Yet another book about the ethics of food, (and this one also goes into the ethics of energy, water, and even waste disposal).In this book, well it is really a diary of a families choice (mama, papa, and one spunky 6 year old boy) to go "money free" for 6 months.
They live in Australia, and so much of the culture, and even some of the language was different than something I would normally run into. Esp being from the wettest part of North America myself, drought often has no reach here. But there, it is becoming an every year problem. In the book you follow this family through their 6 self sustainable months through everything, from eating pumpkin (which they call all squash, from what I gathered... I would hate to think they were eating actual pumpkin all that time) every day for a while to what to feed Possum, their noisy and demanding milk goat.
The book was well written, although some of the language was clearly Aussie, and terribly interesting.
One of my complaints about the book is that I wish that she had gone in more depth about how they did their daily self sustainable things. She talks often about the 5000 kilo tanks she has outside, but does not ever show a picture of them, or where they are on her property. She talks at length about the composting toilet, but again, no picture, or how they put it in, etc. Some of those things would be helpful if they ever were to print a second addition to the book... to help others get used to the idea of that path.
It was nice to read that it took her three years to get ready to do the 6 month project (and in some cases much much longer prep was employed. Trev, her husband, built his own log cabin in the bush and it took 15 years.) So they had some tools. And it was nice to know that not just "everybody" could do it, but that this goal, of getting off the world oil tit, was a long term one... one that even the most prepared had to work at for a while before they could really employ.
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