Amos Beiler · Lancaster County, PA Launch price $57 $37 30-day refund guarantee

A Plain Household AlmanacNo. I

They kept a house alive all winter on very little. Here’s the order they did it in.

Water before warmth. Warmth before food. Food before the rest.

Your grandfather could keep a house going all winter on forty dollars a month — not because he was tough, but because he knew the order of things. The water came before the stove, the stove before the shelf. One warm room beat six cold ones, a candle outlasted a battery, and a jar of beans put up in August was worth more in February than a twenty-dollar bill. Nobody wrote it down. You learned it standing next to someone who knew. This is the writing-down.

🔒 Launch price — $20 off until December 31, then $57

See what’s inside

Instant download · read it on your phone, tablet or computer, or print it at home · pay once, yours to keep

Amos Beiler at his kitchen table
The Old Ways Still Work, shown as a bound book on a farmhouse table
Digital edition · PDF · print it yourself if you like it on paper

I. The Whole Book

The whole household, in order — for $37.

21 chapters · 174 numbered sections · 324 pages · 21 printable cards

What you get:

  • The Old Ways Still Work — the full almanac: 21 chapters, 324 pages, 29 hand-drawn illustrations, every method with the by-eye way to know it’s right$57 $37
  • The large-print edition — the same book in big, easy type, for tired eyes and reading by lamplightIncluded
  • The 21 cards — every chapter on one printable page, to tack up by the door, the stove and the cellar stepsIncluded
  • The first hour, free chapter — yours to pass on to a neighborIncluded
  • You pay today, once$57 $37

🔒 Launch price — $20 off until December 31, then $57

One payment, no subscription. Your download opens the moment payment goes through.

30-day money-back guarantee. Read the first chapter, try one thing. If it isn’t what you hoped, write within 30 days and every dollar comes back.

🔒 Secure checkout by Stripe · cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay — we never see or store your card.

II. The Numbers

Same room. Same cold night. Ten times the cost — or a tenth of it.

Every heat source is a dollars-per-night number. Rank them and the decision makes itself. This is the table from chapter 7: one closed 12×14 room held at 55°F through a 14-hour night at 0°F outside.

Heat for one cold nightAbout
Seasoned wood in a woodstove$4
Coal$4
Kerosene, bought at the pump$7
Vent-free propane, 20-lb tank refills$11
Kerosene, bought in hardware-store jugs$17–22
Tealights (and the book explains why not)$37
1-lb propane cylinders$45

Typical 2026 U.S. prices, worked out on paper in section 7.11 so you can redo them for your own house and your own fuel. Yours will differ.

The whole first night — light, heat and two meals for a family of four in one room — comes to about $14 (section 1.8). The expensive night is never the candles. It’s the freezer opened every hour, the pipe in the north wall, the generator bought at the worst price of the year. The difference is the order.

III. What’s Inside

Six parts, in the order things fail.

When the power goes, a house loses things on a schedule: the grid, then water, then heat, then the shelves, then the money. The book is built on that line, so you always know what to do first.

Part I

The First Night

Survive tonight before you plan a winter.

  • The first hour, minute by minute — shut off, shut in, count people
  • What fails first in a country house, and in what order
  • The shelf that empties first, and what $50, $150 and $500 buy

Part II

Water

Nobody dies of hunger in three days. Everybody dies of thirst.

  • Reading land for water; pitcher pumps, bailers, cisterns, springs
  • Nine ways to make water safe — and what each one doesn’t remove
  • Gallons a day, the bucket toilet, and where 300 gallons actually go

Part III

Heat and Light

The part that decides whether you stay in the house.

  • Heating one room all winter — the blanket wall, sleeping low
  • Every heat source ranked by cost per night, and what never to burn indoors
  • Tallow and beeswax candles, oil lamps, wood, charcoal and ash

Part IV

Food

The longest part, because it was the longest part of the year.

  • Root cellars without a cellar — barrels, clamps, trenches
  • Drying, salt, smoke, fat, ferment — and canning done safe
  • The winter math: how many jars a family of four really needs
  • The haybox and cooking a whole meal on one flame

Part V

The Household That Produces

Where the money is actually saved.

  • Soap from wood ash and fat, step by step
  • A clean house and no pests, with five old things on a schedule
  • The medicine shelf — what was kept and how it was stored
  • Seeds, hens and the small stock on a quarter acre

Part VI

The System

The part that turns the book into a habit.

  • The $10-a-week habit and the twelve-month buying calendar
  • The repair bench: five tools, sharpening, leather, five knots
  • The repair that buys a year

Plus the back of the book: buy-first lists at $50 / $150 / $500 / $1,500, every reference table in one place, where the old tools still come from, and a glossary and index.

IV. A Look Inside

Real pages from the book.

Every method has the same four parts: what you need, how it’s done, the by-eye way to know it’s right, and what to do when it goes wrong. Where a number decides whether something is safe — water, canning, curing, smoke — the book gives the current published guidance and says where it came from.

A chapter opening page: One Room
A chapter opening
A method page: the haybox
A method, step by step
The first-hour card
A card to tack up by the door
The cover of The Old Ways Still Work

V. About Amos

Who’s doing the writing-down.

I come from people who fixed what broke, grew what they ate, and kept a full pantry long before anybody called it prepping. My mother drew every pot full of water before the pressure tank gave out. My grandmother stood still in the dark for as long as it takes to say a short grace before she touched anything. None of them wrote a word of it down.

On my channel I pass those old ways along one at a time — keeping food without a refrigerator, stretching a dollar, heating one room, the simple repairs. This book is all of it gathered and put in order, with the arithmetic done on paper and the safety lines checked against what we know now, so you don’t have to guess.

Nothing fancy. Nothing you need to buy. Just what worked, explained slow enough to follow.

— Amos

Amos is a narrated character; the methods are drawn from traditional sources and current public-health guidance. Watch the channel →

VI. Get the Book

$37 once. No subscription. Yours to keep.

🔒 Launch price — $20 off until December 31, then $57

The download page opens right after payment, and Stripe emails your receipt. Lost the files? Get them again with the email you paid with.

30-day refund guarantee. If it isn’t what you hoped, write within 30 days and you get every dollar back.

🔒 Secure checkout by Stripe · Visa · Mastercard · Amex · Apple Pay · Google Pay

VII. Before You Start

Questions folks ask first.

Do I need to live on a farm for this to be useful?

No. The first night, the water math, one-room heat, light, the pantry and the repair bench all work in a town house or an apartment. Some chapters — wells, springs, hens — are for folks with land; you’ll know which ones to skip.

What exactly do I get, and in what form?

Three PDF files: the full book (324 pages, letter size), a large-print edition, and the 21 cards on their own. They open on any phone, tablet or computer, and print on ordinary paper at home or at a copy shop.

I’m not much for computers. Is it hard to get?

Not a bit. After you pay, the next page has three buttons. Tap one and the book downloads. Stripe also emails you a receipt. If you ever lose the files, go to the download page, type the email you paid with, and they’re yours again.

Is it safe? Some of these old ways sound risky.

Some of them were. Old households were poisoned by their own stoves and wells. Where the old way got it wrong — carbon monoxide, radon, low-acid canning, drying raw meat — the book says so plainly and puts the modern safeguard right beside the old method, with the source (CDC, EPA, USDA).

Is this medical advice?

No. The medicine-shelf chapter is about what a household kept on hand and how it stored and labeled it — not what to treat with it. When somebody is hurt or sick, you call for help.

Is it a bug-out or doomsday book?

No. It’s about staying — in your house, in your town — and keeping it running on very little when the usual things stop, and in the ordinary weeks too.

Can my family have it too?

Yes — it’s yours to keep, print and hand down to the people in your house.

What if it’s not for me?

Write within 30 days of buying — reply to your Stripe receipt — and you’ll get a full refund.

❦

Not ready for the whole book? Take the first hour, free.

Chapter 1 in full — what to do in the first fifteen minutes, the first hour and the first night when the power goes — plus the first-hour card to tack up by the kitchen door.

We’ll write only when there’s something new from Amos. Unsubscribe any time.

Nobody wrote it down. Now it’s yours.

$37 once — the book, the large-print edition and all 21 cards. Read the first chapter tonight; if it isn’t what you hoped, one note gets a full refund.

$37 once · no subscription · 30-day refund guarantee · yours to keep and to hand down