November 26th, 2004 - Extreme Simplicity: Homesteading in the City by Christopher and Dolores Lynn Nyerges
While most other autobiographical books about living simply involved moving to the country, the Nyerges live in LA. Granted, they live in a more rural-set area of LA, but nonetheless, they don’t live in the country. They are, however, able to keep chickens and geese, forage for wild edible plants (in the lot behind them which is a wilderness area), and few other things that would be more typical of rural settings. I was expecting it to be about someone on even less property than I have–maybe even a townhouse with almost no yard or an apartment. It’s not…I’d say what they do would be difficult to implement for most *city* dwellers, myself included! I live in a city of 60,000. There’s only one “wilderness” area nearby and it’s a pretty small, private area. I don’t think I could forage there. My lot isn’t big enough for chickens (neighbors too close), which aren’t allowed anyway.
Wish I had some ready sources of wood chips and grass clippings. I really want the latter for mulching my garden. For $20, I can get a permit to use the city’s grass and yard waste recycling (most people use it to drop off, but some of use pick up). But I can’t use that on the vegetable garden for we have no idea if pesticides/herbicides have been used. So we’ll get some woodchips there, but even those are a little iffy. More certain than grass. Can’t use our own grass clippings because A) we have dogs and B) we have a composting mower that cuts the grass really fine so we NEVER bag the clippings.
All in all, another enjoyable read, with lots of ideas generated.
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April 18th, 2005 at 1:18 am EDT
When I read this book I thought the exact same thing. They have a very unique situation and they explain it very will, however, my situation has many more strings. I have to work to pay for the house and the kids (Did they have a morgage?). They don’t explain what happens when they can no longer work.
Just my $0.02 :-)