Reading Assignments
For anyone interested in a more thorough study of self-sufficient living, here is a very brief reading list. Keep them together as two groups of three:
First Group:
You Can't Live on Radishes by Jerry Bledsoe
ISBN: 0962425540
Small Farm in Maine by Terry Silber
ISBN: 0395379113
Far Out isn't Far Enough by Tomi Ungerer
ISBN: 0413545806
Second Group:
The Fat of the Land by John Seymour
No ISBN number, last printed in 1962
The Good Life by Helen and Scott Nearing
ISBN: 0805209700
Payne Hollow by Harlan Hubbard
ISBN: 0917788664
These six books all have in common that they are documentaries of a self-sufficient life rather than instructional discourses on how to homestead. At last one of the authors, John Seymour, also wrote how-to books, some of the very best available: The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It, The Self-Sufficient Gardener, Forgotten Arts and Crafts and many others.
Read Payne Hollow itself and do not rely on Gene Logsdon's nor Wendell Berry's writings about Hubbard. You would miss the point entirely.
There is something very illustrative about these two groups of books, and the clever mind even never having read them will be able to guess what it is. But not why. That's what I'm going to cover in the next posts.
First Group:
You Can't Live on Radishes by Jerry Bledsoe
ISBN: 0962425540
Small Farm in Maine by Terry Silber
ISBN: 0395379113
Far Out isn't Far Enough by Tomi Ungerer
ISBN: 0413545806
Second Group:
The Fat of the Land by John Seymour
No ISBN number, last printed in 1962
The Good Life by Helen and Scott Nearing
ISBN: 0805209700
Payne Hollow by Harlan Hubbard
ISBN: 0917788664
These six books all have in common that they are documentaries of a self-sufficient life rather than instructional discourses on how to homestead. At last one of the authors, John Seymour, also wrote how-to books, some of the very best available: The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It, The Self-Sufficient Gardener, Forgotten Arts and Crafts and many others.
Read Payne Hollow itself and do not rely on Gene Logsdon's nor Wendell Berry's writings about Hubbard. You would miss the point entirely.
There is something very illustrative about these two groups of books, and the clever mind even never having read them will be able to guess what it is. But not why. That's what I'm going to cover in the next posts.
posted by Eleutheros at 9:27 PM
11 Comments:
More books! I just got an e-mail from my library letting me know that the first batch I ordered from the suggestion in one of your recent posts has arrived! Well, I guess I'll just have to bite the bullet and read even more. (Reading, such a hardship. ;-)
I've read several of these authors in the past, but some I've never heard of. Thanks for the tip.
You, MadCap, are going to love Seymour. He's dead. Died this year and more's the pity. But I will already tell you that he's your kind of guy.
He was 90 years old and died on his farmstead in the hut he built in Wales surrounded by his daughters. A body can do worse! He had been arrested the year before for destroying a field of Monsanto GMO soybeans that he said were invaders and his duty to resist with body and soul.
Have a cup of tea and read him. You can even have milk in it, he wouldn't mind.
And step through that portal to the 43 acres and never be the same again.
Actually, he's one of the ones I've read, the Forgotten Crafts and 5 acres to Self-Sufficiency. You've got me pegged! I love that story in "Forgotten" where he and a friend get a bit (or very) pixillated and try to clean the chimney.
And he didn't mind the milk in the tea at all. Didn't even hint that I was a scarlet woman or the like. Very broadminded man.
MadCap:"Very broadminded man."
And no mistake.
My favorite story is when he wanted the crusty old boatwright to make him a dindhy and was told the cost would be ten pounds a foot. He said" But the going rate is fourteen pounds a foot" and the old geezer replied, "I said ten pounds a foot, take it or leave it!"
No, he'd have poured the milk himself.
I tried all three of my available libraries, and NONE of them has Payne Hollow! It's such a well-known book (at least on the blogs I visit), that I assumed it would be everywhere. I guess I'll have to check out e-bay.
I looked for Fat of the Land for AGES, finally got it used from Amazon I think it was. Worth it too. hmmmmm, may have to read that again next. Still can't find my copy of Another Roadside Attraction. Have some feminist thing on the agenda but it's introduction has already irritated me.
And does anyone know the right combination of hexes and how to hold one's mouth to get blogger to publish photos? geez
Still out of commission for you? It was giving me trouble a couple days ago, but it righted itself.
Thank you for the suggestions- I managed to order Payne Hollow from the library, but can tell right away I will need to be getting my own copy.
Although we are actively working on simplifying our lives right now, this book makes me wish I had come across it 20 years ago.
Of course I may not have been ready then....if wishes were fishes and all that.
Eleutheros,
I have just discovered your blogs and have been reading them with interest as time permits. Thanks for these two reading lists; I had been stuck in a reading rut. It was your comment about reading Payne Hollow without the lens of Berry that first caught my attention. I have managed to borrow Payne Hollow and The Good Life from the library, but had to settle for Seymour's Farming for Self-Sufficiency rather than Fat of the Land. I do have a question from the opening chapters of The Good Life. Do you see any inconsistency (not in their practice, but in their philosophy) between point #7 of their plan (keep no animals) and their criticism of modern agriculture for "abandoning animal husbandry, farming with machinery, thus decreasing the supply of animal manure" (p. 97)? One of their reasons for not keeping animals is that keeping animals ties you down and limits your freedom...but if that is true, it seems to me, so does raising all of your own food . Again, thanks for the book suggestions and new paths for thinking.
Tumbledown
Excellent, love it! » » »
Keep up the good work »
Post a Comment
<< Home