Winter is the best season for getting cozy with a good book

I find the winter to be a perfect time to slow down, get cozy under a blanket with a warm beverage near by, and a good book to read. I love all kinds of books from historical fiction to modern nonfiction. But, when I long for the warmer weather and dream of those summer nights spent in the back yard by the fire or warm days working in the garden I find that a few good ways to supplement are: work on a garden plan, look at seed catalogs and also read books, blogs, watch vlogs and listen to podcasts. One of my goals for 2021 is to read more books...50 this year! So for the first week of the year I read a book. It was on my kindle but still, I read it, and I liked it very much it gave me a good feeling to start the year off with this book so I thought I'd share a little about it.

The Good Life Lab Radical Experiments in Hands-On Living

by Wendy Jehanara Tremayne

This book was a lucky find as I was searching through the library's available eBook list. The story Wendy tells is impressive and to me, relatable and motivational. She describes how as a couple who became fed up living the consuming lifestyle of creating more waste, and being stuck in the cycle of the economy of work for money to pay for stuff, so they left it all behind. With no experience in being "self-sufficient" they moved from New York in the most urban place imaginable to live in a place called Truth or Consequences, New Mexico out in the middle of the desert. Without giving away too many of the details, the book includes Wendy and Mikey's adventures in figuring out how to live in the desert among a new type of neighbors and building a home and more from the ground up. The value is in the important parts telling about how they did so using mostly waste products and not a whole lot of money. The couple also did all they could to maintain a lifestyle that they enjoyed which gave them time to explore all of the many ways that they could make things from waste valuable and sell any extra they had in their cottage business and not have to be committed to going to work to pay bills. There are pictures and descriptions of the processes and inventions they used to accomplish these new tasks.

I find this very motivational because I too like to waste nothing. I also try and make the old into something new and can appreciate that I am not alone in this lifestyle. It feels like they know what I am going through when I say to my husband "Can you turn that old swing set into a chicken coop?" I'm not just being cheap when I want to take apart pallets and build raised beds with them and create compost at home to put in the raised beds. This couple gets that all this waste our society has can be turned into treasure that is useful, and I admire them for this book. I recommend you check it out I read it pretty quickly too. I start classes again this week, but I already started reading the next book: Groundbreaking Food Gardens by Niki Jabbour. Let me know on my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/KatnMaos-Urban-Homestead if you have some good book suggestions.