My husband & I live north of San Francisco near scenic wine country. Instead of traveling
abroad, thereby lessening our carbon footprints we’ve enjoyed exploring our picturesque
area. However, during the past 20 years we’ve come to deplore the fact that many fruit &
nut bearing trees have gradually been replaced w/ vineyards. Acreage where fields of
veggies once grew are now covered by grape vines, as well.

The gradual disappearance of locally grown “real foods” has led to a progressively active
interest in cultivating organic produce, right in our own backyard. We have an apple, a
plum, and a lemon tree, along w/ a wild blackberry bush that has taken over the northwest
corner of our large suburban lot. The wild berries, plus our cultivated strawberry plants have yielded a delicious sweet harvest through spring & late summer… nothing like fresh
berries for breakfast al fresco!

In our veggie garden we’re harvesting curly leaf kale, leeks, broccoli, green beans, yellow
& butternut squash, tomatos, and lettuce. Sharing our goodies w/ family, friends, and FISH
a community organization dedicated to feeding those in need has been a continuing source of gratification. And we’re always amazed at how much we’re able to grow in a 300 sq. ft. space.

I also enjoy growing & drying herbs, which includes basil, tarragon, thyme, parsley, savory, & oregano. Unfortunately, we lost our rosemary bush to heavy frosts last winter.
This fall, in order to remedy further losses my husband is going to build a greenhouse
(covering half our plot.) This should provide more protection, while extending our growing
season.

Raising earth worms has been a top priority. Last year my husband built a state of the art
worm bin, using a raised bed kit, which he modified to suit our needs. It’s both attractive &
easy to use. Along w/ feeding our soil w/ worm castings, we have our garden soil tested
every couple of years to make sure it has the proper balance of life giving nutrients. Healthy soil makes growing organics so much easier, and no pesticides means having
a healthy habitat for garter snakes, lizards, frogs, and a variety of dragonflies, butterflies,
and birds. We’ve come to deeply appreciate our symbiotic relationship w/ nature, again
right in our own backyard.

“From the garden to the table” keeps me busy throughout harvest time… making & freezing
pasta & pesto sauces, applesauce & lemon curd is a yearly ritual I wouldn’t miss, either.
Drying provence rose buds & blossoms, and lavender for potpourris & sachets has also become a favorite pastime. Now, because of inspiring websites such as yours, we’re seriously thinking of canning more of our veggies & baking breads. The how to’s of raising
chickens for eggs has also been a major topic of conversation lately.

These rad homemaker activities sort of grow on you, don’t they?! Thanks everyone… it’s
good to be connected with the earth & people of like minds. Please feel free to contact us
at: provencerose.cam@gmail.com

Just a few weeks ago I was thinking about all of these things that I love to do and have as part of my life and I was thinking about my foremothers and how I ended up at this point despite or because of the choices and conveniences that they had in their lives. Then, I discovered Radical Homemakers, picked up a copy and devoured it in two days. Its fascinating to read and to find many of the thoughts and ideas that I have be articulated as a movement. I find it so exciting to be part of this and to realize the possible life- community- and world-changing potential of Radical Homemakers.

I also find it interesting to approach all of this as someone who has traveled, worked in various places and learned many of these skills but never really been career or money oriented. My husband and I have some financial needs and we will both be working for the time being, but my real devotion is to the daily practices and creative pursuits that are part of the rhythms of my life. Without knowing it or trying to be part of a movement we have made decisions like only having one car, biking and walking mostly, eating local, making things ourselves, and pursuing our creative interests. Reading Radical Homemakers, though, was really helpful for me to realize that we can stay on this path, we don’t have to get sucked into mainstream approaches to money and consuming, and it is possible to sustain the family we want to have on a reasonable income.

We are still just starting out in our life together, we’ve just moved to a new city for a job, but reading Radical Homemakers was both reaffirming of our choices and inspiring to know all of the possibilities and approaches that people have taken. Thanks Shannon, for the inspiration and information!

I keep track and write about some of my making, doing and learning at http://roadtothefarm.blogspot.com If you are interested.

I chose home over career from the outset of my parenting adventure, and although sometimes it would be nice to have two large salaries I know how much we would all loose out as a family. We live in a battered and unloved old house in rural Devon, Uk. It needs a lot of work doing on it and there is almost no outside space but due to our lifestyle choices we were lucky to buy at all.

I teach Natural Active Birth classes, and have worked as a birth Doula before our youngest was born. I teach in the evenings and at weekends when my husband is around so I am always there when my children need me. The women who attend my classes are very often just at the point of embracing the way of the Radical Homemaker, and I am endlesley observing the wrestlings of balancing wants and needs and feelings of career importance and financial stability. I watch women talk in early pregnancy about maternity leave and already thought through childcare arrangements, and see how the changes in their body and hormones of pregnancy slowley bring up conflicting feelings and thoughts. I constatly return to the conviction that this is what we are designed to do. Nature did not intend for us to abandon our children into childcare so we could nurse our second income.

We muddle through as best we can. I grow cucumbers and tomatoes and peppars in pots in our tiny yard, and swap work for veg on neighbours large plots. I make as much as I can and assess our needs and wants in terms of our ability to fulfil, not in terms of importance. Its still ok to want something you dont need as long as you can make it yourself.
I believe greatly that the universe provides you with what you need, and am constantly amazed by how frequently this happens. Skips and free-cycle are great. The boys and I recently pulled a wooden climbing frame, small wooden teddy bed and covered sand pit/ paddling pool out of our local schools skip, just as the summer started.

Im no martyr though! I just happen to genuinely prefer sewing to watching tv. I can’t bear doing nothing, and I’m so not interested in the latest this or the must have that. And the idea of going and spending a weeks food bill on a night out just revilles me! I’d much rather spend a evening out on the beach with a bag of chips and a shared flask of tea!

The end result, the point we are heading for, is to have somewhere we can grow most of what we need and keep Alpaca’s. For my husband, it also has to include working less hours for others and more for us. We no where near yet, but we are going in the right direction, and living as we go.

Our blog is http://www.boysinthewoods.blogspot.com for photos of wild boys and crumbly houses!

I read your book a month or more ago, and have been reading it aloud to my husband, to help him understand what drives me. It’s slow going, though–we mainly read at bedtime, and only after he has already done our traditional family read-aloud, so he doesn’t stay awake very long–not a reflection on the book at all!

I would say I have been gradually finding my way down this path for the past 10 years or so. Big influences were, that my family of origin were quite environmentally minded, and my mom did some things back in the 70s that surprise me in retrospect–made her own yogurt and bread, even taking us along to a friends house to grind the flour; we didn’t have a TV for many years, so I never developed the taste or habit for it. Another influence was that our annual family vacation was, and still is, to a little cabin in northern Minnesota, with no electricity or running water (well, it ran, but you had to pump it into a pressurized tank by hand, first!)–and it was the most joyful part of my life. That helped me see that good time with family and simple pleasant meaningful work had great value. Then, after I married, we spent 3 years in my husband’s native England, and partly because I wanted to, and partly because it wasn’t easy to slot into the medical system there, I stayed home and had and cared for our 2 children, now 15 and nearly 14. This showed me 2 things: I loved being home, and we could be happy in a smaller home, with more public space, than was typical for an American household ( we lived in about an 800 square foot Victorian row cottage, that was 100 years old the day we moved in).

Still, when we came back to the USA, my first job as a doctor was in our first truly auto-dependent suburb. Boy, did we discover right away, especially after having learned how wonderful it was to have only one car, and walk to everything the kids and I needed, that this was not for us! We couldn’t even safely walk the dog without first putting him in a car and driving to a park! We tried to meet our neighbors, but we almost never saw them. Everyone left by car, came back by car, drove into their garages, and never appeared again! Ack! But it was good, because I think it may have really started us down this path.

So I haven’t done the full thing–my kids are in public school; I work part time, and my husband more than full time (he has a career promoting alternative transportation, so it definitely is meaningful work, but it doesn’t always pay well. Some years it doesn’t pay at all!). But I have been gradually adding skills and sorting out priorities. I’ve always had an interest in gardening, but have gotten really serious about it lately. This year I helped campaign to make chickens legal in our town. We did it, and I have 4 beautiful, entertaining pullets who should begin laying in a few weeks. We had a root cellar built, and I have learned to can. I’m trying to learn to knit, but seem to have no aptitude! We plan to get a solar water system installed soon. Oh, and I’m learning to play the banjo. It’s funny–I felt that this was so important, but couldn’t say why it fit with the other things we are doing, until I read your book! Also, in the past 10 years, we have reduced our car usage from a minivan and small car, totalling over 20K mile per year, to one smallish car, with less than 10K per year on it, and this is with two teenagers, who still do lots of the usual stuff–marching band, dance, boy scouts, music lessons etc, It’s just that they have learned to use the city bus, and ride their bikes to many destinations. It also includes the 1600 mile round trip to Minnesota. We would take the train, our favorite way to travel, but it doesn’t go anywhere near there.

I would love to stay home all the time, but I am too frightened by 2 things you mention in the book: health insurance and college education. I know lots of other people here rely on healthy food, exercise, and herbs, but what can I say–I’m a doctor. I see lots of people who do thing right and still have BAD things happen. I’m not dismissing those things–we, too, eat local, organic food, and emphasize exercise and wellness; but sometimes you need more, and it is very difficult without insurance. As for college education, while I think it is to some degree over-rated (that is, there are lots of skills and jobs that I think would be better learned through apprenticeships or trade schools), there are some careers that really do require college education, and I don’t want my kids, if they pursue one of those, to start life saddled with a huge mountain of debt. In medicine, I can tell you first hand, that the unbelievable cost of undergraduate and then medical education plays a big role in what careers people choose, and many who would like to be in primary care, or serving underserved communities, or working part time, fell trapped by the debt load.

I was inspired to come to this website after our local paper carried an article featuring your book this past week (and I recognized at least one commenter above in the article, too). Overall I thought it was good–it emphasized rural retreats over those of us making changes in our suburban and urban environments, but they did quote you on that, Shannon. The one piece I thought was critical, and missing was that this isn’t only about self-sufficiency–it’s also very much about interdependence and community, or at least that’s the way I see it.

Anyway, I’ve gone on long enough. Thanks for giving this a name and a sense of being a movement, or at least a community.

Hi Tania – thank you for your honest letter, which reminds us that Radical Homemaking is a path, and not a destination. RH-ing in the city is the exciting frontier that many of us rural people can sit back and marvel at….country folks like me have a lot of resources to fall back on, if not a lot of $$. That said, we’ve all been in rough spots. I was in grad school w/my grad stipend supporting my student housing when we bought our place. We counted on Bob’s income to get the mortgage. Two weeks later, when the first mortgage bill came, he was canned. We made the payments selling homemade jellies and soap, and relied on the kindness of friends and neighbors for support.

It is hard to know what will open up for you. There is simply not a blueprint for this lifestyle, and the urban folks, in particular, are coming forward with lots of exciting innovations and ideas for making their lives work. This movement is pretty new on the urban frontier, and the folks on this path right now are the pioneers. While that may be exciting, there are certainly harrowing moments. Chin up. You aren’t in debt, and it sounds like you and your husband have your goals in mind. Try to remember that the path for you may not look exactly like what you are imagining…but many have found their way through seemingly impossible circumstances, and you will, too. Good luck! -sh