The Old Ways Manual 3 VOLUMES · 136 METHODS · $10,365 A YEAR Get the set — $79

The Old Ways Manual · Edition MMXXVI

Three volumes.
A hundred and thirty-six
methods, every one measured.

The house, the land and the workshop. What each job costs, what it puts back in your pocket, and when it does not work.

Get all three — $79 → Or look inside each book first

WAS $97 · YOU SAVE $18 · ONE PAYMENT · THE FILES ARRIVE AT ONCE · 7 DAYS TO CHANGE YOUR MIND

136Methods
3Volumes
$10,365Saved a year
8Failures

I. The set

Three volumes.
House, ground, workshop.

Each book stands on its own. Together they cover what a house costs you to keep, to feed and to mend.

THE OLD WAYS MANUAL Volume I
Out now
Volume I

Home & Household

Sixty methods · 12 chapters

  • Heat, cooling and the drafts you cannot see
  • Water, and the silent toilet leak in one house in ten
  • Pests — the bee-safe bucket trap
  • Pantry, garden, poultry, kitchen, cleaning
  • Tools, structure, remedies, and the money
$2,365saved / year
$29you pay
Buy Volume I — $29
THE OLD WAYS MANUAL Volume II
Out now
Volume II

Land & Livestock

Forty-one methods · 10 chapters

  • The woodlot — heating on your own timber
  • Fencing, posts, and electric that actually works
  • Pasture, hay, goats and sheep
  • Bees, orchard, water on the land
  • Meat, honestly costed — and the money
$4,970saved / year
$34you pay
Buy Volume II — $34
THE OLD WAYS MANUAL Volume III
Out now
Volume III

The Workshop

Thirty-five methods · 10 chapters

  • The bench, the light, and finding your tools
  • Sawing, planing, chisels, joints that last
  • Furniture repair and four finishes
  • Metal, threads, and small engines that will not start
  • Electrical safely, and appliance repair
$3,030saved / year
$34you pay
Buy Volume III — $34

II. The math

Where the $10,365 comes from.

These are ordinary American households, not best cases. Every book has a blank page at the back so you can put your own numbers in place of mine.

Volume I

Home & Household

You spend now$4,695
→
You spend after$2,330
→
You keep, every year$2,365
  • Cooling, heating and drafts$580
  • The pest-control contract$515
  • Cleaning and paper goods$410
  • Food that went bad$410
  • Small repairs and call-outs$450
Volume II

Land & Livestock

You spend now$8,450
→
You spend after$3,480
→
You keep, every year$4,970
  • Heating on your own wood$1,580
  • Meat raised at home$870
  • Fencing, pasture and hay$1,090
  • Milk, honey, fruit, water$1,430
Volume III

The Workshop

You spend now$4,350
→
You spend after$1,320
→
You keep, every year$3,030
  • Mending things instead of buying new$595
  • Carpentry you no longer hire out$810
  • Mower and small-engine repair$375
  • Furniture, metal, wiring, tools$1,250
All three volumes

Added up

You spend now$17,495
→
You spend after$7,130
→
You keep, every year$10,365
Ten thousand dollars a year, for seventy-nine dollars once.
EVERY LINE ABOVE IS PRINTED SO YOU CAN CHECK THE ARITHMETIC YOURSELF
Get all three — $79 →

SOURCES. U.S. Energy Information Administration, Residential Energy Consumption Survey · U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditure Survey · USDA Economic Research Service, food-loss estimates · USDA NASS, feed and hay prices · regional trade-rate surveys for carpentry, appliance and electrical work. Full citations with table numbers are printed in Appendix B of each volume.

Why my number is smaller than the one you have seen

There are books in this corner of the internet promising six thousand dollars a year from a single volume. I want to be straight about why three of mine come to ten thousand three hundred and sixty-five.

Because that is what the table above adds up to. Go and check it — every line is shown. A headline figure larger than the author's own arithmetic is not a saving; it is the first thing that goes wrong when a book makes a promise a house cannot keep.

And because the failures are not counted in. Eight of the hundred and thirty-six do not work the way they are commonly claimed to. I did not quietly total up their theoretical savings and hope you would not check.

And because most people will not reach it. Volume II needs land. That is said on its fourth page, and again below.

If the number matters more to you than whether the number is true, this is the wrong set of books, and I would rather you knew now.

III. Honestly

How much of it applies to you.

The ten thousand is a household with land. Most readers are not, and I would rather say so on the sales page than in a refund email.

A rented apartment

No outdoor space

~$1,900

$1,100 of Volume I plus about $800 of Volume III. Pantry, kitchen, cleaning, pests, appliance repair and small engines all still apply. Nothing structural does.

A house and a yard

No livestock, no woodlot

~$5,400

All of Volume I ($2,365) and all of Volume III ($3,030). Volume II adds the orchard, the water and some fencing on top of that — but its two big rows, firewood and meat, need ground you do not have.

Land

A few acres, woods, some animals

$10,365

All three volumes in full. Firewood and home-raised meat alone are half of Volume II's total, and both need ground.

A manual that only contains successes is a catalog, not a manual.

Volume I · a note before you start

IV. Tested, not compiled

Eight of them failed.
Here are three.

Printed in full, in the chapters where they belong, with the readings that killed them. No other book in this category does this, and it is the only reason to believe the other hundred and twenty-eight.

Volume I · § 1.4 Failed

The charcoal cooling box

0.4°Fthe drop it gave in damp July airIt managed 7.8°F in dry September — but four tenths of a degree is less than the error on the thermometer.

Widely claimed to cool a room for seven dollars. I measured it over eight days with two calibrated thermometers.

Volume II · § 7.4 Failed

Apples stored at 45°F

22%still good at sixteen weeksThe same apples at 33°F: 91% good. The difference cost me $364 of fruit.

I applied my own root-cellar rule to fruit. Apples are still ripening; they need to be near freezing. I lost most of a crop finding out.

Volume III · § 9.3 Failed

The washer I kept repairing

$148and thirty hours, spent on a machine I scrappedEleven years old, in a ten-to-thirteen-year life. My own arithmetic in § 9.1 said stop.

I repaired it anyway, three times. The chapter that says when to stop is the chapter I did not follow.

Jonas Hale
Jonas Hale · the narrator of the three manuals

V. The voice

Forty-seven years of building,
fixing, and doing without.

He isn't Amish and he never says he is. He grew up beside them in Pennsylvania Dutch country — neighbors, barn-raisings, the men who taught him the trade.

Nothing in these volumes is folklore for its own sake. If a method is only sentiment, it is not in the books. If it works but only in dry air, the book says so and tells you where the line is. And where the modern shop-bought product is simply better — very hard water, disinfecting, drinking water, anything gas — it says that too.

Read this first

Who you are buying from

Jonas Hale is a character. He narrates these manuals and the videos, and he is drawn rather than photographed. I built him because the knowledge in here is not one man's — it came from my grandfather, from worn-out trade manuals, from county extension bulletins printed before the war, and from neighbors in Pennsylvania Dutch country who taught me by letting me hold the other end of the board.

The methods are not a character. All hundred and thirty-six were built, run and measured before they went in. Where you see a temperature, I read it off a thermometer. Where you see a price, I paid it.

Eight of them failed. They are printed as failures, with the readings that killed them, in the chapters where they belong. Three of them are printed further up this page.

You will find plenty of channels right now with a bearded man who says he is Amish. He isn't. I would rather tell you before you pay than let you find out afterwards.

The books

The Old Ways Manual

This is not a set of books about living like somebody else. It is a set of books about keeping more of what you earn.

Best value · save $18

All three volumes

$97$79
One payment · the files arrive at once · free updates
  • Volume I — Home & Household · 60 methods
  • Volume II — Land & Livestock · 41 methods
  • Volume III — The Workshop · 35 methods
  • All three savings ledgers, printable
  • Materials sourcing sheets and seasonal calendars
  • Every future edition, free
Get the set — $79 →

One volume

$29 to $34
Start with one. Want the others later? You pay only the difference.
Volume IHome & Household$29 Volume IILand & Livestock$34 Volume IIIThe Workshop$34

Same 7‑day guarantee, same free updates.

Secure checkout via Gumroad · Visa · Mastercard · PayPal · Apple Pay

There is no countdown on this page. The set is $79 today and it will be $79 on Sunday. If you come back next month and find a banner telling you the launch price ends tonight, you have learned something useful about whoever wrote it. Buy it when you want it.

7Days · No questions

Open it, read it, and decide the same week.

Buy it, read the whole thing, and pick the three methods you would do first. If it isn't what you wanted, reply to your receipt inside seven days and I refund you in full — no form, no reason needed. You keep the files. I'm not going to ask anybody to delete a PDF.

VI. Questions

Before you buy.

Which volume should I start with?

Volume I, unless you have land. It works in a rented flat, it is the cheapest, and its two best methods — the attic vents and the toilet dye test — cost twenty dollars between them and return over three hundred a year. If you keep animals or heat with wood, Volume II is worth far more to you. If you have a garage and things keep breaking, Volume III has the best hourly return of the three.

Will these methods work in my climate?

Some of them will not, and the books tell you which. Evaporative cooling is close to useless east of the Mississippi in August — I measured 0.4°F at 78% humidity and printed it. Root cellaring needs a cold season. Every method carries a section titled when this is the wrong method naming the climate, humidity or water hardness at which it stops working.

I rent an apartment. Is any of this for me?

About half. All of the pantry, kitchen, cleaning and pest chapters, most of Volume III's engine and appliance work, and the money chapters. Nothing structural. That is roughly $1,900 a year, and it is the honest figure — see the table above.

I'm not handy. Is this still useful?

If you can use a drill and a tape measure you can do most of it. The two highest-return methods in the whole set need a flashlight and a bucket. Anything needing a helper, a ladder or a permit says so at the top of the page, before you have committed to anything.

What format is it?

Six PDFs — each volume comes twice. One is made for reading on a screen. One is made for printing on ordinary US Letter paper, with real page numbers. No app, no login, no password, nothing that expires. Yours to keep and to print.

Is Jonas Hale a real person?

He is a character — the narrator. The methods, the tests and the measurements are real, and they are mine. It's the first thing on this page for a reason.

Is any of this dangerous?

Some of it can be, and Volumes II and III say so far more often than Volume I. Chainsaws, hay stacks that heat themselves, curing salts, mains electricity, and appliances that hold a lethal charge after they are unplugged. Every one of those carries a warning box placed before the step, not after it — and a list of the jobs you should hand to somebody else.

Can I upgrade from one volume to the set?

Yes. Reply to your receipt and you pay the difference. You will not be charged twice for a book you already own.