm you with key information on 40 common cattle breeds. Free sample pages are available.
2. 50 Tunes for Guitar
Part of a great series of instrumental arrangements of bluegrass standards, useful for both lead and rhythm guitar. Includes guitar tab and access to free audio downloads of all the songs.
1. Beef Cattle Nutrition Series: Nutrient Requirement Tables
Free PDF from the University of Arkansas. These tables provide TDN requirements for beef cows, heifers, steers, and bulls of different sizes and stages of growth.
Helpful Resource
Books
Reviews of some of the most noteworthy titles on the Homestead Bookshelf, along with some reading challenges.
Homestead on the Range 