Ok Now that we know your favorite authors

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What is it that you haven't found in a homesteading book, that you really would like to see laid out. I would like to see more books for advanced homesteaders. People who have been behind the sidewalks and are ready to get beyond how to raise chickens. I would also like to see a book of feasable homestead layouts and the benefits and drawbacks of them. In fact I would love to see a homesteading page with maps and drawings of what people are doing. To me this is a very important issue. Many steps can be saved and time also with the right layout for a homestead. I would also like to see some books by folks who are deep deep into homesteading and have made the lifestyle their permanent abode. To me there are a lot of people who attempt homesteading and a lot of people who run away five or ten years later. What I want to see is books by people who have been through the rough times and stuck with it. I want to here how homesteads develop over many years and also how they change as people age. Does any of this make any sense?

Little Bit Farm

-- Little bit farm (littleBit@compworldnet.com), October 18, 2001

Answers

Yes! I have wished for years that people like Eliot Coleman and John Vivian, John Shuttleworth would write their "Been There Done That" sequel. I remember reading an article in TMEN about Coleman when he was a young whippersnapper. Then, I didn't hear or see anything from him until he popped up with Barbara Damrosh on a tv series about natural gardening. I wanted to say, so where's the first wife? How did the kids like country living? Or ask John Vivian how many years he stayed at it before he got tired and moved on? The last I saw about Shuttleworth (TMEN founder)was a very long personal ad in TMEN. Obviously, the first wife was no longer on the scene and he was advertising for a new one. As you can guess, I'm alot more interested in how the lifestyle affected relationships than whether they discovered a new way to milk a goat or split firewood. I guess a few of us should write down our memoirs and forget about how-to articles. If the relationships don't work, life in the country is the same hell it can be in the city. ps: I've read a few books and articles that sound as if the authors had never actually seen a chicken or a tomato worm, but had just copied text from other sources. Nothing like some personal antecdotes to make it a little more believable.

-- melina b. (goatgalmjb1@hotmail.com), October 18, 2001.

I agree. Some of us are past the bed of roses stage. I want to here about how challenges have been overcome. I want to here about other people's bouts with bad fences and dead animals. About the only perspective we have on the is from Helen and Scott Nearing. Let's face it, although they were extremely committed to homesteading, they were also from another age when doing things for yourself was more acceptable. It bothers me that the people who are writing about homesteading are people who have left it behind, like Carla Emory for one. Somewhere in her book there is a place where you get the feeling that she really feels sorry for all us poor saps who believe this stuff. It is where she talks about one young couple who comes to her completely convinced of the life and she makes a real point of feeling sorry for them. I really didn't appreciate that one little story. It is kind of like she has become better than homesteading. Now don't all of you Carla Emory fans Jump all over me. I liked the book too. And I have heard she's doing a radio program now, although I haven't found it on here.

Little Bit Farm

-- Little bit Farm (littlebit@farm.com), October 18, 2001.


By the way I can spell "hear". I can't believe I did that twice!

Little Bit Farm

-- Little bit Farm (littlebit@farm.com), October 18, 2001.


After reading this through, I don't know if I got off the subject or was even on it. Maybe I just needed t say it. Although there's a lot of how to stuff I can't wait to learn, raising a cow, horse, etc. I agree with you little bit. I'd like to read/hear about the tried and true, stick to it, loyal, never say die homesteaders. Those that have the gift and desire, the til death do us part attitude. After this past summer, with all of it's surrendering, compromise, painful events and rain, I'm ready to get to the nitty gritty of homesteading. I haven't given it up, but I had to re-think everything and I had to wait. All this has re-inforced my desires to get back to it. I want it more than ever. And I don't want to not do it, just because I don't have to, does that make sense? So what if it's easier not to, I want homesteading!:~]

I have some homestead friends that were just about to give it all up. They tried to do too much all at once, then life happened. But they're slowly getting back to where they want to be.

-- Cindy (S.E.IN) (atilrthehony@countrylife.net), October 19, 2001.


I'm with you on this one, LBF, I have a lot of homesteading books, many of them with the same information, just presented differently. I think one problem with the book you are describing is that the author would have experiences from ONE growing zone or region. We have SO MANY climates just in the U.S. alone, a book relating on what was done on many homesteads over ALL of them would be bigger than a Bible.

Still . . . that book would be worth it, whatever the cost.

-- j.r. guerra (jrguerra@boultinghousesimpson.com), October 19, 2001.



I think If we worked right and realy tried to help each other and wanted to these sites could do a lot for us. Countryside appeared to be perfect with the mag. and forum, I thought with the ability to question articles and discuss the possibilitis were endless. As usual when I find somethig I like or can use, it changes before I can utilize it. You need to get to know people before you can fully trust their advice. These site populations change to often, don't recognize names. I think old farmers are the best books out there if you can find one. To many authors, websites have publishers to please to be truly honest.

-- Tom (Calfarm@msn.com), October 22, 2001.

Sometimes, I would like to see the authors more like me. I can't be the only person that doesn't have hours per day to do research a problem I havn't seen mentioned. The authors always approach a problem so clearly, try something, have an educated response to it, make incredible adjustments, and stuff works great. It never happens that way around here - and if it does, I wait for the other shoe to drop. It just would be nice to know that there are others that do things by trial and error, lots of error and the final outcome that could benefit us all. Joanie

-- Joanie (ber-gust@prodigy.net), October 22, 2001.

Yes I agree. I buy books and magazine hoping for a homesteading "fix" and usually get disappointed. Maybe soem homesteaders should start a series called : So, You Want To Be A Homesteader, Eh? Book 1 could be about land, chickens, gardens, building out-buildings and or a home ..beginner stuff. Book 2 could get into larger livestock and their housing and needs and what to do with all that they produce. Book 3 could be about relationships on a homestead or homesteader psychology and sociology (Homesteaders are from Mars...), and so on and so on. Wouldn't that be nice? It'd be nice if the bopoks I buy could answer some of my more stupid questions but then again, I seem to learn best by actually doing something.

-- Alison in N.S. (aproteau@istar.ca), November 07, 2001.

ooops..bopoks is a typo for BOOKS :o)

-- Alison in N.S. (aproteau@istar.ca), November 07, 2001.

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