Leave the tweeting to the birds . . . and enjoy a more  sustainable life   There's a lot we can learn from previous generations. The New  American Homestead teaches you simple survival skills that, in  an earlier time, were known and practiced by almost everyone. You  can join the new breed of American homesteaders with a different  concept of "living well" in a city, town, or suburb, a concept  based not on consumption but on self-sufficiency, not on reckless  extravagance but on thrift, and not on the rat race so much as on,  perhaps, the catnap.
  This book teaches you how to:
    -   Make wise choices in the design, planting, and maintenance of  your residential space, regardless of its size or location 
-   Produce your own food 
-   Integrate vegetables, herbs, and fruits with locally native  species and surrogates that contribute to the restoration of the  local ecosystem 
-   Acquire a deeper understanding of the continuously evolving  "livingscape" that you create for yourself, and of its relationship  to the ecosystem that nourishes and sustains all life 
-   Use your space in the sun to manage health problems, earn  supplemental income, and calm frazzled nerves