Craftsmanship & DIY

Reducing your impact on the planet while saving money with "low-tech" projects accessible to everyone is possible! This book offers 16 projects for the garden and home that are easy to achieve at a low cost, suitable for both beginners and experienced DIY enthusiasts: sprouter, Norwegian pot, solar dryer and oven, mobile hutch, birdhouse, composter, as well as insulating the water heater, hanging clothesline, shower water recovery for toilets, dry toilets... projects to recycle waste, save energy and water, or even welcome biodiversity in the garden. This book, written by Roland Dutrey, a craftsman, specialized eco-construction facilitator, low-tech pioneer, and DIY enthusiast who has transformed his own home into a low-energy building, is an updated version, in a modernized layout, of the book "15 clever ecological DIY projects" (2012, 14,000 copies sold).

Living in harmony with nature, like the Native Americans or our ancestors in Europe: a wildest dream? Let's relearn primitive techniques, a source of irreplaceable autonomy, and the dream becomes reality. Through the pages, ''Arts de vie sauvage'' introduces a progressive immersion and allows to acquire the essential, precious, and original gestures. Making fire, crafting nets, bows, and arrows, and then, setting off! Kim Pasche and Bernard Bertrand invite us to share their experiences and treasures, those gifts of nature born from chance encounters and the joy of living humbly.

With photovoltaics, small wind turbines are one of the simplest ways to produce your own electricity. In this book, Tristant Urtizberea gives us all the keys to install a high-performance and affordable small wind turbine at home.

How not to be amazed at the sight of a dragonfly? Creating a pond is a powerful lever to restore biodiversity and introduce children to the beauty of nature! It is also one of the best ways to create water reserves for watering the garden and vegetable patch. Frédéric Proniewski presents all the techniques for simply creating a natural pond, a water reservoir, or a swimming pond. A significant part of the book is devoted to the animals and plants that will enrich this new environment.

Having a productive vegetable garden and a beautiful ornamental garden for next to nothing and gardening almost for free is possible thanks to this book! You will find advice on how to find a small piece of land if you don't have one – such as family, community, shared gardens or those in your neighborhood – the basics of gardening based on recovery, recycling, resourcefulness, water management, seed and plant exchanges, tips for making everything yourself – potting soil, compost, green manure, producing your own seeds, seedlings (including trees), cuttings, natural home care for your plants using ash, comfrey, nettle, horsetail or urine – but also making small, ecological, clever and aesthetic DIY projects like pathways, wooden braided borders, fences, mobile greenhouse, pallet planters, or privacy screens.

The world's richest soils are the "black lands" of the Amazon, or terra preta. Ancient populations incorporated a particular form of charcoal, called "biochar," into these soils. Simply adding this powdered carbonized plant matter to your soil in the presence of very little oxygen and seeded with microorganisms will improve its structure, reduce the need for fertilizers, counteract the effects of toxic metals, stimulate plant growth by storing water and nutrients, and increase microbial biodiversity. Furthermore, its controlled production is not only very low in pollution but also contributes to carbon sequestration in the soil. Jeff Cox teaches you about biochar, how to use it effectively, and even how to produce it yourself, step by step, in your garden or in a stove. For those who want to take the adventure further, there are instructions on how to build the ultimate biochar stove.

If you have a greenhouse – or are planning to install one – and you want to use it all year round without increasing your ecological footprint, you will find in this book more than twenty techniques to improve your greenhouse and make it bioclimatic. Written by Aymeric Lazarin, an ecologist by training, ecology teacher, and nursery-landscaper, this book provides you with all the advice for adjustments that take into account the context, the model of your greenhouse, your DIY skills, your finances, and your needs – you will find both simple and more complex adjustments. The projects are classified according to the nature of the desired intervention: enhancing solar radiation during the day, increasing thermal mass to withstand cold, orienting your greenhouse towards the south, installing a plant barrier or a north-facing wall, creating a double partition, creating warm layers, creating air currents, digging a pond under the greenhouse, whitening the walls with lime... to address both heat, cold, and humidity! Regulatory reminders, fundamental principles of bioclimatism, and reminders about plants' heat needs are also presented. Everything you need to cultivate in a greenhouse all year round without increasing your energy expenses for heating in winter!

Imagine yourself with small and large utensils (blender, fridge, cooking...) without electricity or oil? Everyday low-tech objects that can be easily made and repaired, all while taking care of the planet and humans? Alizée Perrin and Yoann Vandendriessche propose making a sprouter, desert fridge, pantry, Norwegian pot, pedal blender... Useful objects, sometimes full of poetry, that help us reduce our domestic energy consumption. Accessible to everyone, even to novice handymen and city dwellers!

Alizée Perrin and Yoann Vandendriessche invite us to save even more energy by making low-tech objects with direct energy sources. On the agenda: solar oven, wind turbine or rocket stove, but also human-powered motor, wood stove... Each project is accompanied by a step-by-step guide with clear drawings and instructions, accessible to everyone, even to beginner DIY enthusiasts.

During the first lockdown, while lacking materials to practice her artistic activities, Lucie Broisin Schoch becomes aware that she is using polluting products. Necessity is the mother of invention: she realizes that nature is full of materials and colors. From then on, she becomes passionate about making watercolors, brushes, charcoal, pastels, plant-based inks, and wild palettes. This guide offers the opportunity to become self-sufficient in the production of artistic mediums, to learn how to harvest and identify natural resources, and to reconnect with ancient techniques. Beautiful and ecological!

Working in silence, amidst the beauty of trees... what if happiness was in the woods? This practical guide is the first to address modern hand logging techniques, accessible to everyone. Making firewood without petrol, i.e. without relying on a chainsaw, is better for the climate, efficient, economical, good for health and morale. This book brings together techniques and practical advice on choosing the right tools and maintaining them, knowing which tree to cut, how to split it, and taking care of your back with lumberjack yoga! You will also discover all the uses of this living and precious resource that is firewood.

A low-tech and ecological method to learn pottery, without much material. With this book, everyone can gather clay from the surrounding nature, prepare it, shape it without a wheel, and then fire it in a wood-burning kiln. These techniques are simple and will allow beginners to get started. Amateur or professional ceramists will reconnect with gestures dating back to Prehistory. Various types of easy-to-make kilns are presented, as well as clear step-by-step instructions for learning pottery. A way to reconnect with the elements while creating useful and beautiful objects.

All multiplication methods illustrated step by step. Sowing, cuttings, grafting, layering, explained in a very simple way and illustrated step by step. All garden plants (ornamental, vegetable, orchard) and indoor plants. Ideal for beginners, with economical and easy-to-implement and successful techniques.

False, sickle, scythe: yesterday's tools for today's uses The scythe is economical, silent, ecological, and just as effective, if not more so, than lawnmowers or brush cutters... but its handling requires real expertise to use it correctly and effortlessly. This practical guide, highly illustrated and based on the author's experience, provides all the information to make your scythe, sickle, or sickle an effective and enjoyable tool, whether for mowing grass, clearing brush, or harvesting hay and cereals.

Do you dream of becoming self-sufficient in electricity? Solar power is the simplest and most efficient method to achieve this. Convinced that there will be no transition without energy reduction, Tristan Urtizberea offers a comprehensive and accessible guide to self-build your installation and generate your electricity. Basic concepts, sunshine calculation, installation on a roof, a converted van, a tiny house, or a boat: the author describes all the possibilities that solar panels can offer.

Hemp, wool, nettle... Convinced of the importance of reviving ancestral traditions and valuing local resources, Camille Brabant & Naomi Rossignol transmit the pleasure of spinning yarn from natural plant materials (flax, hemp, or nettle), and animal materials (wool, horsehair).

Sowing, planting, transplanting, grafting, monitoring, thinning, mulching, treating, stimulating, pruning, watering, cleaning, propagating, harvesting, cutting, weeding, picking up, digging, eliminating, caring, burying fertilizers, installing supports, picking, removing faded flowers, installing nesting boxes, putting on winter veils... There are many tasks to be done in the organic garden, season after season, and it's easy to get lost! Following Terre Vivante's cheat sheets on vegetables, pests and diseases, fruits and berries, and herbs, this new addition to the collection focuses on seasonal tasks, detailed every two weeks. Discover throughout the year what needs to be done in the vegetable garden, orchard, greenhouse, or ornamental garden, and efficiently take action! With this cheat sheet that's easy to slip into your pocket, with its essential, clear, and concise information, organize yourself so you don't forget anything and know what to do... when it needs to be done!

Games and learning in the woods for budding adventurers The first book on Forest School pedagogy Games and learning in the forest are becoming increasingly important in children's education, whether in England (Forest School), Denmark (friluftsliv), Germany (Waldschule), or in Canada and the United States. In France, interest in outdoor learning is booming.

Produced from waste, biogas is an energy source that can be used for cooking, heating, running a generator, or fueling a vehicle. With this practical manual, accessible to all, learn how to set up a biogas installation at a low cost. All you need is to find organic material and have a minimum amount of space for the installation. The author shares their experiences and provides the necessary guidelines for self-building a biogas production system and the techniques for its use, including a functional biogas purifier allowing its use in a CNG-equipped vehicle. A new step towards energy self-sufficiency!

At the plane and at the planing bench In this era of dependence on all-electricity, this unique guide is a breath of fresh air for all lovers of handmade craftsmanship. Beautifully illustrated, it presents simple plans and detailed tutorials for step-by-step creation of "your" benches – those that will be tailored to your needs – and various personalized green wood objects: small utensils, bowl, ladder, stool, tool handles, basket splitter, etc. All the ingredients are here to satisfy the most demanding and succeed in this new artisanal endeavor, whether for a new initiation or to enhance your skills. This Guide to woodworking by hand, at the plane and at the planing bench, is an indispensable tool to regain true creative autonomy.