The kids have been asking.... are grapes in season?

Barbara Kingsolver is an awesome novelist, so it logically follows that even with non-fiction she tells a good story. This book chronicles her family's journey through a year of local eating. Each season brings new foods to the table, complete with recipes. Each season also finds them missing foods that have gone and not missing foods they thought they needed.
Although the cost of local, organic food was not a concern for her family, Kingsolver does a good job of accurately portraying the stumbling blocks to healthy eating that many people face. She manages to give an overview of the food crisis facing many Americans with out bogging the reader down in statistics.
This is a good jumping off point for anyone who is interested in learning more about local-vore movement and its complementary nature to organics. The decision between local and organic is not a simple one, and although this book does not pretend to provide a definitive answer, at least it asks the question.
I enjoyed the story-telling quality of this book, and I was particularly drawn to the sections contributed by Camille Kingsolver (Barbara's daughter). As a young adult, her voice gives hope for the future of food as a sustainable, life-giving pleasure.
http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/

Living in the Country...

There are quite a few country, back-to-the-land style publications on the market today. I enjoy many of them, but my favorite is Countryside. This magazine isn't much to look at. No glossy pictures, and the black and white type is dingy. The reason I prefer it over so many others is its practicality. All of the articles in Countryside are written by and for real homesteaders. Country people who don't have thousands of dollars to   contribute to a project, but instead use ingenuity and hard work to get the job done. That is homesteading advise I can use! I don't always agree with the viewpoints Countryside's contributers express. I don't always have a need for the projects they describe, but I do appreciate a magazine that encourages the use of available materials and practical solutions.

Living Simply With Children

My children do not have televisions in their bedrooms. For that matter, we only have one television in the whole house and its in the main living area, so if its on, we all have to listen. When I tell people this, they often look at me as if I am crazy. As if I am depriving my kids of the right to non-stop television viewing...
Its not easy to go against the grain. Sometimes I wonder if it is possible to really live our beliefs. Sometimes they seem too big to tackle. For me this book is a synthesis of all the seemingly disconnected values I am trying so hard to espouse. It reminds me that I work for social justice, fight corporate power, protect the environment, and try to build a strong community, for my children. I want them to grow up knowing what community looks like; including others and helping the less fortunate. I want them to do what they love, not love the things they have and I want them to have a clean, healthy world to live in.
By living simply we can model that lifestyle for our children. People learn best by doing, and by teaching others. I am still learning to live simply with my children, family and friends, but I know that as I learn I am also teaching others through my words and actions.

It all takes money...

With three kids, a house and a graduate degree its no surprise that money can be tight for me. Having nice things and a full life with out being outrageously in debt is not always easy. Just look at the example our State and Federal governments are setting for us! We live in a capitalistic, consumerist, corporate driven society. Individual success is measured by the kind of stuff we have and the amount of money we spend.
We are conditioned to believe that we must accrue debt to have nice stuff and boost our credit when we are young, then spending the rest of our lives paying for those purchases. People work 80 hours per week at jobs that do not have great meaning for them to pay for homes they are in only to sleep!
In their book Your Money or Your Life, Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin challenge the reader to examine the logic in the consumerist lifestyle. They suggest that by acquiring fewer needs and paying off debt we can break the cycle of dependence on un-fulfilling jobs with long hours and high salaries. Breaking free of the capitalist cycle allows us to consider the true value of our time. We begin to reconsider some of our needs. For example; is the restaurant meal really worth the two (ish) hours you worked to pay for it? Would that time be better spent preparing a meal at home?
Rather than following the suggestions in this book step by step (which can be done with great success), I choose rather to use it as inspiration as I work toward a life outside corporate control. It helps to be reminded that my time, spent earning money, is worth more that the cheap plastic crap we are told we need and encouraged to spend our money on. When you see your money as time spent it becomes too precious to waste.
http://ymoyl.wordpress.com/

Bathroom reading?

Lots of people have reading material in their bathrooms. When my husband was growing up, they had Reader's Digest. Pretty typical. I remember several books over the years (Raising Rabbits the Modern Way), but one impacted me more than the others.
Actually, its a series of books. The Foxfire books.

The Foxfire books are a compilation of stories, skills and interviews conducted by high school students during the 1960's in rural Appalachia. It began as a classroom project, but developed into a decades long anthropological case study.
The students in Eliot Wigginton's English class gained first hand knowledge of their own local culture through hands-on interviews and lessons with the elders of their community. They learned self-sufficiency skills such as butchering, building, farming, sewing and distilling, then wrote about their experiences. Those written articles became a series of nine (at least) books.
I loved reading and learning about these rural skills as a child. (Still do!) But, I learned more than practical skills from these books. For me the real power lies in the experiences of the young people. A whole generation of young Appalachians were taught traditional skills from their elders, a very uncommon occurrence these days.
Even less common, they (and their teacher) had the foresight to see the priceless nature of those teachings. I am inspired by the reverence for the mundane that that foresight requires and encouraged as I seek the meaningful lessons in my everyday life. Every person and every place, no matter how old, poor or downtrodden, holds a wealth of knowledge that will be lost forever if we lack the patience and vision to discover it.
http://www.foxfire.org/

I have three "Spirited Children"!

I received my first copy of this book from my mom. It has been a lifesaver!
My children are the kind of kids who are more. More energetic, more emotional, more physical and more sensitive than their classmates, they stick out in a crowd. I love their creativity and their enthusiasm but they wear me out!
They wear out their teachers and caregivers too. This book helps parents and caregivers alike to reframe behaviors and character traits that are often describe negatively in a positive light. It reminds us that it is our job as parents to accept, accommodate and encourage our children while at the same time teaching them to succeed in society, school, and the world around them.
Most helpful to me is the positive language. Rather than viewing a child's more challenging behaviors in a negative light, Kurcinka reminds us of the benefits of living life outside the box. What would our classrooms look like if we were to make the paradigm shift to accepting and encouraging intense, persistent and energetic children rather than marginalizing them? I believe that the spirited children we know and love today will be the leaders, inventors and actors in shaping the future. Our job is to nurture them as they learn and grow so that when the time comes, they will be ready.
http://www.parentchildhelp.com/

Mourning Mothering

Mothering magazine recently announced the elimination of their print magazine, moving to a web-only format. I have been a faithful subscriber, anticipating each new issue, since 2006 and I am so disappointed that this resource won't be available for other parents searching for support.
Mothering reinforced the parenting decisions that others questioned and provided resources for many of my questions through the years.
Mothering made me proud to breastfeed my children, even in public, and NEVER in a restroom.
Mothering taught me to wear my babies and how to sleep with them safely (I used a co-sleeper when they were tiny).
Mothering reinforced my belief in gentle discipline and reassured me that sparing the rod will NOT spoil the child.
Mothering encouraged me to rethink and question common medical interventions like circumcision, vaccines and cesareans.
Mothering encouraged me to experience un-medicated birth and to relish every experience with my family.
I truly hope that the mothering.com format will continue to inspire and guide all those who are seeking...
mothering.com

Radical Homemakers by Shannon Hayes

This book is the one that made me decide to blog. For years I have read all kinds of crazy books about homesteading, green living and radical parenting. I knew that there were other people out there reading these books and trying to create a Home for their families, and I had my parents as amazing role models, but reading Shannon Hayes' book put it all together for me.
I always felt conflicted between making a loving, green, self-supporting home and having a meaningful career. This book confirms my hope and belief that feminists can be radical homemakers with out loosing their identity as feminists. On the contrary, the home can be an expression of radical beliefs and a means of social change.
Building a home as a center of family life, with meaningful choices and shared experiences can be a powerful tool in the war against consumerism and global corperate control. The family is the ultimate grass-roots organization and a community of homes can truely change the world.
http://radicalhomemakers.com/