The Rugged Life: The Modern Homesteading Guide to Self-Reliance

by Clint Emerson

Become self-reliant, live off the land, and be prepared for the unexpected in this modern guide to self-sufficiency and homesteading from New York Times bestselling author, retired Navy SEAL, and survival skills expert Clint Emerson.

“Add The Rugged Life by former Navy SEAL Clint Emerson to your library today and get on the path to independence and self-sufficiency.”—Jack Carr, Navy SEAL Sniper and #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Devil’s Hand

Clint Emerson is the go-to expert for surviving the first minutes, hours, and days of a crisis. Now, in The Rugged Life, he works with modern homesteading experts to show you how to thrive over the long-term—for months, years, or even a lifetime—by being prepared and self-sufficient. 
 
You can live the Rugged Life completely off-the-grid by farming your own food and using the waste from your toilet for compost. Or, you can live it by adding solar panels to your suburban home and keeping chickens and bees in your backyard. You can even live the Rugged Life in a city by simply gathering the salad for tonight’s dinner from your windowsill garden. Each of these homesteading and prepper long-term survival skills stand on their own, and taken together, they can help you design the independent life you want for yourself and your family.
 
• Be your own homesteader: Make your own shampoo and face creams; pickle and ferment food; make natural bug spray and cleaning products; smoke meat; tan a hide
• Be your own protector: Create a last-resort emergency plan; gather medicinal plants; protect against dangerous animals and threats; understand survival first aid
• Be your own provider: Hunt for game; make a gillnet; set snares; forage for wild foods; build a rabbit hutch; ice fish; butcher a pig; keep bees
• Be your own builder: Retrofit a van; set up solar, microhydro, and geothermal power; create a water catchment and filtration system; build a shipping container home
• Be your own farmer: Grow a victory garden; build a greenhouse; waffle garden to save space and resources; build a root cellar; can, dry, and store crops; operate a tractor
 
With hundreds of step-by-step, illustrated, self-sustaining skills and projects, The Rugged Life is for everyone who feels they can use more adventure, freedom, and choice in their life—everyone ready to get out of their comfort zone and try new, hard, profoundly rewarding things.

• ISBN10: 0593235193
• ISBN13: 9780593235195
• Publish Date: 10 May 2022
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Rodale Books
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 272
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780593235195

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally posted on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

The Rugged Life is an interesting and worthwhile collection of self-suffiency and survival tips collected by Clint Emerson. Released 10 May 2022 by Rodale Books, it's 272 pages and is available in paperback, spiral bound, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

The chapters are arranged thematically: building, power, farmer, butcher, hunter, homemaker, protector, RTO (news & communication), first responder, and handyman. Each of these sections are standalone and can be read in any order. There is no required cohesiveness to the content and it can be read and accessed as needed. To that end, the book does not include an index. I therefore recommend the electronic format for ease of finding specific info more easily.

This is a very broad and general book. It's a good 'starting off' guide, a 'dreaming' guide; it's emphatically not a specific how-to guide. If it errs, it does so by trying to be everything to everyone. Anyone actually going into homesteading will hopefully have a solid workable plan for getting from lifestyle A to whatever level of self-sufficiency is desirable. The author has a competent but stern voice and I found the emphasis on protecting property and fighting and weapon making a bit macho for my taste.

It's very tempting to see pictures of healthy gardens and adorable lambs and healthy beehives and want to be a part of that lifestyle. (I did & do!) The guides rarely show pictures of neighbor's pet-dog ravaged lambs, nosema infested empty beehives, or flattened gardens with more weeds than produce and production that wouldn't feed a toddler. This book could bridge the gap between dreams and reality. He definitely doesn't sugar coat things.

The emphasis here was more on protection and basic survival than smallholding but there is a fair bit of useful info in capsule form. The graphics are simple with line drawn illustrations and text boxes with tips and very short info bites throughout.

Four stars. This would be a good choice for the smallholder's library, people who want to live a more self-sufficient lifestyle and are at the planning stage, and for people who are interested in building a survival skill set.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.