BOOK: Jane Austen's Guide to Thrift

This book, JANE AUSTEN'S GUIDE TO THRIFT, is on my night stand right now. I am a huge fan of the well crafted, entertaining non-fiction read and I have been delighted by this unique look into Jane Austen's famous novels.

Anyone who has read most of Austen's books (and really who hasn't) will know money plays an important role in the characters lives. Either the revenue abounds or there is a complete lack thereof. An independent female at a time in history when females were not valued or protected by law, Austen had her own small nest egg to handle and handle it she did. She did well to stay within her means and left a tidy sums for her family upon her passing.

Austen's opinions regarding prudent spending and careful penny pinching abound in her books. Men who gambled their money away were painted as rogues, the types of men who could not be trusted. The men and women who were careful with their expenses came across as wise and organized.

This book has a different take on thrift than others I have read (and believe me I have read many, many books on the subject) and that makes it entertaining, fascinating and fun. Halfway through the pages I have yet to stumble upon any nugget of information that I had not come across before but that is not where this book gets it's value. The value is in the comparison between what Austen's characters would do, how they would perceive a situation and how Austen imparted her own opinions on the subject through the deeds and misdeeds of her characters. Call it a wake up call from two centuries prior. Debt was still debt in the Regency era with the only major difference between then and now being society's willingness (dare I say eagerness) to take it out.

All in all, it's an interesting book for fans of Austen and anyone looking for a recharge to their financial health. But I would charge you not to buy it, rather check your local library first and Jane Austen would approve.

Book: On A Dollar A Day

I recently finished On A Dollar A Day, a book by Kerri Leonard and Christopher Greenslate, two teachers in California who embarked on a journey to live like the majority of people in the world. They decided for a month they would live on a $1 a day food budget per person. Their experiment was eye-opening and led the way to two other food related projects: one to sustain themselves on the monthly allowance for those receiving food stamp benefits in the U.S. and the other to eat healthfully while keeping their budget in check.

At first I thought I picked up a book on frugality, one of my favourite subjects and then I realized it was a book about another of my pet projects, studying the state of our current food system and all it's failures.



This book is packed with great insight and thought provoking conundrums. It asks questions pertaining to the poor, their ability to access good, wholesome food and how this relates to other food issues like obesity. As full time teachers, they struggle with making even simple meals from scratch but only because they are counting every penny.

I remember the days when the food dollars never seemed to stretch as far as they should and I remember the lethargic, hazy feeling that coincides with extended periods of hunger. In this book they talk about their minds not functioning optimally. Their tempers flare and the stress mounts. This is the reality for many in our world.

While moving into the Food Stamp experiment (they calculated the average amount of dollar value given in food stamps for a childless couple and used their own funds for this experiment) they thought going from $1 a day to nearly $4.13 was going to be fair bit better. However the increase in available funds did little to provide wholesome meals and they struggled with this experiment as well.

I don't believe there could be a better couple to have written this book. Alternating chapters, Christopher and Kerri reveal their experience with whit, wisdom and passion. It was an very enjoyable read and reminded me of the many people living in North America who still do not have enough to eat.

Now, I am reading The Moneyless Man, written by Marc Boyle who ventures to live a whole year without using money for ANYTHING. I think he's nuts but I'm only two chapters in so I will let you know once I am finished.

Next Order of Business

My indoor radish experiment was a flop. The radish leaves did great but the actual radish was nonexistent. The lettuce on the other hand has done rather well. I am harvesting baby greens right now using the "cut and come again" method. This is a method of snapping off leaves but leaving the main plant intact so it can continue to grow and flourish throughout the season.

Today the kids and I planted some more seeds. Each of them chose some seeds a few weeks ago to plant in their own square foot garden. I think it's interesting that my daughter has chosen flowers (morning glories and corn flowers) to grow while my son went for the vegetables. He wants peas, carrots and cucumber, with sunflowers mixed in.



Because my daughter wants morning glories we have to soak them for 24 hours before planting. We dampened some paper towel and placed the seeds inside. We planted the cucumber and sunflowers. I also started my broccoli and tomato plants.

I know I am a bit behind. I should have planted them a few weeks ago but I don't even have my raised beds constructed yet. The lumber has been purchased and is sitting in garage waiting for a sunny weekend to piece them together. I decided to paint the outsides of my boxes, not the insides that touch the soil that touches our food, just the outside to keep the wood from rotting and looking dingy over time. The paint is also waiting patiently in the garage.

Fruit trees are on sale this week at my favourite garden store. I went yesterday to see what varieties they had and came home to hit the books. One of my favourite resources is The Farmer's Wife's Guide to Fabulous Fruits and Berries. I picked it up last summer at a second hand store for three bucks! It's an excellent reference book with how-to's and recipes. Covers everything from choosing varieties, planting, maintaining, harvesting and preparing and/or freezing.



I used this book and a few others to determine the best varieties of apples for my needs. Not all apples are created equal. Tonight I head back to purchase the varieties I chose but I will post about that another time, once I have some pictures.

So far so good on my little homestead in the suburbs.

Plastic and Oil

The David Suzuki Foundation is promoting this interesting personal saga of one woman who had sworn off acquiring new plastic for one year.




You can also check out her blog at Plastic Manners


Plastic is derived from fossil fuels. A few years ago, when I discovered this I was enraged with myself for not being better informed. I had been striving to lessen my dependency on oil by focusing on fuel use and the distance my food traveled. The depletion of fossil fuels is more systemic than what's on the surface. It's not just what we drive and how far we travel. It's also about how warm we keep our thermostats, what we feed our children and what we choose to purchase at the store.

I recently read the book, Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller by Jeff Rubin. It's an excellent read, one that highlights our dependency on oil and gives solid evidence to the future COMPLETE depletion of all oil on the planet, a natural resource that takes a million years to generate. We will run out eventually, that's a no-brainer.



So why are we using this precious commodity to wrap out kids' school lunches in, or to make toys with or to package water? We should be rationing this stuff for really important things like medical supplies and anything that can not be made with alternative sources (wood, metal).

Many people have debated the validity of this claim, stating that Peak Oil was a concept brought forth in the 1970s. Unfortunately, the scientists back then offered a much more generous time line. The rate of depletion has since doubled with international travel on the rise, more cars on the road and more consumption of meaningless and down right silly products. Our houses are bigger, which need more fuel to heat. Our commutes are longer. Our consumption keeps rising and yet not many stop to think where all this is coming from...or what will happen when it runs out.

The Blue Castle and Simplicity

Yesterday I finished reading The Blue Castle by Lucy Maud Montgomery. I love Montgomery's work and this one is by far my absolute favourite. I read this book for the first time three years ago when I first began my simplicity journey. I didn't realize it then but the reason why I love this book so much is because it's a representation of the life I would like to live.



Looking over the lake at a large mansion Barney and Valancy have this conversation...

"Would you like a large house like that, Moonlight?" Barney asked once, waving his hand at it. He had taken to calling Valancy Moonlight and she loved it.
"No," said Valacny, who had once dreamed of a mountain castle ten times the size of the rich man's cottage and now pitied the poor inhabitants of palaces. "No, it's too elegant. I would have to carry it with m everywhere I went. On my back like a snail. It would own me, possess me, body and soul. I like a house I can love and cuddle and boss. Just like ours here. I don't envy Hamilton Gossard 'the finest summer residence in Canada.' It is magnificent but it isn't my Blue Castle.

And so Valancy is right. The burdens of a big house and a big life to match are plentiful. A grand house requires money, time and energy. A life oozing possessions is a life of servitude to clean and care for them. A minimalist life is one of freedom to pursue your passions.

If you know a bit about L.M. Montgomery you know that she loved her Prince Edward Island above any other place in the entire world. After she married and left the Island she never did return. While living in Ontario she discovered Muskoka, around here known as Cottage Country where people come up from Southern Ontario and Toronto to spend the summer. She found this section of the world strikingly beautiful as well. So enamored was she that she ventured to set one book outside of PEI and that book was the Blue Castle. Obviously she held the region in very high regard.

This book is a venture in homesteading and self sufficiency. Montgomery's character Valancy retreats from the town and her oppressive clan to find a life of peace and tranquility in the forest she loved. While living "Up Back" Valancy found her Blue Castle living amongst nature; the water, the trees, the rocks and wildlife. She ventured into town when need arose but for the most part she stayed at home with her books, her companion, her cats and the life purposely and deliberately chosen.

I wonder if L.M. Montgomery ever dreamed of such a life. My guess is she probably did, and it is from her own desires to turn her back on modern society (and the burdens she bore from it) that the story "The Blue Castle" was born.

Extraordinary Canadians: Lucy Maud Montgomery

Extraordinary Canadians: L.M. Montgomery by Jane Urquhart

A possible lesbian. Suicidal. Depressed in her choice of Bridegroom even on her very wedding day. The last statement I knew, the other two took me by surprise. When an article was published last summer on L. M. Montgomery's possible end by medicinal overdose, I cried. But I wasn't all that surprised. She had been horribly haunted all of her life. Her own personality including a perverse need for control and keeping up appearances made her life even more horrific. Even in the end, she was granted no respite from controversy or drama. She was in real life, by all accounts, the very opposite of what you would expect the authoress of our beloved Anne to be. And yet it all makes sense.

Perhaps one of the most distressing things about her life, in my view, is her close encounter and then complete resistance to passionate love. When I am reminded how close she was to giving into her feelings for Herman Laird before convincing herself that he, at least in her mind, was a lowly, uncultured farmer that she could never prevail herself to marry, I feel sadness in the depths of my soul.

... to dream of marrying such a man. If I were mad enough to do so -- well, I would be deliriously happy for a year of so-- and wretched, discontented and unhappy all the rest of my life. I saw this plainly enough--- passion, while it mastered my heart, left my brain unclouded. I never for a moment deceived myself into thinking or hoping that any good could come out of this love of mine.

To let some misconceptions cloud your judgement so. To be so judgmental. To be so blind. Some spectulated that it was a combination of Herman and her Saskatchewan love interest, Will, that culminated to create Gilbert Blythe.

And yet this is what she later wrote about the day she did marry:

I felt a sudden horrible inrush of rebellion and despair. I wanted to be free! I felt like a prisoner-- a hopeless prisoner. I sat at that gay bridal feast, in my white veil and orange blossoms beside the man I married-- and I was unhappy as I had ever been in my life.

All these things come together so eloquently under the prose of Jane Urquhart, another of Canada's beloved authors. Not chronological. Deeply engrossing. Certainly thought provoking. This biography of my favourite author has to be one of the better ones. Reading this has forced me to pull out my pictorials of Montgomery's numerous photos, her journals, her auto-biography The Alpine Path. This has been an ideal way to kick off my L.M. Montgomery Challenge.

Perhaps each January, when the snow drifts splash on my windows and the pines on yonder field sway in their annual ceremonial dance with the Wind Woman, I will strive to pull out my collection for some reading and reminiscing.