2018 books: 31-34

[the_siobhan]

    

I Ran Into Some Trouble by Peggy Caserta One of the freebies from Bookbub. Peggy Caserta started a clothing shop in Haight-Ashbury right when it was becoming a fashion and cultural mecca. She was uniquely positioned to become friends with many of the people who were so influential in the hippie movement, such as Bill Graham and The Grateful Dead, and the association she is most famous for, her relationship with Janis Joplin. The book extends beyond the Summer of Love stories and she talks openly about her heroin addiction and her time in jail. She's an interesting person with an incredible story, but man, I have no idea how she's still alive.

    

The Healthy Habit Revolution: Create Better Habits in 5 Minutes a Day by Derek Doepker and Minimalist Living: Decluttering for Joy, Health, and Creativity by Genevieve Parker Hill


More freebies.

So sometimes when books show up in Bookbub I click on the button because what the hell, it's free and then later I find it in my Kindle and kinda just leaf through it because it's there. And then I wonder why I thought it would be a good idea to download those books in the first place.

These pretty much fall into that category. There's nothing wrong with them really, they just don't have anything particularly new or insightful to say. I suspect they mainly exist to drive traffic towards the authors' consulting businesses.

    

Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre by Brett L. Markham So this book I actually got on purpose. Many years ago, when Axel and I first moved into the Gin Palace, there was a real life vegetable garden out back with a grape arbor. (I distinctly remember pumpkins.) We were busy dealing with the inside of the house so the grape vines grew all over the top of the entire yard and killed every last thing. In subsequent years I tried to grow tomatoes. The raccoons took a single bite out of every tomato and threw the rest away. I tried to grow basil. The slugs razed it to the ground. I gave up.

In the years since we're pretty much let the yard run wild. But this winter we ended up putting one of Axel's friends on our couch for a month when they ended up homeless and they decided to repay us by planting a bunch of vegetables in our back yard. And they grew beautifully. Chard! Oregano! Tomatoes! So. Much. Basil! OK, the squirrels dug up all the corn, but still. We got all excited and decided we want to do this more often.

So when this book came up on my deals list I grabbed it. And it really is about how to run a small farm, if I followed all this guy's advice we could probably give up buying vegetables at the store for the rest of our lives. We're not quite that ambitious, but I really like the idea of being able to make a small dent in our grocery bill.

Comments

[greylock]

Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre

Even, in the most optimistic scenario, do they main that is possible?

And they grew beautifully. Chard! Oregano! Tomatoes! So. Much. Basil! OK, the squirrels dug up all the corn, but still. We got all excited and decided we want to do this more often.

FWIW my experience is that stuff grows really well year 1 and even with crop rotation, less so later.

We have different issues (We have sun, you have squirrels; you have soil, we have sand) but IME chard grows well and hardy, and my experience with tomatoes has been good. (Also broad beans). Basically, if you want to eat it, it dies.

[the_siobhan]

Well, not 100% obviously, you're not keeping sheep on that size of lot. But his family keeps chickens and grow enough food to that they sell the excess.

[greylock]

I was also thinking of our block, which is (maybe) 1/8th of an acre. I always make that mistake.

And that's why I am not allowed to keep a sheep.