In the past two days

I have read Carleen Madigan's The Backyard Homestead [subtitled: Produce all the food you need on just a quarter acre!]. I won't be buying this one, but may check it out from the library frequently. This book overviews a whole lot without actually giving you the information you need to complete one project outlined within. 

Seriously, she misses steps egregiously. This is a case of highly specialized education forgetting that the target audience of beginners doesn't know what temperate zones are, nor how to get from roasting ?malted barley? to 'unhopped malt concentrate'. She does, however, provide some handy charts indicating how much common plants will yield in what space and how much is needed to provide all the needs of one average person, so you can figure out how much of things to grow by scale of family. [The reason I may borrow it frequently, or perhaps just see if I can get these pages on googlebooks]

If I were to classify The Backyard Homestead as a reference type, I'd call it a first two weeks of a semester book with followup books for each major section each subsequent week. I figured out what I'm interested in, now I just have to figure out how to implement these forms of self-sufficiency.