A practical guide to yield.

The year-round aspect is especially good. Fermenting and sprouting in addition to the veggie garden.

A somewhat different tact here, a general guide to "traditional" skills. Entertaining and illuminating. Good for any DIYer.

A revelation! Year-round veggie gardening without a heated greenhouse. Here in Minnesota, you're down to mache in the middle of the winter, but you can grow something!

Okay, personally I don't want or need chickens, but this, I'm told, is the best current urban chicken keeping book. So there!

An updated classic for small space vegetable gardening. Invaluable!

If you want more than just chickens...

The Dummies books are hit or miss. Here I'd call it a decent book, but perhaps not essential.

Root cellars.

The original year-round gardening book.

An urban homestead doesn't need to be organic, but it's likely to be of interest.

Beekeeping. There's a huge literature of apiculture out there. This is a good starting point.

Fantastic bread with very little work. It'll have you baking bread every day or every other day.

Make your own wine. The focus here is on genuinely good wines.

Make beer as well. This is more common, and commonly successful than winemaking at home. Good starter book.

Covers the fermentation and other non-canning, non-freezing techniques. Encyclopedic!

Good recent canning and freezing book.

Almost forgot cheesemaking! Easier than you'd imagine. Good stuff.

Seed saving. An important way of preserving the good veggies.