5 Acres & A Dream The Sequel

So full disclosure, I was given this book to review by Leigh Tate. We sometimes email each other about different things so I would class her as a blogging friend, but I only agreed to review it if I could be completely honest. I had planned to buy the book anyway as I had enjoyed the first. 

I'll start by saying that this is certainly a sequel. I'd recommend you either read the first book first or at least follow her blog or have read some of her other books. 

I went for a long time of reading pretty much every gardening, homesteading, smallholding, alternative living book out there but I got completely fed up with how-to guides or books preaching about how I should be doing something. I loved Leigh's first book because it wasn't one of those, and her second book follows on in the same way. 

Book Review - 5 Acres & A Dream

I've got a lot of books on smallholdings and homesteads but this is the first one I've read from a fellow blogger. 

It's written by Leigh Tate who has the blog "5 Acres & A Dream", its a blog that I visit regularly and I enjoy seeing what she and her husband do with the same sized piece of land over in the US.  

The book is well written, easy to read and broken into sensible chapters. Certain things in it have really given me food for thought - seeing things like how their master plan changed through the years of being there made me wish I'd drawn up more definite plans for here on paper so I could alter them as ideas and needs change.

One chapter I really enjoyed was about food self-sufficiency for animals. This is something that most books skip over, but if you really want your own patch of land to completely support you then it's no good bringing in feed for the animals the whole time. And although they've no where near cracked it in terms of animals feed she shares all their failures and what they're planning to do next.

The book isn't a "how to" or a "guide" but more of the story of how they came to be in the position they're in and the way they are tackling each issue of self sufficiency. I could see that Leigh has a same kind of approach to self sufficiency as I do, whilst still paying the bills and mortgage, and I guess that's part of what makes it so appealing to me.

If you enjoy her blog, then you'll enjoy this book.