Extreme Simplicity

Sometime last year I was at Malaprops (a most amazing locally owned book store) going through the garden books... can't help myself...Out jumped a book called Extreme Simplicity: Homesteading in the City by Christopher and Dolores Nyerges.
It rocked my world! No kidding. I opened the book and there it was.... my garden project, only bigger than I had even had a chance to dream up!

from the book...

"Simply put, we have chosen to live lightly on the earth right here in the city, and to do so in a way that represents solutions to the problems that today confront everyone. Our way of living more lightly on the earth has been described by many names: voluntary simplicity, living country in the city, an ecological lifestyle, and so forth. We regard what we do as practical survival."

The Nyerges have been at this since the mid-1980's at their home in Southern California. Check out their School of Self-Reliance. www.self-reliance.net

More from the book....

"We have come to realize that it is not possible to change the world. It is hard enough work to change one's own thinking and to actually live one's life in a manner that represents a solution to at least some of the world's problems."

The book shares their many experiences while transforming their new home. "A duplex rental with a distant owner and careless tenants, the building had been sorely neglected." I loved reading about not only what they did, but how they did it and the philosophy behind the choices made. When the entire process is laid out, it is a gateway to really understanding a new way of looking at the world we share.

and again from the book....

"We regard our small urban homestead as a research station. Here we are able to try out many gardening, recycling, and building ideas to see if they will really work or if they need refining. We had endeavored to let our living home laboratory be truly an extension of our values and our thinking."

Extreme Simplicity is really worth a read if you are at all interested in how to create your own homestead in the city... no need to move to the country to make this happen! And they will show you how! They really are extreme! but take what you can use and don't worry about the rest... Every little step that we take on this path is SO worth the effort and is a big step away from our collective dependence on the gigantic corporate machine that does not have our best interests at heart no matter what they tell us!