What i’ve read, April 2011

  The Transition Handbook, Rob Hopkins-To say my spare time has been consumed by Transition would be an understatement. I fell in love with the concept about two years back when I first read it, and now i’m involved in starting a Transition Initiative i’m rather excited. You should get excited too, it’s an awesome, fun way to design your community’s descent from fossil fuel dependency and inspire relocalisation. Read more here. And here!

  Listening to Country, Ros Moriarty-Autobiographical, about the author’s involvement with her husband’s Indigenous family. Admittedly, I grew up in a (typical?) family where racism was fairly standard and it wasn’t until my early twenties that I realised that they were completely wrong. I’ve made more of an effort since them to educate myself and this is a fine book for it-it’s the only thing i’ve read that’s written on a personal level, rather than at arms-length. The loss of culture and knowledge is so incredibly tragic and irreversible-hopefully the efforts to preserve what remains are successful.

  Mind Maps for Kids, Tony Buzan-More for me, as I have so many balls in the air at the moment anything that will help keep them up is welcome. Just mind-maps, not massively exciting.

  Mama Mia, Mia Freedman-Autobiography. I read this in an evening and actually really enjoyed it-possibly because the lifestyle she lead/s is so different to mine! Funny because I remember reading a lot of the Cosmos that are mentioned in there as a teen (I had Brad Pitt naked :P) with some tearjerking parts. Which is life for everyone, really.

  Anastasia, Vladimir Megre-This series has come highly recommended to me by a few people. While i’ve liked reading the first two, i’ll reserve judgement until i’ve finished the series. It’s the first book i’ve read that suggests existence of a Creator that I haven’t thought was total bullshit, so I suppose it’s already achieved a massive victory (i’ll keep my sceptic hat firmly on though, thanks).

  The Ringing Cedars of Russia, Vladimir Megre-As above.

  Earth Garden #154-Missed this one somehow. Made me want to go travelling.

  Home Farmer V1, Earth Garden Publications-Missed this one somehow too. Made me want to start a farm in the backyard-don’t think landlord would approve. Already pushing it with more chickens than legally allowed and mini oat field.

  Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver-I adore this book, it’s the third time i’ve read it. I scored it at the op-shop so if any locals want it drop around. It’s her family’s story of their local eating for a year, from a production point of view. It’s written in a very thoughtful, humorous way and is immensely readable. Puts forward lots of very persuasive arguments for locavory, as well as dealing with many ethical issues in a totally non-confrontational way. If you need inspiration to garden, read this-it makes me want to run outside and start digging.

What i’ve read-March 2011

The Triumph of the Airheads and the Retreat from Commonsense, Shelley Gare-Very good! If you commonly see total idiocy presented as serious ideas, and taken up solemnly, while you shake your head muttering “what the fuck?” then read it. Also for if you hate the dumbing down of virtually everything-surely i’m not the only one who hates being patronised? Australian too.

Grassroots #202 & 203-All caught up now.

Booms, Busts and Bushfires-Australia 1973-present, Jackie French-Yes, I know it’s a kids book, but I know embarrassingly little about Australian history (after 14+ years of formal, state-sanctioned education), and everyone has to start somewhere. Educating my own children is excellent motivation for filling in the gaps of my own education.

Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer-This sat on the shelf for weeks after the husband read it, because I was sick of reading ‘food’ books. But he kept urging me, so I started it…………and loved it. It’s really good to read a book that actually takes a point of view, instead of the normal ‘this happens, it’s horrible, but i’m still an omnivore’. Yay, someone else who feels the need to completely boycott the meat and animal products industry! I have more to write about this, don’t bring a steak sandwich to the reading ;)

The Fable of all our Lives, Peter Kocan-novel. I liked this, but it’s sort of hard to see why. It’s not technically an interesting book, but I found myself finding excuses to read it. I enjoyed the theme of the QO vs the Regime, because I certainly feel like that a lot of the time. Some rather interesting events happen which will get you thinking about our over-policed, over-paranoid society.

What i’ve read, February 2011

A good month for reading!

The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan-Fantastically interesting. An evolutionary view of plants from the perspective of four plants, who have managed to manipulate us into planting more of them than ever would have existed in the wild. So who’s in charge-them or us?

Are We Listening to Our Children, Paolo Crepet-Overall, yet another book that rails against society for creating crap children, but fails to suggest removing them from the crap parts of society (ie chucking out the TV, homeschooling etc) as an easy solution. I’m not waiting around for school/advertising/food reform.

The 100-Mile Diet, Alisa Smith & JB MacKinnon-Easy on the brain cells and entertaining-if you want an introduction to food issues this is a good one to read. It won’t have you drowning in science-speak or completely freaked out, but it covers most of the main issues. The husband immediately wanted to try it, but I said no way. Our current vegetarian/wholefood/organic/Australian/no GM/frugal diet is limiting enough without adding MORE criteria. We can cut the remaining food miles with the extra garden space we’ve just added.

Wholefood for Children, Jude Blereau-I don’t think I can return this cookbook to the library. This is full of recipes that illustrate my ideal way of eating (minus the meat). I’m definitely going to search out and most likely buy one of her adult cookbooks. Yes, I read everything non-recipe, and most of the recipes too.

The Last Word, Jenny Chantry and Mike McKay-The sort of book that makes me realise I may as well be from another planet-compared to these baby-boomer retirees anyway.

Grass Roots 200 & 201-Love this mag.

Creative Homeschooling, Alan Whitehead-Not one i’d recommend to the beginning homeschooler, and way too much blather. It’s really hard to get to the substance of it, and it’s not particularly my style. However, I do like his approach to handling meddling authorities-basically obfuscation, pretending compliance and moving house if all else fails.

Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser-Can’t believe it took me so long to track this down and read it! It’s not an easy read but it’s very in-depth. More of the same food stuff really, with more coverage, especially of meatpacking conditions and disease. And I found out Elders is owned by ConAgra. I seem to find out we’re more American every day-why does no-one in control care? Oh, that’s right-a goldfish attention span combined with $$$$$.

New Internationalist #430-The kind of magazine I wish I understood everything in, and will once the kids are older.

What i’ve read-January 2011

  Ah, a busy month, this one. With Christmas and Frosty’s birthday just behind me, Oods’ birthday looming, four orders to complete and the MIL here for a fortnight reading time was at a premium.

Hungry Planet, Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio. An absolute must-read, this is about the fifth time i’ve borrowed it out. Putting the German family’s photo next to the Sudanese refugees in Chad is the perfect example of how politics, not lack of food, leads to hunger. Definitely something that will put you in your place on a petulant day.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig (DNF)-Didn’t have enough brain for this one-some tantalising ideas to ponder, but not enough brain space left to give them credit. I gave up about halfway through, but will definitely try again in a couple of years.

Someone Else’s Child, Sue Phillips-Story of surrogate pregnancy from the surrogate’s view. Rather simplistic, but interesting nonetheless.

Texas, Sarah Hay-Novel, an easy read but with more substance than the ghastly chick-lit.

Enlightenment for Beginners, Anne Cushman-Novel, somewhat disappointing but I think that’s only because i’ve seen it recommended in a few places so expected more. Worth a read though.

How to go Carbon Neutral, Mark Brassington-A good one of it’s kind-it’s a lot more no-nonsense and much less wishy-washy than most books of eco-tips.

What i’ve read-August

I thought it may be useful for me to keep track of what I read. I read a lot, and mostly non-fiction. Already, after only six weeks, I can track my interests waxing and waning through my list of books.

Here’s August-gardening seemed to be the dominant theme, appropriate for a month of setting up gardens in a new house.

Child of our Time-Dr Tessa Livingstone

A Year of Slow Food-David and Gerda Foster

Growing without Digging-Esther Deans

Earth Garden Backyard Farmer #4

Is it just me or is Everything Shit? V2-Lowe and McArthur

Absurdistan-Eric Campbell

Easy Aquaponics-Earth Garden

The Crafty Minx-Kelly Doust

Sewing Green-Betz White

If you want to ask me about any, feel free! I love a chat about a good (or not so good) book.

Why TV is good for kids

So, who's had a heart attack at me writing that title? It's actually a book, I thought i'd get it to see if it would change my mind, and started it with an open mind, really I did. Let's just say that I haven't been convinced I should race out to Harvey Norman.

The holes in the arguments are the type you could fall into and never return. For example, they seem to feel that Madonna only manages to not have a TV because she has masses of money and therefore an army of employees to help with her children. Yep, they're trotting out the tired old martyred cry of 'But the only time I get to myself is when they're watching TV!' I mean, all those poor people who raised children more than 50 years ago, it must have been terrible! The kids running around feral, constantly nagging you to entertain them, never a moment to sit down and have a cuppa........hey, wait a minute, revelation here-maybe kids could entertain themselves back then, and still could if they didn't learn to fall back on television the instant they're bored?

Or by stating that TV is a passive activity, but so is reading and a number of other things. Obviously they've never seen (or ignored) any of the number of studies that show that your body runs at the lowest pace while watching TV. While reading you actually burn more kilojoules than by watching TV. I think sleeping is the only activity that comes in under TV, but not by much.

Or by saying that BMI is totally unreliable because it can't be applied to all people in the population, using George Gregan and his 'overweight' BMI as example. When anyone who has a clue about BMI ranking knows it can't be and isn't applied to super-fit body-builder types or some ethnic groups. But if they admitted that they wouldn't be able to write off BMI as an indicator and therefore also write off the increase of overweight and obese children would they?

And my favourite, deliberately interpreting the well-documented correlational link between TV watching and attention disorders as a direct cause-effect link. As in, watch x amount of hours of TV per week and you WILL get ADD. Well, it's easier to refute something that is obviously wrong, isn't it? Morons.

And that's only one chapter. I don't think i'll bother with the rest (except the education chapter, that should be fun), as books that choose their POV then selectively search out information that supports it while leaving glaring omissions frustrate my husband-yes, I argue out loud with books ;P Pity, I agree with a lot of it, like TV is not too bad if used properly (I use the guns analogy, it's not the thing it's how you use it), but the rest is just too crap.

Ethical Eating

Here I was thinking that pregnancy had just totally killed all brain and energy I had and I was doomed to a couple of months of doing not much and only being able to read moronic chick-lit type books-turned out I was just iron deficient. Once I worked that out and started treating it I felt great!

So when I came across the ethics section of the library I stocked up. The Ethics of What we Eat by Peter Singer and Jim Mason was first up. Many people hate Singer but I find his books quite interesting and thought provoking-the one about Bush's ethics and morals (The President of Good and Evil?) was very good. Ethics of eating is rather relevant to our situation now. Before I fell pregnant I was loving cooking, and we were eating mostly fresh and homegrown food with very little meat. However when morning sickness kicked in I lost all interest in food and cooking-moving interstate didn't help, and even now i'm not particularly into it. So our diet has slid somewhat-some convenience food crept in, meat consumption increased and junk increased. Reading this has given me enough of a guilt trip to pull my socks up.

So the goals now are

Animal cruelty-no more meat. We'll eat what we have and that'll be it. We don't have much, but I did turn to meat products to fix my iron deficiency. So once it's out it's out, and we won't be eating it when we go out anymore either, we've been dithering for years and I think it's time for total vegetarianism. In regards to other animal products, we're dairy fiends so milk, cheese and other dairy products will remain. I've started replacing some cows milk with soy and that'll do until we get settled back into non-meat eating again, reducing it can be my next goal. Eggs-I don't believe any supermarket eggs are ethical to eat. Even 'free-range' hens aren't kept in anywhere near optimal conditions. I put in a request weeks ago to get some chooks but our RE agent is absolutely useless and can't seem to return calls-i'm thinking of getting them anyway, screw them, it's not like i'm asking to get a rottweiler. Until then i'll use the vegan Orgran Egg Replacer for eggs in cooking-we don't eat egg meals anymore because I can't stand the rubbery tasteless things i've been buying after our completely free-range eggs from our chooks. I'd already cut out most other non-necessary animal products a while back (eg Massel vegan stocks) so that's easy to continue. I also need to do more research on the 'hidden' animal products, like rennet.

Environmental-Cutting back on animal products goes a long way towards minimising environmental harm-one thing i've never considered before was disposal of animal waste from factory farming which is hugely polluting. An intriguing part of the book investigated the newish fad of locavores which is basically eating as locally as possible in order to reduce food miles. Their conclusion was that a lot of the time eating locally will produce more pollution if you have to go out of your way to buy it, due to the food making smaller trips from the producer to stores/market then home to you. I'll keep getting vegies from the local markets because they're so much fresher and better quality and it's less than 2kms away. I used to walk there, and will do so again once i'm not so huge. We're getting more organised with the garden now as well and focussing on fast-growing, high yielding foods rather than all our whimsical things (really, I don't need to be growing giant gourds in a rental). Until we buy we're somewhat limited in growing, but producing some part of every meal is my current goal-we're about halfway there.

Health-i'm making much more of an effort to cook from scratch again, I got pretty lazy there for a while. This generally means we eat masses of grains, fruit and veg because that's what I know how to prepare the best. I'll stick to making loaves of bread from scratch but will stop beating myself up about buying other breads like rolls-it can be a future goal when I get a better oven. I also now have a pasta maker which is awesome-how did I live with that terrible bagged stuff?? The snack foods I do buy can generally be bought 'better' so i'm doing that-eg organic, low packaging rice and corn cakes.

Another interesting part was about freegans who obtain all their food for free, mainly by 'dumpster diving'. I've heard of this before and was revolted, I suppose picturing eating from my bin. But the way it was explained here made it look like a much better idea, bringing up how much food supermarkets turf which is still completely packaged and within date. It wouldn't really fit into my lifestyle now, being rather time-intensive (but less so than slaving away at work to pay the supermarket) but I think i'd be open to it if it was just me to feed-i'd definitely go along for a trip.

That's it for the food for now-but I still have the rest of the lifestyle to bring back in line. A book about waste is next on the shelf, should be interesting.

Who needs ornamentals?

I've borrowed Jenny Allen's Paradise in Your Garden-Smart Permaculture Design from the library again-I love it, and will buy it one day. I love how her whole property is lush and productive and looks fantastic and it makes me want to go out and buy a block (any block!) so that I can get cracking on a food forest. But for the moment we're stuck in this rental so I decided to potter around and see if I could get some nice pics of our rather woeful 'gardens', inspired by the ones in the book. I'm no photographer but I can try!

This one's obvious-scrummy strawberries.

Zucchini Nimba flower

Mmm, fresh peas-i've already eaten them. Rockmelon or honeydew flowers-I have two next to each other and can't remember which is which!

Macro wasn't good enough for me to get a clear close-up of any of the zillions of ladybugs on the potatoes, but you get the idea. Raspberries-in the subtropics! They don't taste as succulent and I doubt they'll fruit again-they got to chill in Tassie before coming here. We'll probably end up giving them to family the next time we go south.

Choosing Eden-Adrienne Langman

I was given this to read by a friend who ordered it from the library. It was on a long waiting list so I assume it’s fairly popular.

It’s predominantly about Peak Oil. Peak Oil is the term for when worldwide oil production will peak, and after the peak of course comes decline. When you think of what is made by or with oil, it becomes pretty obvious that this will affect us in a big way. It makes sense, after all oil is a finite resource. Since our goal is to become mostly self-sufficient anyway it was just another reason to do so, it doesn’t feature as a major worry on my radar. The greenie in me suspects it’s one of the best things that could happen, as horrific as it sounds.

These people though, were majorly freaked out by Peak Oil, and decided to leave their very modern, hard working consumerist lives in central Sydney to move to 12 acres in northern NSW, in their fifties. Their aim is to become as self-sufficient as possible and leave a great food source for their kids and grandkids. Radical, but good.

The book irritated me a lot though. It did seem to be simply a vessel for raising Peak Oil awareness, as that’s what most of it is about. It irritated me how the story finished before they’d become anywhere near self-sufficient-after all, I don’t think you can preach to the masses if you’ve never achieved it. The cynic in me suspects they’re leaving it open for book #2 and the resultant income this will bring. The main thing that irritated me though is how little they seemed to grasp the concept of self-sufficiency-when they moved into the new house they got people in to do everything they needed rather than have a bash themselves first. They bought so much stuff when preparing to move! And the toilet paper stock-up.........argh! She also shudders at the thought of reusable menstrual products and pats herself on the back for sacrificing things like the dishwasher.

I know, i’m a purist. But it got me thinking of motives. Our motivation for self-sufficiency is the healthy food, the healthy lifestyle and what we think is a great way for kids to grow up. Reducing our environmental footprint is a big part-we discuss most things we buy to decide whether our use of it makes it worth it being produced, or to try to come up with a better alternative. I find it a fascinating challenge to slowly replace things I buy with things i’ve made/grown/bartered for, and it also helps satisfy my militant anti-consumerism. Frugality comes into it-we’re certainly not the most well-off people you’ll ever meet and penny pinching is an everyday necessity, but we quite enjoy the challenge of it, especially when we get to reap the reward of the totally cruisy and stress-free lifestyle we live.

They, on the other hand, were doing it purely as a disaster escape plan. They believe Peak Oil will wreak havoc on society and their family will need what they’re doing to survive. It’s preservation driving them. So it was OK for them to buy anything they wanted-they’re not trying to avoid or prevent anything, they’re trying to stock up and prepare for it.

And I think this is why the book irritated me so much-the motives were so different from mine. Not necessarily wrong, but completely and utterly different.

So, should you read it? If you’re a suburbanite who doesn’t know how a peanut grows or how to thread a needle, or you’re interested in Peak Oil then go for it. If you’re already into the green lifestyle and as intolerant as my husband and I then don’t. It’ll also give you the irrits.