By coincidence your newsletter on homesteading as a through line in our history arrived on the heels of the death of another homesteader. Rosalyn Carter died in the small house in Plains, Ga. which she and Jimmy shared as home for 77 years, even when they were living in the White House. She still walked in the little garden everyday weather allowing. That garden they had kept together was still kept up. In her illness it was tended by the National Park Service in what she referred to as “her best perk ever.”
I was at a poetry lecture the other day, and the entire group agreed that Jimmy Carter was the least "money-blind," president, and a person who used his post-presidency in beneveloent ways. I feel like Rosalyn never got the same amount of credit, but she was an equally actualized, warm-hearted human being. I love this anecdote — she was the real deal. And it doesn't surprise me that she liked homesteading, and it makes me incredibly happy that the Park Service took it into their care. If we end up in DC, that little garden will be on the list of things to see.
My personal brush with homesteading probably had its roots in the pages of MAKE magazine. It's fun to see how many tomatoes you can get out of a self watering 5 gallon bucket gizmo https://makezine.com/projects/building-subirrigated-planters-from-recycled-materials/, or a modified window box. Truth be told, the squirrels got as many as I did, but I had my revenge the following season when I planted a selection of super hot peppers instead. I still love to peruse the pages of heirloom seeds available from the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange www.southernexposure.com , although I rarely plant anything these days. It would most likely end with me finding out just how much meat there is on a squirrel first hand!
OMG! I'd forgotten MAKE. I don't think they are still publishing print issues, yeah? I made one of those self-watering tomato buckets as well, but it didn't work very well. Once upon a time someone told me the best way to grow tomatoes was to buy one of those plastic-wrapped squares of steer manure at the garden center, slash an X in it, and drop your seedling right into it. Never tried it, mostly because the aesthetics of it sounded depressing, but I guess you could put a Christmas tree skirt over it or something. : ) LOL, I did the same thing with ghost peppers! Someone took one wee bite out of one of the fruits and apparently spread the word. We didn't have much trouble after that. Southern Exposure is one of my favorite seed companies, I always wanted to try some of their bona fide southern varities but St Louis was too cold a climate. Now's my chance, I guess! They offer cotton seeds where the fluff grows in strage colors like light blue and beige. I don't know what I would do with it, but always wanted to try to grow it. Maybe next spring?? Also, odd thing about NOLA: I've seen seven, count 'em seven, squirrels in the last year. Could be that gardeners fricasee them, I wouldn't doubt it.
They have come and gone a few times, including one terrible experiment with a standard magazine format, but now they are back and back as a quarterly mook, as it should be. I'll pick one up off the stands whenever I see one, but I never buy them anymore. 2005 was a sweet spot for MAKE and I think they timed the launch perfectly. It was sort of in the middle of the analog/digital switch over, there was a lot of low hanging fruit for maker projects and there wasn't yet a YouTube video available to show you how to do anything you could possibly imagine.
Those colored cotton varieties have caught my eye as well. They remind me of the bathrooms of the 1970's when you were expected to buy green toilet paper and soap and dixie cups to match your Avocado toilet and sink, there were also options for pink, beige, and blue. Imagine the coordination meetings that had to take place between all the different manufacturers involved. Now you can have a matching jar of cotton balls as well. I noticed they won't send the seeds to certain cotton growing states, less the pollen contaminate the boring commercial crops with a little heirloom vigor. If Louisiana is one of those state, let me know, and I will act as your super secret cotton contaminating accomplice.
I've heard the term "bookazine," but never "mook," which I like a lot better. I'll have to check for them the next time I'm at a bookstore with a decent magazine selection. I'm not great at following project directions, but I always like to try. When I can slow my brain down, I actually do OK with stuff like that, but it's always intimidating. Wow, you are right about why they were such a smash in the early-ish aughts. I'd never considered the YouTube thing, but that's exactly right. Ah! I would love to have some of that stuff to use as pastel cotton balls. I'll have to see if it's contraband in my parts. Maybe it's OK in the city? We are pretty far away from any cotton fields here, through I'll bet you can't grow it in Mississippi or even down in the Missouri bootheel, which is a big cotton-growing area. If not, I guess I will have to content myself with an okra forest. : )
I LOVED this entire article. I've been seeing a lot about this topic lately, and I find it really fascinating. You might be interested in the articles "A Growing Fear of Nature Could Hasten Its Destruction", "How We Learned to Be Lonely", and "America Is Getting Lonelier and More Indoorsy. That's Not a Coincidence" all from The Atlantic, which are similar to this idea, but different in that they focus on how our separation from nature affects us (I've only been able to read little snippets because I don't have a subscription but they seem good). But I also keep getting recommended this page on Instagram of a guy who is "bending back to nature" as well. It seems to be all around me lately.
All of this makes me think about a book I read when I was 11 about a boy who ran away from home to live off the land, made a home in a hollow tree, and made friends with the animals. For a moment, as an 11-year-old, I thought about doing this too. It just seemed like the coolest thing to me and such a lovely life. Luckily, I didn't do it lol—I have no outdoor skills whatsoever and am very allergic to mosquitos—but, like you said, there are other ways to bend back to nature that are less drastic. I think people just forget that you don't have to go so extreme to make a difference sometimes.
The opening made me laugh until snot came out my nose. Thanks.
Ahhh! I'm always glad when a piece passes the snot test. The spewing coffee test is good, too. : )
By coincidence your newsletter on homesteading as a through line in our history arrived on the heels of the death of another homesteader. Rosalyn Carter died in the small house in Plains, Ga. which she and Jimmy shared as home for 77 years, even when they were living in the White House. She still walked in the little garden everyday weather allowing. That garden they had kept together was still kept up. In her illness it was tended by the National Park Service in what she referred to as “her best perk ever.”
I was at a poetry lecture the other day, and the entire group agreed that Jimmy Carter was the least "money-blind," president, and a person who used his post-presidency in beneveloent ways. I feel like Rosalyn never got the same amount of credit, but she was an equally actualized, warm-hearted human being. I love this anecdote — she was the real deal. And it doesn't surprise me that she liked homesteading, and it makes me incredibly happy that the Park Service took it into their care. If we end up in DC, that little garden will be on the list of things to see.
My personal brush with homesteading probably had its roots in the pages of MAKE magazine. It's fun to see how many tomatoes you can get out of a self watering 5 gallon bucket gizmo https://makezine.com/projects/building-subirrigated-planters-from-recycled-materials/, or a modified window box. Truth be told, the squirrels got as many as I did, but I had my revenge the following season when I planted a selection of super hot peppers instead. I still love to peruse the pages of heirloom seeds available from the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange www.southernexposure.com , although I rarely plant anything these days. It would most likely end with me finding out just how much meat there is on a squirrel first hand!
OMG! I'd forgotten MAKE. I don't think they are still publishing print issues, yeah? I made one of those self-watering tomato buckets as well, but it didn't work very well. Once upon a time someone told me the best way to grow tomatoes was to buy one of those plastic-wrapped squares of steer manure at the garden center, slash an X in it, and drop your seedling right into it. Never tried it, mostly because the aesthetics of it sounded depressing, but I guess you could put a Christmas tree skirt over it or something. : ) LOL, I did the same thing with ghost peppers! Someone took one wee bite out of one of the fruits and apparently spread the word. We didn't have much trouble after that. Southern Exposure is one of my favorite seed companies, I always wanted to try some of their bona fide southern varities but St Louis was too cold a climate. Now's my chance, I guess! They offer cotton seeds where the fluff grows in strage colors like light blue and beige. I don't know what I would do with it, but always wanted to try to grow it. Maybe next spring?? Also, odd thing about NOLA: I've seen seven, count 'em seven, squirrels in the last year. Could be that gardeners fricasee them, I wouldn't doubt it.
They have come and gone a few times, including one terrible experiment with a standard magazine format, but now they are back and back as a quarterly mook, as it should be. I'll pick one up off the stands whenever I see one, but I never buy them anymore. 2005 was a sweet spot for MAKE and I think they timed the launch perfectly. It was sort of in the middle of the analog/digital switch over, there was a lot of low hanging fruit for maker projects and there wasn't yet a YouTube video available to show you how to do anything you could possibly imagine.
Those colored cotton varieties have caught my eye as well. They remind me of the bathrooms of the 1970's when you were expected to buy green toilet paper and soap and dixie cups to match your Avocado toilet and sink, there were also options for pink, beige, and blue. Imagine the coordination meetings that had to take place between all the different manufacturers involved. Now you can have a matching jar of cotton balls as well. I noticed they won't send the seeds to certain cotton growing states, less the pollen contaminate the boring commercial crops with a little heirloom vigor. If Louisiana is one of those state, let me know, and I will act as your super secret cotton contaminating accomplice.
I've heard the term "bookazine," but never "mook," which I like a lot better. I'll have to check for them the next time I'm at a bookstore with a decent magazine selection. I'm not great at following project directions, but I always like to try. When I can slow my brain down, I actually do OK with stuff like that, but it's always intimidating. Wow, you are right about why they were such a smash in the early-ish aughts. I'd never considered the YouTube thing, but that's exactly right. Ah! I would love to have some of that stuff to use as pastel cotton balls. I'll have to see if it's contraband in my parts. Maybe it's OK in the city? We are pretty far away from any cotton fields here, through I'll bet you can't grow it in Mississippi or even down in the Missouri bootheel, which is a big cotton-growing area. If not, I guess I will have to content myself with an okra forest. : )
I LOVED this entire article. I've been seeing a lot about this topic lately, and I find it really fascinating. You might be interested in the articles "A Growing Fear of Nature Could Hasten Its Destruction", "How We Learned to Be Lonely", and "America Is Getting Lonelier and More Indoorsy. That's Not a Coincidence" all from The Atlantic, which are similar to this idea, but different in that they focus on how our separation from nature affects us (I've only been able to read little snippets because I don't have a subscription but they seem good). But I also keep getting recommended this page on Instagram of a guy who is "bending back to nature" as well. It seems to be all around me lately.
All of this makes me think about a book I read when I was 11 about a boy who ran away from home to live off the land, made a home in a hollow tree, and made friends with the animals. For a moment, as an 11-year-old, I thought about doing this too. It just seemed like the coolest thing to me and such a lovely life. Luckily, I didn't do it lol—I have no outdoor skills whatsoever and am very allergic to mosquitos—but, like you said, there are other ways to bend back to nature that are less drastic. I think people just forget that you don't have to go so extreme to make a difference sometimes.