There are only so many hours in a day. I only have so much money. The money thing is variable…I could do any number of things from a bake sale to a kickstarter campaign to make more money. No amount of kickstarter could give me more time. In theory I could hire an employee but there are things I just want to do. Me. You know? For example, I can’t hire someone to play with my kids. I also can’t hire someone to read for me.
Here is a list of books I’m currently reading or have in queue. Several I could finish in a couple of hours, some will require several sittings. At least one will require some serious rumination.
Mach II With Your Hair On Fire: The Art of Vision & Self Motivation
Sales book with an emphasis on seeing the world as you want it to be. Julie won’t stop talking about it so it’s high on my list.
Living At Nature’s Pace: Farming And The American Dream
A series of essays about farming and the need for agricultural reform. I have read this before so it should be quick. I’m looking through several of Logsdon’s works for a few specific quotes for an upcoming post.
This book is turning my world upside down…and I’ve read a few permaculture books in my time. Wow. Just wow. Look for more later. He’s wanting me to tree my farm…for grazing. Wow. Use chestnuts as a source of High-Fructose Syrup. Yeah. He was recently on Agricultural Insights but you’ll have to pay for access to the archives.
The Resilient Farm and Homestead
This is a book you should have on your coffee table. It’s beautiful. Beyond that, Faulk does a great job of explaining base permaculture concepts and his ideas of proper implementation. I don’t agree with everything anybody says but I find Faulk’s ideas to be appealing.
For The Love Of Land: Global Case Studies of Grazing in Nature’s Image
Just came in the mail today. Bigger book than I expected at 470 pages. My hope and understanding is this book gives real-world examples of grazers implementing holostic management. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it.
Now, when we get to the real post about budgeting your day and I talk about the time I spend reading, you’ll know specifically what I’m chewing my way through right now. Just know that I read for a little bit in the morning, read when I’m not driving the carpool, read over lunch and often read for a little bit in the evening. I have to read and it just has to fit in where it can.
What are you reading? How do you find the time?
Chism Heritage Farm 
I read light stuff in bed before I fall asleep – right now I’m doing a return to my childhood favourites, so I’m working my way through the entire Anne of Green Gables series – I just finished Anne’s House of Dreams, about to start Anne of Ingleside. I think I started the series just after Easter, so obviously, I don’t read a lot of pages per night :), maybe 4 or 5. The series is set in PEI in Canada around the turn of the 20th century, written by L. M. Montgomery.
If it’s a day off, I read with my breakfast, which I sit down to in peace and quiet after morning chores are done, and everyone else has gone to school or work. This is when I tackle most of my serious reading. I will grab the same book at lunch time too. Probably about 15 minutes with breakfast, more if I grab a second coffee, and about 30 minutes with lunch. Right now, I’m just about finished Shannon Hayes’s new book “Long Way on a Little” – yet another grassfed meat cookbook, but much better than her first two in my opinion, and I may end up buying it. The one I finished just before that was “Every Farm Tells a Story” by Jerry Apps – it wasn’t a deep read, it’s all vignettes from his childhood in the mid 20th century growing up on a farm, but it’s a wonderful portrayal of just how the transition from small mixed farms to the modern farming methods happened. He writes well, and has several books, as well as a small PBS series.
If it’s a work day, I have a book in my locker in the staff room on the go – usually non-fiction. Currently it’s “How to Climb 5:12” by Eric Horst – which is actually signed out to my climbing daughter but which I picked up to read as I volunteered to work at the World Youth Climbing Championships happening at “our” wall next month – hoping I’ll learn more about what it takes to be one of the amazing climbers I’m about to watch. I just finished “Homesteaders: A Novel of the Canadian West” by J. C. Stead, published in 1916. This had very flowery prose, and the kind of drama and romance you find in an old western novel, but it did give great descriptions of how the Canadian prairie opened up at the turn of the 20th century. I get to read on my coffee break and lunch break, but I also use these to check blogs, so sometimes the book gets less time.
In the winter I usually read a little with a cup of tea after dishes, dinner etc are over – maybe about 20 minutes. Doesn’t happen in the summer, though, and even in the winter, not every day.
I’m on hold for “The Resilient Farm and Homestead”, and also Ben Hewitt’s new book “Saved”.
I read Anne of Green Gables some years ago when my daughter was reading it. To my lovely wife’s surprise I enjoyed it but that’s as far as I read into the series. Maybe it was just too tragical.
I need to add Ben Hewitt to my reading queue.
I love seeing the reading lists of others. I guess I try to take the view most people have and see if I can find a conclusion they don’t have. That is why I enjoy this blog and sailors small farm as well.
I’m 3/4’s of the way through Malcolm Gladwell’s books; The Tipping Point, Outliers, and Blink. Kurt Timmermeister’s Growing a Farmer shows the transitions he made to becoming the owner of a paying farm. Kingslover’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle has been good at times. The last two may be better for someone coming from my situation than many.
Your last few posts have really laid out the thought processes and that has been extremely helpful. Thank you.
Thanks Steve. Somehow Gladwell’s books always get pushed into the “someday” category…but as you know “Someday” is just code for “Never”.
Now I’ll try to put it in the queue. Thanks for reminding me of them and for pointing me to two other books I hadn’t heard of.
Nice day outside. Probably the best September I’ve ever seen in July…not that I’m complaining. Spent the morning chopping wood and doing chores. Now I’m ready to sit in the shade with a book. There’s a really nice breeze out there.
The Malcolm Gladwell books are fascinating. I’ve read Tipping Point and Outliers. Outliers in particular was an eye opener. Anything by Barbara Kingsolver is worth reading – the way she puts words together is just so right – texture, richness, contrast. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle came out the same year as 100 Mile Diet (which I think has a different title in the US) – the latter, by Canadians MacKinnon and Smith was more of a reality challenge type thing – two young urbanites surviving for a year on food grown only within a 100 mile radius of where they lived. Kingsolver’s family took on a similar challenge, but far more realistically in my view, with lots of the real life exceptions anyone with locavore aspirations butts up against almost immediately. It is a lovely read, and repeat read. I started the Timmermeister book last year, but it came with a whole bunch of other books that grabbed me more at the time, so I didn’t get much beyond the first chapter or two. Good reminder, I’ll have to get back to it!
Oh, oh, I meant to add: I read this a while ago, but try Simon Fairlie’s “Meat: A Benign Extravagence”. I actually took this one to the beach vacation last summer and read it all in one week – without getting sand in it. This was a dense, information dense book. Encylopaedic is a word that applies. And Restoration Agriculture (which I’ve put a hold on, thank you!), reminded me, earlier this year I read an awesome permaculture book “The Permaculture Handbook” by Peter Bane. I took ages getting through it, but fortunately was recuperating from the gall bladder surgery at the time, so had plenty of reading opportunity.