the long emergency

The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century

by James Howard Kunstler

Chapters:

1. Sleepwalking Into The Future
2. Modernity and the Fossil Fuels Dilemma
3. Geopolitics and the Global Oil Peak
4. Beyond Oil: Why Alternative Fuels Won’t Rescue Us
5. Nature Bites Back: Climate Change, Epidemic Disease, Water Scarcity, Habitat Destruction, and the Dark Side of the Industrial Age
6. Running on Fumes: The Hallucinated Economy
7. Living in the Long Emergency

I read this book because I needed a basic understanding of why alternative fuels weren’t going to help us deal with the immediate oil crisis. He did a great job explaining the ins and outs of the different types. I also found the last chapter quite interesting.

Good reading, but take it in small chunks. I still need some “sunshine” in my bad news!

Kim

when technology fails

When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance & Planetary Survival

by Matthew Stein

An interesting read. A simple but thorough beginner’s guide. We have most of the books he referenced, so this is mostly a lend-out book.

Chapters

1. An Introduction to Self-Reliance
2. Present Trends, Possible Futures
3. Supplies & Preparations
4. Emergency Measures for Survival
5. Water
6. Food: Growing, Foraging, Hunting, & Storing
7. Shelter & Buildings
8. First Aid
9. Low-Tech Medicine & Healing
10. Clothing & Textiles
11. Energy: Heat & Power
12. Metalworking
13. Utensils & Storage
14. Better Living Through Low-Tech Chemistry
15. Engineering, Machines & Materials

gaia’s garden

This is quite a fantastic little book. I won’t change the garden as it now exists, but new areas (like the orchard) will get a little more consideration and thoughtful planning. I really like the idea of planting daffodil bulbs under my fruit trees. It will bring a little more beauty to the area. It was also quite helpful in the gray water system research. I now have a basic idea and plan for creating the wetlands, mini-ponds and the final water holding system.

Kim

tasha tudor’s garden

I got this book and Tasha Tudor’s Heirloom Crafts for Christmas. They are really lovely books. Her gardens are magnificent and I still find myself turning the pages just to see the way the colors play together.

Kim

How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

HM and I recently watched the documentary “How Cuba Survived Peak Oil” by The Community Solution.   I highly recommend finding a copy or viewing it on-line.  It is very  educational.  Cuba went through an artificial Peak Oil when the Soviet Union collapsed.  Their economy plummeted and oil imports dropped like a bomb.  They survived.  Some would argue they have thrived.  You’ll have to watch and see what you think.

We have been aware of the concept of peak oil for a while.  It is a term you run into when you start talking to sustainability people.  We were already working hard to make our little farm as close to self-sufficient as we could.   We like/love John Seymour’s work and book.   Learning a little about peak oil spurred us on to greater efforts.

After watching the documentary I realize how much more we need to add to our to-do list.   Things like: rain water collection, bigger garden, more perma-culture, and more sheep.  The biggest thing we need to do though is to build community.  You would think living in the middle of corn country that we’d  be set for food in an emergency.  Wrong!  I haven’t found a single neighbor who gardens or farms without tractors or tillers.  We are alone in that effort.   Square beds are easy to build, seed, weed and harvest by hand.   They aren’t typical though.

So my community building begins.  Most people around here are aware of both our environmental efforts and our homesteading efforts.  It makes it easy to strike up these conversations.  I have worked hard to make our home appear “normal.”  I have found that people are sometimes put off by what seems weird or too difficult.   So we need to keep is simple and effective.

Five Acres and Independence

Five Acres and Independence by M. G. Kains

Subtitled:   A Handbook for Small Farm Management

Read:  July 2007.  Rating:  A disappointed me!  Some good parts, some out-dated parts, and some I just flatly disagree with.

I first read this book in 1994.  CK was trying to decide if he should stay in the military or turn civilian.  He had 2 years left of his commitment.  We began thinking about what kind of life we would want for our family post military excitement.  We decided a small piece of land way out in the country seemed perfect.   So we began picking up books the dealt with our new desire.

Back then it seemed great.  Now,  I’m not sure.  There are many good parts.  Many things to thing about, but there are parts that annoyed me.  For example, he believes seed saving is a waste of time.  I believe it is important.  I don’t trust the big guys.  I like knowing that year after year I’ll have my garden seeds.  I like knowing that I can pass along my seeds and they will produce a radish (or whatever) and not some 2 headed monster.

So I’ll keep it on the shelf, pull it out occasionally, and remind myself that I know our piece of land better than almost anyone else.  It has unique challenges and great potential.  We’ll continue to work toward self-sufficiency.

I also wonder if there wasn’t another book with a similar name.  The book I thought I remembered had much more to say about actually setting up a five acre homestead.  Maybe that is just time and too many books.  They tend to mush together!

Off to the garden.  (This isn’t Eden, so the weeds need pulling and I will be sweating!)

Kim

The Unsettling of America

The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry

Subtitle: Culture and Agriculture

Read: July 2007. Rating: A book that should be read, re-read, marked up, and also purchased for each of our children!

This is perhaps one of the best books I have read recently. Mr. Berry wrote the book in1977, but it is still very applicable today. He looks at industrial agriculture and traditional agriculture; exploiting versus nurturing; unity versus diversity.

He gives us a picture of a healthy farm. “The health of a farm is as apparent to the eye as the health of a person. To look at a farm in full health gives the same complex pleasure as looking at a fully healthy person or animal. It will give the impression of abounding life. What grows on it will be thriving. It will seem to belong where it is; the form of it will be a considerate response to the nature of its place; it will not have the look of an abstract idea of a farm imposed upon an area somewhere or other. It will look cared for–groomed, so to speak–like a healthy person or animal; it will look lived in by people who care where they live.” He goes on the mention that the healthy farm will have a variety of trees, plants and animals, and be self-sustaining as far as possible.

Here is a yardstick by which to measure our own efforts here at the homestead.

KMH

Speaking of Stuff

Stuff:  The Secret Lives of Everyday Things by John C. Ryan and Alan Thein Durning.

Read: June 2007.  Rating 4 stars (Amusing, educational, but not a “Grab it ’cause the house is on fire” kind of book)

This book takes a look at 9 things that are consumed by the Average American.  It follows them through the manufacturing process to your doorstep.  The 9 things are:  coffee, newspaper, t-shirt, shoes, bike/car, computer, hamburger, french fries, and cola.  Along the way, we learn how much of our natural resources we consume without even being aware of it.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
Subtitle: A Year of Food Life
Read: May 2007. Rating: 5 stars (fantastic, fun to read, and future changing)

Barbara Kingsolver and family take on local eating with an agrarian flair. They’ll grow most of it, put it by for winter, and in the process transform their friends, relatives, and neighbors. I loved this book. It was refreshing and reminded me of why we do the things we do.

The month-by-month format was great. It inspired me to get out our old garden journals (at least those not lost in the “Big Computer Crash of ‘06″) and construct a calendar of local foods for our area. I’ll be adding to this by listing my farmer’s market purchases.

There is a picture in the front of the book of a “vegetannual” that I would love to embroider and hang in the kitchen. It is such a fun way to thing about the year of gardening.

KMH

Better Off

Better Off by Eric Brende
Subtitles: Flipping the Switch on Technology; Two People, One Year, Zero Watts

Read: April 2007. Rating: 3 stars (innovative, interesting, but not instructive)

Eric and Mary, his new wife, move to a “minimite” community. Eric has become disillusioned with his modern academic life. So he seeks to find the answer to the question: how much do we really need? The book is portrait of an agrarian society. Life revolves around the land, the weather, and the tasks that must be done in preparation for each season.

Along the way Eric learns that some technology makes the job easier, but it also distracts from community, conversation, and contemplation. In the end he returns changed and changing those around him.